Will dell ever jump onto the AMD bandwagon?

I was thinking about buying AMD64, but so far the only company offering the processor w/ 9700 is Voodoo, and w/ everything config to the way i want it .. let's just say it scared my wallet pretty bad. Beside, AMD 64 isn't really a matured plateform yet. Just a while ago most of motherboards got a major revision on their bios for memory type stability. And as of now WinXP 64 is still more of a showcase then functional OS.

Don't get me wrong though, if it's desktop i would definently go w/ AMD64 since it's easier to fix than getting stuck w/ a 10lb paper weight.

I'm sorry but the AMD64 *is* a matured platform. Dell is in bed with Intel and this probably will not happen for more political reasons. Dell & AMD would be beneficial for customers and consumers.

Hypersonic will on Saturday supposedly post their AMD64 platform w/9700. Based on other configurations between Hypersonic & Vodoo it should be $500-$1000 cheaper than Vodoo.

Well, if u ment to run it on the 32 bit side yes. What i ment was to say was that not really that many application takes adventage of the 64 bit processing power yet. A point to bear in mind, if you do get WinXP 64 right now, you cannot use the graphic card at all.. Nvidia has a beta 64 bit driver right now; and ATI isn't offering one yet... Now would you call that matured? Granted I probably would be using the regular 32 bit OS w/ it. But i would rather wait a bit more for the motherboard manufactures to iron out all the little problems they have w/ 64. As stated on tomshardware.com's benchmarks, some of the motherboard can't even complete some of the benchmark they tried to run.

It's almost there but not quite

As for your Dell/Intel relatioship, well *looks around* anybody seen a dell w/ anything but intel chips raise their hand... Yeah, Point taken.

the Dell/Intel relationship benefits more than it has drawbacks for dell. Although they lose out on hot chips like the Opteron for there server market. Intel almost always announces first tier products to top oem and first on that list is Dell this is also how theres almost never a shortage with processors on Dell's side compared to smaller oems. It wouldnt be bad if Dell would start on AMD products it would be wonderful

I always get passionate when people say "AMD".

AMD CPU's in general have NEVER been a mature platform. If anything, it's been problematic nearly 100% of the time since the initial days of the Athlon.

AMD has given up on developing chipsets themselves. Why? Every chipset they've ever developed themselves has been an abysmal failure. They have always had to rely on companies like VIA, SIS or NVIDIA to develop entire chipsets or partial southbridges at minimum for their CPU's. It's very hard to trust a CPU that never has a complete package.

Intel and their CPU's are generally more respected (and used) because an entire chipset is always developed along with the CPU - and typically these chipsets have fewer "quirks" than their competitors. Sure there's exceptions like the FDIV bug and the 820 SDRAM Memory Translator Hub thing - but Intel TAKES OWNERSHIP of those problems and PAYS for them if things go sour. They will recall and replace any defective component and replace it with an entire working subsystem if required (heck, I even scored an i820 motherboard with 128MB of PC800 RDRAM when they were going through the translator hub thing - for free, direct from intel). AMD has almost NEVER owned up to any of its chipset problems save for ONE (a USB problem with the 761 southbridge - in which they sent PCI cards to "replace" that functionality).

So AMD turned tail and got out of the chipset business Way to go. They left that job to third parties, and now have zero quality control over motherboard chipsets. I see little reason for Dell to go with AMD, because they would not be getting a complete package. They'd have to go to AMD for cpu's, some other 3rd party for chipsets, and some other company to integrate motherboards for the devices they wanna sell.

AMD exists for one reason and one reason only. To keep antitrust regulators off Intel's back In the years that Intel and AMD have been fighting for market share, Intel has never wavered far from the usual 80% market share, even during AMD's best year. The Athlon alone nearly broke the company (look at their financials - hundreds of millions in losses every year ever since the Athlon came around). The only desirable effect AMD has had in the microprocessor industry is the lowering of prices of INTEL chips Some people will say that Intel worries about AMD undercutting them. They don't. Intel makes BILLIONS a year in profit where AMD loses it. Look up their financial data on yahoo, you'll see what I mean.

