1. DDR needs BGA packaging
2. Memory controllers need to be on the CPU die
3. Traces from memory to CPU need to be as short as possible
4. DDR2 might be BGA
5. System memory would ideally be on the CPU die
6. TSOP needs to go away
7. Removing off-die memory controllers is a good thing
0
Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited December 2003
Um, maybe what they are doing is labelling the best CORES as FXs. That is more likely. And takes more intense QC.
Very true, Geeky1, you can get away with stuff, but if you do it a lot, their data mining will catch you. That is why I had one heck of a hard time with an Intel rep forcing third mobo RMA crossship for same customer on same model and same rev board, and why the rep, when I totally flummoxed him and his supervisor, did a next-day-air crossship of a newer REV of same model Intel baord, which was flawless.
The mfrs do not like me when they ship me something not to spec, and software pubs do not like that either, not one whit do they like it. I hold them to literal warranties, plus implicit warranty of fitness. And THAT, my customers like a lot.
Many times it is what you do NOT tell them, if you have enough info to tell them exactly what went wrong and why. you know that, so do I. And mfrs do not like logical presentations of where they messed up (statistically, they cannot help doing so sometime and know this) hitting the press and the web (which the press uses as feedback base in part).
I had to tell one friend how to get a 1\2 refund on a mobo purchase, turned out the seller did not have what he advertised, and my friend had done one thing-- he emailled Asus tech support and asked what the serial number was as far as rev, and included a copy of email and reply in demand for refund. MY FRIEND had gotten the wrong board for what he wanted to do. He got a decent board, never run, at about 1\4 retail after the refund and will be getting an NF7-S version 2.0 board and selling the board he got locally.
The tricks are persuasion, persistance, and key evidence (all the above together) that is true and conclusive enough to make an engineer cringe-- or an engineering student, which is what some of the RMA supervisors ARE in reality, these days. By policy, knowing it is possible, the best rollover and RMA the part to keep their rep high. This has been true for over 4 decades of IT, and I will pay a bit more to get things from such mfrs over others.
Statistically, the best will play more fair overall--and a lot of the idea of best is goodwill of customers. That is why you drive a Benz, right, while Mom drives a Chevy branded Toyota Corolla that cost a grand less on average than the Corollas coming off the same assembly line, and takes it to the Toyota dealer for all work, and I own a Nissan which statistically and by VIN trace had a very good life and a repairable issue for which I got 2 times the best repair bid off purchase price??? True for all mfring.
THAT is one core reason half my income comes from other local techs with boxes they have no idea how to fix.
Remember that 64bit processing is AMD's next big step. Consider the early XP's as PR scratch. Now that the PC market has bloomed and matured, it's time for companies to start moving up, and when that happens, they want everything to be perfect. These are AMD's new cashcows. This is what'll keep AMD afloat 2, 3 years down the road when 32bit begins to move out of the scene, because AMD and Intel (and Apple...) are the big players. When one pushes for something big, 1/3rd of that market is taking a new direction. That's astonishing when you think about all these other larger industries, like cars, that try something new. You've got around 30 something MAJOR car companies, or subsidies of larger conglomerates, but each are doing something different. If one company tries something, they're only pushing 1/30th of the entire industry weight around.
When you put it on paper, you think "Wow, AMD is pushing 64bit processors. Intel is still doing 32bit, and Apple is doing their thing", and that decision is where companies beg and plead for you to choose them over competitors. Now you have two (or three) choices, compared to the 10 more popular car manufacturers (BMW, Audi, Chevy, Honda, etc.). It's easier to decide between two choices, and ten isn't it? Now do a lot of math and you'll come up with a big number that usually translates to money.
I seem to have stirred up a proverbial hornets nest, yay for me.
That said I'm glad to see that everyone got behind this thread because I think that what I was concerned about is on the minds of several of the others that read that article, AMD might not depend on the enthusiast community to survive but I think that a good number of the CPu's that AMD sells go to the people that are represented by the fine folks here at SM, the AMD loyal overclocking enthusiast community.
I know I am bucking the trend by running a P4 (oddly enough the 4 on a U.S. keyboard is also a dollar sign ) but I have overclocked my fair share of AMD CPUs as well and I guess I fall into the camp of "I like them both" but I think AMD is doing a very big disservice to the people that have kept the faith and bided their time waiting for the next big thing by A: pricing the hottest desktop CPU ever out of the reach of their core user base and B: dismissing the core user base both verbally (at least the language of the quotes seemed dismissive) and in planned action by making the future CPUs that are in reach of the masses pretty much non-user modifiable which really chaps me.
