Comments on: AMD's Barcelona not a savior, yet

After a delay, Barcelona is here, but is it the clear winner AMD promised it would be? That's uncertain.

[Arbalest05]

Cnet & ZDnet biased against AMD?

Is it just me or is CNet & ZDnet (same company) just a little biased against AMD? Everyone knows that George Ou is an Intel zelot, but even simple product release stories are peppered with negative statements by staff bloggers.

Perhaps Intel is a big part of their advertising income?

[gdmaclew]

AMD's biggest Problem

AMD's biggest problem is advertising.
when was the last time you saw an ad on TV for AMD processors or an ad from a computer manufacturer that featured a "made with AMD processors" like they do with Intel?
If you ask the average consumer what AMD is, they couldn't tell you.
I know AMD doesn't have the deep pockets that Intel does but if you don't advertise you are never going to get your message out there.
This has always been AMD's weakest link.

[webdev511]

All those cores maxed out?

I don't think so. Sure it's good to concentrate the CPUs down and keep the power consumption down, but systems still need ram, network and disk. Anyone care to guess where the bottle neck is?

Oh yeah, as far as getting these cpus on the desktop, it sure would be nice if more applications were written for 64bit and leveraged multiple cores.

And yes I am looking forward to a phenom workstation with lots of ram and fast drives because there's data mining to be done.

[Mister Winky]

Bad News for AMD

AMD has lost the plot and they have nobody but themselves to blame.

1) They made a HUGE tactical blunder by not bringing any quad-core chip to market in the last year while Intel sold tons of profitable 2x2 quad core chips. AMD keeps screaming about how they're chip will be better and faster, but that didn't help IT managers with immediate buying decisions and it doesn't help shareholders waiting over two quarters for revenue relief.

2) AMD bet that Intel couldn't build a true quad-core like Barcelona. All indications are that Intel will have a chip which is just as good, if not better, than Barcelona by early next year. This makes waiting for Barcelona seem even more foolish.

3) AMD is playing "hide the ball" with their performance stats, and that sounds like bad news if you read between the lines. When the AMD marketing people try to change their measuring stick to find some way of making their product look better in some other way than pure performance, you know they're in trouble. CPU speed/utility per watt consumed is an interesting metric, but it's still a secondary concern for some buyers who need raw performance.

So, AMD had a few years in the sun, and now they're going to be stuck at a distant #2 for a while. Over the next decade, Intel will inevitably get lazy with their success, AMD will pull something new and useful out of their hat, then the cycle will begin anew!

-Mister Winky