AMD should learn its role. Make cheapo half-functionality chips for the economy segment like they did with the K6. During the K6 era, they were profitable. As soon as the Athlon was released, AMD sank to the lowest of lows and has yet to recover. AMD's own actions are killing them, and this 64-bit-cpu-with-no-apparent-market isn't helping. I don't want AMD to go bankrupt, they employ a lot of US workers. But if they keep selling expensive chips at below their cost like they have been, they aren't going to survive.

And before you hype this 64 bit garbage, keep in mind that 32 bit HAD a market. There were operating systems and software WAITING for a 32 bit CPU. Stuff like Desqview, Windows and OS/2 all promised to work better in a 32 bit environment, but Hardware had to catch up with Software. This simply isn't the case now.

No one is hitting the wall with 32 bits yet. No average user has a need for >4GB of memory or insane floating point precision. 64 bit has NO killer app and NO software waiting for it. While I like the idea of progress, at least develop something that MAKES MORE SENSE than a 64 bit CPU that offers nothing to the average consumer. Another one of AMD's big blunders if you ask me.

Let the flame begin????

Oh wow, i hadn't seen that coming lol. All I can say is you are missing a great deal by ignoring AMD and seeing it as an immature chipsetmaker. As far as i can tell w/o AMD we probably would still be using Intel P3 @1G and the main competeing cpu will be *gasp* G4.

*yeah call me stupid (^_^)*

Well good thing is i give up trying to convinence ppl to believe in AMD, benchmark speaks more then i can ever will. And if they choose to ignore the fact, hey, this is a free country. Just some more info for you before I go back studying. Currently AMD is the preformance crown even though only clocked @ 2.4GHz, only thing Intel shines is in encoding, and that is slowly being chewed away by AMD. So if you use it for video/audio editing purposes, yeah Intel is much better. Intel P4EE, well, guess why is the chip so expensive? The chip is a scaled down Xeon... So basically Intel is just milking out their Xeon processor which I agreed are well designed. But then AMD's FX-53's not that far from P4EE either.

Now if someone will put some cold water on this topic that would be great

Few comments on Karl's post.....

1) AMD did design their own chipsets (once, when Athlon just came out). But if other inventers can do a better job, why not let them? AMD doesn't have strong financial backing like Intel does. So by concentrating all on resource on CPU they would have more chance of coming out ahead. That's why we have kick ass CPU right now and quality motherboard to play around w/ on the AMD front.

2) AMD was losing money for every K6 chip sold if u didn't know. Athlon on the other hand was the first chip to reach 1G. If you had been reading up on back during those exciting times. Intel was forced to play speed war w/ AMD and start "paper release" the chips. and one of the chip had stabilibity problem coming right off the door, and had to be reprogrammed @ chip level to make things stable. What does this all mean? have you heard of overclocking? Intel was overclocking their own chip and put some restriction so stability can be obtained.

3) No matter what you say. Comparing P4 and P3 @ the same clock speed would result in P3's dominance. Wait a min, isn't P4 suppose to be the "next gen" for Intel? P4's only designed so that they can operate @ higher clock speed. Same thing is happeing right now, w/ Prescott and Northwood. To run @ higher clockspeed usually requires more power. PPL complain that Prescott runns hotter then hell while not offering any adventage better then that of Northwood. Now let's see what ppl says when Prescott is released @ higher speed then u can hope for w/ Northwood. Seeing the fomula yet? Too many customer judge preformace based on CPU Speed instead of basic performance. And intel is using this blind spot against them. PR PR PR PR. Now it's easier to see why AMD's chip matches and even outperform Intel @ lower speed setting. They concentrate on bringing quality chips, well, at least much better then what intel offers.

4) What was I gonna say? Oh yeah, I do own an Intel and stop bashing me for standing on AMD's side lol

Pardon the English, if you can't understand it, it's part of intel's fault.

Damn You have notting but hate for AMD.

Ill write something on this later

time for me to go home

I wonder what would happen if some were to develop a cheap, non-volatile (retains data without power) memory that costs as much per GB as hard drives?

(The immediate retirement of disks and immediate transition to 64 bits, perhaps?)

Karl,

AMD chips themselves are _as functional_ if not _more functional_ depending on the market and the time of day. If you do not acknowledge this, then you are in complete denial. Your inflamatory, factless words belie the facts that major companies use Opteron servers now. I don't plan on trying to convince you and doing searches and so forth because I can tell it's a waste of my time, but I do make these statements so that others will keep an open mind and not buy into your diatribe.