The whole reason I went with Intel on my last build was my blooming disillusionment with the tactics I had been percieving coming from the AMD corporate camp, such as the delays on the 64's and the pricing that was unveiled when they were finally set to come out, I figured, what the hell, if I'm going to spend that much I might as well go P4 and save a few bucks and not have to wait any longer.
I just couldn't justify building a new AMD box around a CPU that I had been using for a while but just upgrading chipsets yet again so I went with a whole new architecture. Not because I thought it was better, just for a change of pace.
You'll never see me take sides in an AMD vs. Intel debate or slam either one but it's begining to look like AMD is trying to emulate Intel and that's kinda sad.
I skimmed over the overclockers article, concentrating on the "AMD Exec"'s responses and this thread, I must say I'm rather dissapointed. I'm one of those people that likes seeing big numbers whether or not it results in any positive effects. I also like little 'do dads' that don't necessarily do anything but sound cool (IE Hyper Threading). I was/am an Intel guy to an extent. I honestly have no good definitive answer as to why I am, just something that happened. I was tainted several times to step into unexplored waters. Mainly when a site was selling the super-duper-overclocking machine 1700+'s and when the 2500+'s were king of the AMD overclocking hill. But, unfortunately I've never used an AMD for any extended period of time. This was all going to change when I felt it was time for my next main rig cpu. There were a couple must have's for the next "Dakillac" 1) I was going to try out AMD 2) It had to be the uber overclocker. After reading that article it looks like I might be sticking with my current PC for awhile.
I was also impressed with Keto's response. His theory makes a lot of sense IMO and it also gives me some hope as to switching to AMD. I might wind up thanking AMD for doing this, looks like they'll be saving me quite a bit of money . -DaK
In the Final Anaylsis, FX Series CPUs are Completely multiplier unlocked (& very expensive) and on Athlon 64 series CPUs (939 & 754 pin) the multiplier can be adjusted downwards but not increased (provided your motherboard supports multiplier adjustments).
If AMD does do that I'll be very disapointed in them for turning their backs on the market that pretty much keeps them afloat.
Your joking right? The overclocking guys are a very minor niche market. Its one no chipmaker cares about. You just cost them money.
And when you guys are smoking $500 FX chips jacking around and not $70 XP chips you don't see this as a problem?
They want to sell those chips into workstattions and be the value leader for CORPORATE AMERICA.
For god sakes more PC's are sold every day to grandma's and grandpa's then all the OC guys combined. Just because YOUR into the OC game does not make it a big deal overall in the volume of cpu's produced and sold daily. Corporate America buys 1000's of computers each DAY for every single CPU sold to hardcore overclocker guys and you guys screwup more chips by frying them, installing them wrong and overheating them also. YOU GUYS DON'T EVEN SHOW UP AS A PERCENTAGE ON THEIR PIE CHARTS when they discuss marketing strategy. You do when they show charts of profit and loss as a loss leader and a problem they want to curb.
Lets see..... If I made chips and suddenly after years of struggle had a chip costing hundreds of dollars not $50 to $90 bucks do I want to make that a play toy for kids to fry? Or try and position it for corporate america?
Easy answer.
I have sold single networks with over 1200 PC's on it. In a single day.
Tex
0
LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited June 2004
I hate to admit it, but Tex is absolutely right. AMD was/is sympathetic to overclockers when it was in their financial interest. I assume they valued us (maybe still do) as banner carriers of the AMD flag, free public relations. As AMD's corporate sales rise, and as their market share increases, we overclockers will be of less value to them. Business is business.
Look at the flip side: if and when overclocking eventually becomes impossible, I'm sure we'll concentrate our efforts into other areas - cooling, more efficient PC architecture, better balanced performance. There is always room for modification and tweaking.
I'll probably be strung up in the S-M Town Square for saying this, but I think overclocking has been overrated for some time now.
In the days when you could turn a Celeron 300a into a 450MHz machine it was an extraordinary value. We don't see too many 50% OC's these days, at least not without extreme - and expensive - cooling measures. A jump of 150MHz is peanuts.
Any Athlon XP CPU is going to be fast enough for nearly all common computer tasks. The emphasis now should be on stability.