You're right - Intel could put AMD out of business very quickly. When AMD gets a little bit too close they use shady means to strongarm motherboard makers and notebook manufacturers to stop supporting AMD because they cannot compete on a fair ground. They flex their muscle a little bit - muscle that AMD does not have.

Unfortunately consumers typically are not educated about the details of processor work and are easily bamboozled by flashy ads. It's a sad fact that such a small company can produce chips just as capable if not more capable than Intel.

The AMD64 platform is mature because TODAY it can run NOW just as fast if not faster depending on the exact configuration of a comparable PC and be compatible with future enhanced 64 bit software. You guys all want future compatibility but when your precious INTEL loses out in an engineering fashion suddenly this "future compatibility" is not important any more. I am familiar with this attitude - the IBM PC folks didn't need multitasking back in 1985 either when I was doing it with my Commodore Amiga. Why would someone need to print at the same time as working on a computer? I always get coffee when I print, they would say.

You guys should support competition. It's good for all of us. The Intel Fanboy diatribe that plays ostrich-in-the-sand with the facts and distorts the truth does nothing but diminish the credibility of your messages.

No one should be better at making a chipset for an AMD processor than AMD.

Not sure where this is coming from. The way microprocessor fabrication works is simply by speed-binning parts. a P4 3.4C is the same as a P4 3.2C - only with refinements made to the FABRICATION process to make a higher quality chip that operates at a faster speed regardless of a bump in voltage. The whole "speed war" meant nothing to Intel. They still outsold AMD 4 to 1, or more. I'm not sure what "restriction" you're talking about, since it likely has nothing to do with semiconductor fabrication.

I'm not sure where you're getting your info on the K6 either. AMD was profitable throughout the K6's lifespan, all the way through the K6-3. Problems didn't start until they started fabbing the Athlon. The Athlon and Opteron/AMD64 are **EXPENSIVE CHIPS TO PRODUCE**. They are MORE expensive to bring to market than the P4. A great deal for the consumer? You betcha. Will it help AMD survive? No friggin way.

With every new product, you have a product ramp. The pattern for Intel is the same: When a new family of processors is released, they don't perform clock-for-clock with its predecessor, but they can scale FAR further. If you don't understand what "scalability" means to a processor family, then this will be lost on you - but you cannot scale any given processor indefinitely. There are thermal and voltage limits to EVERY semiconductor design.

No one has EVER designed a semiconductor that can scale indefinitely. This is why "Moore's Law" is starting to become less and less relevant. The amount of transistors on a die may increase two fold every 18 months. But so is power consumption, and thermal generation. Moore's law does NOT take these diminishing factors into account.

Oh, you can stand on AMD's side all you want. It won't help them AMD has to turn a consistent profit, and in order to do that, they have to sell their chips at ABOVE manufacturing cost.

A semiconductor engineer can easily make a chip faster than another. Intel could EASILY make a processor that would blow away anything else in the consumer CPU market - but how much would it COST?

The problem is selling it at MASS MARKET PRICES.

AMD is not doing that. I completely respect the CPU's they make. On the right chipset, they DO run faster than a comparable Intel. I would never deny that. But the fact that they are doing it at THEIR OWN EXPENSE means that they can't do it forever. Again, refer to their financials. They are losing money on EVERY processor they sell, and they simply don't have the volume Intel has.

AMD cannot continue to firesale their chips to "Benefit Consumers" indefinitely. Eventually, AMD will run out of money selling more expensive chips just to undercut intel and "stay in the game". It's not the nature of technology that's the problem here. It's the nature of BUSINESS.

I'll sum it up like this.

-AMD pays Intel for an x86 license. They have to. Without Intel, AMD has no market. Don't ever plan on Intel going away

-I don't consider AMD's platform complete until they take ownership of the entire thing. They clearly abandoned owning their own platform when they abandoned making chipsets. This means integrators like Dell have to go further than AMD to procure components. This is why so many large integrators stay away from AMD or keep them in "low volume" segments. It's a HASSLE to deal with multiple vendors - some of which (VIA) having less than optimal solutions.

-AMD makes a great chip - but it's an EXPENSIVE chip. With every CPU you buy, AMD loses money. Your wallet might like that, but I think it's 100% stupid. The trend CAN'T last forever, and eventually real people will lose their jobs. I can't contribute to that kind of corporate stupidity. If AMD wants to truly innovate, they need to beat intel technically AND financially. Every time I say that, people always say the same thing. "That will eventually happen".

Well, it's been like 10 years now, and it hasn't happened, and shows NO SIGN of happening.

Which major companies?

I'm a network engineer for the largest financial conglomerate in the *world* (Citigroup). We don't have a single opteron anywhere. Most of my friends work in this area as well (at other companies), and they don't see 'em either. It's the same ole thing - Intel domination thanks to Dell, HPaq and IBM. AMD NEVER caught on in the business/financial world, and our IT spending is in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year range. Go ahead and compare any of those company's product lines and tell me where the Opteron fits in

And like I said in my last post, AMD cpu's are as functional or more functional. But they cost more to make, which is why AMD keeps losing money quarter after quarter. The only time they ever "break even" or post a modest gain is when another of the markets they manufacture for (like flash memory) has a good quarter.

Not for nothing, but there's a funny list of "oxymorons" that circulates the internet about, oh, i don't know, 593,581,669 times per second. Somewhere near "Military Intelligence" is the oxymoron "Business Ethics".

To bash intel for their own "Business ethics" is silly, because any company that has the kind of market share they have does anything they can to keep it. Like it or not, strongarming is the RULE in business, not the exception. Doesn't make it "right", but it *IS* the norm. Remember the saying... "Nice guys finish last."

What flashy ads? I don't hear constant radio ads bombarding Intel. I don't see tons of commercials regarding Intel either. The last TV ad I saw that was intel related was the "blue man group" ones, and those were years ago. Sorry, but the whole "intel marketing angle" is 100% bunk. If anything, they UNDERMARKET themselves.

Also, without Intel, AMD has no market they are a licensee of the X86 instruction set. They have to follow Intel's leads, and it's intel that's the true innovator here. Intel created every standard we use in computing today. AMD hasn't developed ANY that i'm aware of. PCI, PCI Express, USB, SSE, SSE2, AGP, etc. AMD has done NOTHING to advance the computer industry. It's all intel's work, and AMD is dependent on ALL of it.

There is no market for 64 bit computing. That's the fact. You may not like it, but it *IS* fact. I keep hearing about all this "coming soon" 64 bit software, but I don't see anything leaps and bounds over the 32 bit world. I agree 64 bit is important.... but it simply isn't RIGHT NOW.

Different situation now totally. I was an amiga owner previous to the PC. The amount of times multitasking was important to me while on the amiga? I could count 'em on one hand. Face it, the world didn't embrace the amiga except for gaming, some flashy demos, and your local TV station that needed video overlay for their scrolling TV guide. IBM's market was WAY bigger than that.

I AM ALL FOR COMPETITION. What AMD is doing is not competing. In order to compete, you gotta pull a profit. AMD isn't doing that.

While i'm sure a lot of you would be really really happy if Chevy sold their corvette for 30% less than Ford's mustang - it would eventually spell doom for Chevy. Bottom line: Chevy wouldn't be that stupid. AMD shouldn't be either - but they're being stupid by selling a chip that should sell for twice as much for under its own cost. That simply isn't competition. That's poor corporate strategy right there.

Well, it *IS* your thread!

You need a 64 bit operating system in order to play the 64 bit version of Far Cry, not just a 64 bit processor.

Not that the world revolves around MS but: June 23rd is the release date for WindowsXP 64bit edition.
Being that this is a full retail release most top level hardware manufacturers will have a WHQL'd driver built in, as was the case for XP, Win2k etc...
The developer community is seriously being steered in this direction as well.

AMD's part works very well right now, but Intel is right behind them so I suspect things will be very interesting come Q4.

BTW Far Cry is an awesome game and is a "killer app" for 32bit or 64bit.
Far Cry and UT2004 being available in 64bit is very significant. Should Doom3 and Half Life 2 be 64bit as well thats a pretty safe bet on the speed of transition being 1 year.

I must admit though I am still running an Amiga1200/060@60MHz tower and multi-task every time workbench is loaded using ImageFX and Lightwave in tandem.