It's fun as a hobby. I have done watercooling. And used a chest freezer to chill the water to -20 etc... but today you can get a new MB and 2500+ XP at Fry's for 59 bucks. It's easier to pay an extra $25 for a faster CPU then hang a $40 heatsink fan that sounds like a blow dryer on it and its cooler, quieter and more stable at stock speeds with stock cooler.
OC'ing is a fun hobby. but thats all really. And its a miniscule market share in the over all realm of things. A lot of folks lose site of what a tiny niche market this really is. Hp sells more printers every 5 minutes worldwide then swftech does waterblocks in 5 years.
Your joking right? The overclocking guys are a very minor niche market. Its one no chipmaker cares about. You just cost them money.
And when you guys are smoking $500 FX chips jacking around and not $70 XP chips you don't see this as a problem?
They want to sell those chips into workstattions and be the value leader for CORPORATE AMERICA.
For god sakes more PC's are sold every day to grandma's and grandpa's then all the OC guys combined. Just because YOUR into the OC game does not make it a big deal overall in the volume of cpu's produced and sold daily. Corporate America buys 1000's of computers each DAY for every single CPU sold to hardcore overclocker guys and you guys screwup more chips by frying them, installing them wrong and overheating them also. YOU GUYS DON'T EVEN SHOW UP AS A PERCENTAGE ON THEIR PIE CHARTS when they discuss marketing strategy. You do when they show charts of profit and loss as a loss leader and a problem they want to curb.
Lets see..... If I made chips and suddenly after years of struggle had a chip costing hundreds of dollars not $50 to $90 bucks do I want to make that a play toy for kids to fry? Or try and position it for corporate america?
Easy answer.
I have sold single networks with over 1200 PC's on it. In a single day.
Tex
Yep.. The number of corporate pc sales in a day is probably a 10000 to 1 vs the home overclocker. You mean nothing to them peons..
Companies like Dell, hp/compaq and the rest are their real customers. Hence processor prices being quoted as say $799 based on 1000 ct. cuz Companies like dell buy them in the 1000's at a time. your 80 dollars means jack.. except the truth, move on and be happy.
Exactly, guys. That's why I dropped this off the sticky list; it's old news now. And socket A still has an unlocked choice and what a good choice it is; the mobile XP series.
Also, since there are finally chipsets out there for A64 that support a locked pci and agp bus, the upward locked multis on A64 aren't any kind of big hurdle to get past in overclocking. They will overclock just like an Inel now.
And Tex is dead right about the overclocking community and AMD. We are barely a pimple on the real target of oem sales. You can thank the unscrupulous chip remarkers for the present state of affairs with the locked multipliers too as they were stealing real revenue from AMD when they really needed it. Who really knows how bad the remarking problem had gotten before AMD started hard locking all those procs. I'm sure that AMD won't release how bad the problem really got either.
0
LeonardoWake up and smell the glaciersEagle River, AlaskaIcrontian
edited June 2004
I'll probably be strung up in the S-M Town Square for saying this, but I think overclocking has been overrated for some time now.
As far as utility goes - yes. But as a hobby, it's certainly fun. Kinda of like making a hotrod out of a Chevy Chevelle - looks cool and has tons of horsepower, but really doesn't get you to work and the grocery store any faster.
For the sake of discussion, say that CPU overclocking does go away. There will still be plenty of other mods and performance tweaks to do. And that's the fun of it - not megahertz boost per se, but in improving performance of a stock piece of hardware.
Not really. I have argued with co-workers from years ago and they insist the number of PC's I built myself years ago has to be over ten thousand and I bet it's half that. I sold that way way over that but didn't build them. And the majority were mind killing yucky basic no-frills PC's. Built assembly line style in a huge room like auto's are bult now. Sucks the fun out working 20 hours a day unpacking and installing parts for 600 pc's lets say... one after another as fast as you possibly can..... with electric screwdrivers one after another. It's not fun. It's work and nothing more. So tired you can barely stagger around.
Not like a dressed out enthusiast box. This was one boring PC after another.
Building the servers was fun and writing and installing the custom software was fun. I loved writing the custom software and the system design. Building was simply a evil that had to be endured.
I was the "snake killer" I got all the weird goofy repair crap no one else would fix.
Your joking right? The overclocking guys are a very minor niche market. Its one no chipmaker cares about. You just cost them money.
And when you guys are smoking $500 FX chips jacking around and not $70 XP chips you don't see this as a problem?
They want to sell those chips into workstattions and be the value leader for CORPORATE AMERICA.
For god sakes more PC's are sold every day to grandma's and grandpa's then all the OC guys combined. Just because YOUR into the OC game does not make it a big deal overall in the volume of cpu's produced and sold daily. Corporate America buys 1000's of computers each DAY for every single CPU sold to hardcore overclocker guys and you guys screwup more chips by frying them, installing them wrong and overheating them also. YOU GUYS DON'T EVEN SHOW UP AS A PERCENTAGE ON THEIR PIE CHARTS when they discuss marketing strategy. You do when they show charts of profit and loss as a loss leader and a problem they want to curb.
Lets see..... If I made chips and suddenly after years of struggle had a chip costing hundreds of dollars not $50 to $90 bucks do I want to make that a play toy for kids to fry? Or try and position it for corporate america?
Easy answer.
I have sold single networks with over 1200 PC's on it. In a single day.
Tex
No I'm not fsking joking...when you stop and take a look at it who buys AMD based desktop systems? Enthusiasts...they are either bought by the same class of enthusiasts that buy a pre-built hot-rod from someone like Boyd Coddington (boutique vendors) or they are bought as parts by guys like us that "roll our own" so to speak so, yeah, they are turning their backs on the guys that are their core audience.
I've sold AMD systems in a smaller mom and pop computer store and I've been in others and AMD systems are always marketed as "performance" systems...we sold P4's to grandma and grandpa and sold XP's to their grandkids for gaming on.
So I still stand by my earlier statement...I'm disapointed that AMd is cutting off the enthusiast consumer unless they want to buy a $700 chip instead of a $175-250 chip.
Even by your reckoning that's asstastic on their part, why invite someone to smoke the most expensive product you produce?
Think about it.
No I'm not fsking joking...when you stop and take a look at it who buys AMD based desktop systems? Enthusiasts...they are either bought by the same class of enthusiasts that buy a pre-built hot-rod from someone like Boyd Coddington (boutique vendors) or they are bought as parts by guys like us that "roll our own" so to speak so, yeah, they are turning their backs on the guys that are their core audience.
I've sold AMD systems in a smaller mom and pop computer store and I've been in others and AMD systems are always marketed as "performance" systems...we sold P4's to grandma and grandpa and sold XP's to their grandkids for gaming on.
So I still stand by my earlier statement...I'm disapointed that AMd is cutting off the enthusiast consumer unless they want to buy a $700 chip instead of a $175-250 chip.
Even by your reckoning that's asstastic on their part, why invite someone to smoke the most expensive product you produce?
Think about it.
Sadly, you have a slightly accured vision of what AMD is obviously attempting to do.
Tex is 100% accurate in this statement. It's about the corporates. The "enthuiasts" just happen to have stumbled across the wonderful playability of the AMD processor family. It wasn't by design. Sorry but it definitely wasn't.
I used to work for the biggest optical component manufacturer in the world: Nortel Networks. You want to see the number of DELL machines they got through.. they employed (at peak).. over 250,000 staff. That's 250,000+ PC's (not including servers and so on) carrying over 250,000 processors. If you were a chip manufacturer, wouldn't you want to get a slice of that kind of action. That's just ONE corporate, just one, there are thousands of multi-national corporations spanning the globe. You do the math at what that markets worth. Alot more than the $60 a pop bargain basement processor game.
AMD want in on that share, who can blame them? Watching Intel kick away billions of dollars from DELL, HP and others must bite hard.
As I have previously stated, the enthuiasts picked up on the movement with AMD's processors. At no stage did AMD wave a flag saying "Oh this is for you overclocker enthuiasts".. and then are now suddenly waving the "no sorry, not for you anymore". That's not how it works.
Sorry but that's the way it is. AMD haven't turned their backs on anyone.
I'm perfectly happy with the downward multipliers on the 3x00 class of chips being unlocked. That makes it easier to ramp the FSB sky high.
Nor am I offended by the new pricing scheme. It, as Agent Smith would say, was inevitable. AMD isn't expected to operate in the black by selling CPUs in the red.
Oddly enough though we aren't talkinh about enterprise class CPU's here...we are talking about CPU's that are being marketed to home users.
I never once mentioned Opterons in this post which would be more along the lines of what AMD would like to sell to multi national clients...they are geared and marketed towards them.
If you think I'm full of crap then why do they make 1XX-2XX-8XX series Opterons if not for desktop, workstation and server applications and why sell a higher end aimed home use geared CPU at all?
The 754's and 940 as well as 939's will not do smtp and the simple fact that 754's and 939's don't support ECC ram should point out that they are designed and marketed towards the home user as well.
When it comes straight down to who the home user market is it's still going to be enthusiasts like us just like I keep stating regardless of whether or not anyone chooses to believe it.
I could give a whit what AMD does with enterprise hardware as I'll probably never be in the market for that kind of gear but I'll be an enthusiast until the day they pack my body into the ground.
And for those of you that don't think that we as enthusiasts matter, stop to ponder this for a moment, we keep how many companies afloat? Dozens? More? All I know is that without the "fringe" element that we are accused of being companies like D-Tek, Innovatech, Zalman, Danger Den, Koolance, Thermaltake, Thermalright and more would cease to exist or be operating on a much smaller scale than they are now.
We make a much greater impact than you stop to consider.
0
Geeky1University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
edited June 2004
Thermalright etc. are very small companies compared to AMD.
What do corporations buy for their employees? Not Xeons.. Pentium 4s and Celerons.
What will they eventually buy for their employees if they went to AMD? Athlon 3x00 chips, not Opterons. The 3x00 chip is the regular desktop workhorse chip of the A64 line.. The FX-53 is for the enthusiasts (Smells like.. P4EE!), and the Opteron is for enterprise workstations (Media development boxes, anyone?) and servers.
We're not talking about Opterons, and all those companies you just mentioned are a fraction of the size of AMD alone.
I'm perfectly happy with the downward multipliers on the 3x00 class of chips being unlocked. That makes it easier to ramp the FSB sky high.
Nor am I offended by the new pricing scheme. It, as Agent Smith would say, was inevitable. AMD isn't expected to operate in the black by selling CPUs in the red.
I agree with most of what you are saying, Thrax, but AMD has definitely screwed the pooch with socket 939 IMO. Sure they have some procs being released for socket 939 but the cheapest one is $500. What about lower speed socket 939 procs that are more affordable in the lower speed classes. BTW, I'm not talking about $50 procs, I'm referring to procs in the $200-300 range. That way, the major oems don't have to stock but 2 lines of motherboards instead of 3 different lines to put out a complete hammer offering. You will presently have to have socket 940 for servers/workstation setups, socket 939 for gaming/high end rigs and socket 754 for the el cheapo boxes and there is no upgrade path between el cheapo and high end without changing the mobo and cpu. Not releasing some more affordable socket 939 procs is a stupid decision on AMD's part. Look at the last several releases of new procs by Intel; they covered not only the high end but also the value end too with only one mobo platform needed to cover both. I just hope AMD wakes up to this fact sooner than later.
You have to realize that socket 939 is soon going to encompass both the 3x00 series and the FX-5x series. It takes time to transition, Mud.. They <i>just</i> released it. It took them 4 months to debut low-end socket 754 chips based on the Newcastle core. By the time the transition completes <i>all Athlon64 chips excepting the Opteron will be on socket 939</i>.
Like Intel, it really is a wise move for them to keep Opteron on the 940.
You missed AMD's statement on moving 754 to 939, I guess.
Comments
2. Memory controllers need to be on the CPU die
3. Traces from memory to CPU need to be as short as possible
4. DDR2 might be BGA
5. System memory would ideally be on the CPU die
6. TSOP needs to go away
7. Removing off-die memory controllers is a good thing
Very true, Geeky1, you can get away with stuff, but if you do it a lot, their data mining will catch you. That is why I had one heck of a hard time with an Intel rep forcing third mobo RMA crossship for same customer on same model and same rev board, and why the rep, when I totally flummoxed him and his supervisor, did a next-day-air crossship of a newer REV of same model Intel baord, which was flawless.
The mfrs do not like me when they ship me something not to spec, and software pubs do not like that either, not one whit do they like it. I hold them to literal warranties, plus implicit warranty of fitness. And THAT, my customers like a lot.
Many times it is what you do NOT tell them, if you have enough info to tell them exactly what went wrong and why. you know that, so do I. And mfrs do not like logical presentations of where they messed up (statistically, they cannot help doing so sometime and know this) hitting the press and the web (which the press uses as feedback base in part).
I had to tell one friend how to get a 1\2 refund on a mobo purchase, turned out the seller did not have what he advertised, and my friend had done one thing-- he emailled Asus tech support and asked what the serial number was as far as rev, and included a copy of email and reply in demand for refund. MY FRIEND had gotten the wrong board for what he wanted to do. He got a decent board, never run, at about 1\4 retail after the refund and will be getting an NF7-S version 2.0 board and selling the board he got locally.
The tricks are persuasion, persistance, and key evidence (all the above together) that is true and conclusive enough to make an engineer cringe-- or an engineering student, which is what some of the RMA supervisors ARE in reality, these days. By policy, knowing it is possible, the best rollover and RMA the part to keep their rep high. This has been true for over 4 decades of IT, and I will pay a bit more to get things from such mfrs over others.
Statistically, the best will play more fair overall--and a lot of the idea of best is goodwill of customers. That is why you drive a Benz, right, while Mom drives a Chevy branded Toyota Corolla that cost a grand less on average than the Corollas coming off the same assembly line, and takes it to the Toyota dealer for all work, and I own a Nissan which statistically and by VIN trace had a very good life and a repairable issue for which I got 2 times the best repair bid off purchase price??? True for all mfring.
THAT is one core reason half my income comes from other local techs with boxes they have no idea how to fix.
John.
Meanwhile I have come. I have babbled.
http://www.short-media.com/article.php?127.0
I read that in the INTEL dictionary...right after SCSI.
When you put it on paper, you think "Wow, AMD is pushing 64bit processors. Intel is still doing 32bit, and Apple is doing their thing", and that decision is where companies beg and plead for you to choose them over competitors. Now you have two (or three) choices, compared to the 10 more popular car manufacturers (BMW, Audi, Chevy, Honda, etc.). It's easier to decide between two choices, and ten isn't it? Now do a lot of math and you'll come up with a big number that usually translates to money.
That said I'm glad to see that everyone got behind this thread because I think that what I was concerned about is on the minds of several of the others that read that article, AMD might not depend on the enthusiast community to survive but I think that a good number of the CPu's that AMD sells go to the people that are represented by the fine folks here at SM, the AMD loyal overclocking enthusiast community.
I know I am bucking the trend by running a P4 (oddly enough the 4 on a U.S. keyboard is also a dollar sign ) but I have overclocked my fair share of AMD CPUs as well and I guess I fall into the camp of "I like them both" but I think AMD is doing a very big disservice to the people that have kept the faith and bided their time waiting for the next big thing by A: pricing the hottest desktop CPU ever out of the reach of their core user base and B: dismissing the core user base both verbally (at least the language of the quotes seemed dismissive) and in planned action by making the future CPUs that are in reach of the masses pretty much non-user modifiable which really chaps me.
The whole reason I went with Intel on my last build was my blooming disillusionment with the tactics I had been percieving coming from the AMD corporate camp, such as the delays on the 64's and the pricing that was unveiled when they were finally set to come out, I figured, what the hell, if I'm going to spend that much I might as well go P4 and save a few bucks and not have to wait any longer.
I just couldn't justify building a new AMD box around a CPU that I had been using for a while but just upgrading chipsets yet again so I went with a whole new architecture. Not because I thought it was better, just for a change of pace.
You'll never see me take sides in an AMD vs. Intel debate or slam either one but it's begining to look like AMD is trying to emulate Intel and that's kinda sad.
I skimmed over the overclockers article, concentrating on the "AMD Exec"'s responses and this thread, I must say I'm rather dissapointed. I'm one of those people that likes seeing big numbers whether or not it results in any positive effects. I also like little 'do dads' that don't necessarily do anything but sound cool (IE Hyper Threading). I was/am an Intel guy to an extent. I honestly have no good definitive answer as to why I am, just something that happened. I was tainted several times to step into unexplored waters. Mainly when a site was selling the super-duper-overclocking machine 1700+'s and when the 2500+'s were king of the AMD overclocking hill. But, unfortunately I've never used an AMD for any extended period of time. This was all going to change when I felt it was time for my next main rig cpu. There were a couple must have's for the next "Dakillac" 1) I was going to try out AMD 2) It had to be the uber overclocker. After reading that article it looks like I might be sticking with my current PC for awhile.
I was also impressed with Keto's response. His theory makes a lot of sense IMO and it also gives me some hope as to switching to AMD. I might wind up thanking AMD for doing this, looks like they'll be saving me quite a bit of money . -DaK
OCWorkbench Epox 8KDA3+ NF3-250GB S754 mobo review (AMD A64 3200+ 2.0GHz 10x Multi 1MB L2 Cache)
Page 8
Your joking right? The overclocking guys are a very minor niche market. Its one no chipmaker cares about. You just cost them money.
And when you guys are smoking $500 FX chips jacking around and not $70 XP chips you don't see this as a problem?
They want to sell those chips into workstattions and be the value leader for CORPORATE AMERICA.
For god sakes more PC's are sold every day to grandma's and grandpa's then all the OC guys combined. Just because YOUR into the OC game does not make it a big deal overall in the volume of cpu's produced and sold daily. Corporate America buys 1000's of computers each DAY for every single CPU sold to hardcore overclocker guys and you guys screwup more chips by frying them, installing them wrong and overheating them also. YOU GUYS DON'T EVEN SHOW UP AS A PERCENTAGE ON THEIR PIE CHARTS when they discuss marketing strategy. You do when they show charts of profit and loss as a loss leader and a problem they want to curb.
Lets see..... If I made chips and suddenly after years of struggle had a chip costing hundreds of dollars not $50 to $90 bucks do I want to make that a play toy for kids to fry? Or try and position it for corporate america?
Easy answer.
I have sold single networks with over 1200 PC's on it. In a single day.
Tex
Look at the flip side: if and when overclocking eventually becomes impossible, I'm sure we'll concentrate our efforts into other areas - cooling, more efficient PC architecture, better balanced performance. There is always room for modification and tweaking.
In the days when you could turn a Celeron 300a into a 450MHz machine it was an extraordinary value. We don't see too many 50% OC's these days, at least not without extreme - and expensive - cooling measures. A jump of 150MHz is peanuts.
Any Athlon XP CPU is going to be fast enough for nearly all common computer tasks. The emphasis now should be on stability.
OC'ing is a fun hobby. but thats all really. And its a miniscule market share in the over all realm of things. A lot of folks lose site of what a tiny niche market this really is. Hp sells more printers every 5 minutes worldwide then swftech does waterblocks in 5 years.
Tex
You can still OC AMD CPUs via multiplier, you just have to pay for it (or grab a Mobile DTR CPU)
THIS Story needs to be told!
Mobile processors will be the overclockers processor in the future as they have to be unlocked for the power scalability...
Gobbles...
Yep.. The number of corporate pc sales in a day is probably a 10000 to 1 vs the home overclocker. You mean nothing to them peons..
Companies like Dell, hp/compaq and the rest are their real customers. Hence processor prices being quoted as say $799 based on 1000 ct. cuz Companies like dell buy them in the 1000's at a time. your 80 dollars means jack.. except the truth, move on and be happy.
Gobbles
Also, since there are finally chipsets out there for A64 that support a locked pci and agp bus, the upward locked multis on A64 aren't any kind of big hurdle to get past in overclocking. They will overclock just like an Inel now.
And Tex is dead right about the overclocking community and AMD. We are barely a pimple on the real target of oem sales. You can thank the unscrupulous chip remarkers for the present state of affairs with the locked multipliers too as they were stealing real revenue from AMD when they really needed it. Who really knows how bad the remarking problem had gotten before AMD started hard locking all those procs. I'm sure that AMD won't release how bad the problem really got either.
For the sake of discussion, say that CPU overclocking does go away. There will still be plenty of other mods and performance tweaks to do. And that's the fun of it - not megahertz boost per se, but in improving performance of a stock piece of hardware.
Not really. I have argued with co-workers from years ago and they insist the number of PC's I built myself years ago has to be over ten thousand and I bet it's half that. I sold that way way over that but didn't build them. And the majority were mind killing yucky basic no-frills PC's. Built assembly line style in a huge room like auto's are bult now. Sucks the fun out working 20 hours a day unpacking and installing parts for 600 pc's lets say... one after another as fast as you possibly can..... with electric screwdrivers one after another. It's not fun. It's work and nothing more. So tired you can barely stagger around.
Not like a dressed out enthusiast box. This was one boring PC after another.
Building the servers was fun and writing and installing the custom software was fun. I loved writing the custom software and the system design. Building was simply a evil that had to be endured.
I was the "snake killer" I got all the weird goofy repair crap no one else would fix.
Tex
I've sold AMD systems in a smaller mom and pop computer store and I've been in others and AMD systems are always marketed as "performance" systems...we sold P4's to grandma and grandpa and sold XP's to their grandkids for gaming on.
So I still stand by my earlier statement...I'm disapointed that AMd is cutting off the enthusiast consumer unless they want to buy a $700 chip instead of a $175-250 chip.
Even by your reckoning that's asstastic on their part, why invite someone to smoke the most expensive product you produce?
Think about it.
Tex is 100% accurate in this statement. It's about the corporates. The "enthuiasts" just happen to have stumbled across the wonderful playability of the AMD processor family. It wasn't by design. Sorry but it definitely wasn't.
I used to work for the biggest optical component manufacturer in the world: Nortel Networks. You want to see the number of DELL machines they got through.. they employed (at peak).. over 250,000 staff. That's 250,000+ PC's (not including servers and so on) carrying over 250,000 processors. If you were a chip manufacturer, wouldn't you want to get a slice of that kind of action. That's just ONE corporate, just one, there are thousands of multi-national corporations spanning the globe. You do the math at what that markets worth. Alot more than the $60 a pop bargain basement processor game.
AMD want in on that share, who can blame them? Watching Intel kick away billions of dollars from DELL, HP and others must bite hard.
As I have previously stated, the enthuiasts picked up on the movement with AMD's processors. At no stage did AMD wave a flag saying "Oh this is for you overclocker enthuiasts".. and then are now suddenly waving the "no sorry, not for you anymore". That's not how it works.
Sorry but that's the way it is. AMD haven't turned their backs on anyone.
Nor am I offended by the new pricing scheme. It, as Agent Smith would say, was inevitable. AMD isn't expected to operate in the black by selling CPUs in the red.
I never once mentioned Opterons in this post which would be more along the lines of what AMD would like to sell to multi national clients...they are geared and marketed towards them.
If you think I'm full of crap then why do they make 1XX-2XX-8XX series Opterons if not for desktop, workstation and server applications and why sell a higher end aimed home use geared CPU at all?
The 754's and 940 as well as 939's will not do smtp and the simple fact that 754's and 939's don't support ECC ram should point out that they are designed and marketed towards the home user as well.
When it comes straight down to who the home user market is it's still going to be enthusiasts like us just like I keep stating regardless of whether or not anyone chooses to believe it.
I could give a whit what AMD does with enterprise hardware as I'll probably never be in the market for that kind of gear but I'll be an enthusiast until the day they pack my body into the ground.
And for those of you that don't think that we as enthusiasts matter, stop to ponder this for a moment, we keep how many companies afloat? Dozens? More? All I know is that without the "fringe" element that we are accused of being companies like D-Tek, Innovatech, Zalman, Danger Den, Koolance, Thermaltake, Thermalright and more would cease to exist or be operating on a much smaller scale than they are now.
We make a much greater impact than you stop to consider.
What will they eventually buy for their employees if they went to AMD? Athlon 3x00 chips, not Opterons. The 3x00 chip is the regular desktop workhorse chip of the A64 line.. The FX-53 is for the enthusiasts (Smells like.. P4EE!), and the Opteron is for enterprise workstations (Media development boxes, anyone?) and servers.
We're not talking about Opterons, and all those companies you just mentioned are a fraction of the size of AMD alone.
I agree with most of what you are saying, Thrax, but AMD has definitely screwed the pooch with socket 939 IMO. Sure they have some procs being released for socket 939 but the cheapest one is $500. What about lower speed socket 939 procs that are more affordable in the lower speed classes. BTW, I'm not talking about $50 procs, I'm referring to procs in the $200-300 range. That way, the major oems don't have to stock but 2 lines of motherboards instead of 3 different lines to put out a complete hammer offering. You will presently have to have socket 940 for servers/workstation setups, socket 939 for gaming/high end rigs and socket 754 for the el cheapo boxes and there is no upgrade path between el cheapo and high end without changing the mobo and cpu. Not releasing some more affordable socket 939 procs is a stupid decision on AMD's part. Look at the last several releases of new procs by Intel; they covered not only the high end but also the value end too with only one mobo platform needed to cover both. I just hope AMD wakes up to this fact sooner than later.
Like Intel, it really is a wise move for them to keep Opteron on the 940.
You missed AMD's statement on moving 754 to 939, I guess.