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AMD comes out with dirt-cheap quad core, fucking finally.
Daedalus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_weaves_its_web/page20.html
AMD Phenom 9500. Quad core for $248. Not as fast as a Core 2 Quad but not as expensive, either, and it will work in old, cheap Socket AM2 motherboards since AMD realizes that it kinda sucks to have to replace your motherboard every time you upgrade your processor.
It's clear that AMD doesn't have enough oomph to take on the absurdly expensive high-end Intel stuff, but that's okay because I don't have the kind of money to spend a thousand fucking dollars for a chip. Hell, even $248 is a little high, but I figure it'll get lower within a few months.
Still, this is nice. Affordable quad core. Not bad at all. Not that anything is actually using four cores right now, but still, "teh futyoore" and all.
AMD Phenom 9500. Quad core for $248. Not as fast as a Core 2 Quad but not as expensive, either, and it will work in old, cheap Socket AM2 motherboards since AMD realizes that it kinda sucks to have to replace your motherboard every time you upgrade your processor.
It's clear that AMD doesn't have enough oomph to take on the absurdly expensive high-end Intel stuff, but that's okay because I don't have the kind of money to spend a thousand fucking dollars for a chip. Hell, even $248 is a little high, but I figure it'll get lower within a few months.
Still, this is nice. Affordable quad core. Not bad at all. Not that anything is actually using four cores right now, but still, "teh futyoore" and all.
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edit: noticed a couple of benchmarks in there where the quad cores did better.
AVISynth to decode, VirtualDub to encode, and I'd still have 2 cores left over so that I could actually get work done.
3D rendering and video rendering is helped out immensely by multi-core and multi-processor systems.
The only reason the the CPU market is cutthroat is because of AMD. Who else does Intel seriously compete with? Cyrex? :P AMD is such a threat and still around because Intel got complacent in the past. Remember the Pentium 4? Used up tons more power, generated much more heat, and ran worse than AMD cpus that were clocked at much slower frequencies (and usually cheaper too). Intel sparked the PC revolution with their Pentium series, but they dropped the ball and that let AMD come in and take the crown with their Athlon 64 line. AMD was the first to break the 1GHz barrier, the first to bring 64 bit cpus as well as dual-core to desktops. You have to give AMD props for consistently outplaying the Intel juggernaut for years despite being the much smaller company.
AMD is facing a tough time right now because Intel has finally gotten back in gear, and despite their stumbling Intel remains the bigger company. The CPU industry is founded on non-stop R&D, so the larger company has a distinct advantage. AMD has to play smart to win the crown back, the purchase of ATi may be such an attempt. Put a GPU in a CPU and take Intel's integrated graphics market, there's certainly a lot of possibilities for the future. In any case, AMD should stick around for the benefit of us the consumers. Competition increases product quality and drives down cost, which everyone can benefit from.
I need a new motherboard because mine is broken and I can't afford to replace the whole machine, but it's a goddamn 939 and they're really hard to find now. To think, at the time I thought I was being smart for adopting Socket 939, because my friend had just gotten fucked over for building a Socket 754 machine. I don't think even a year went buy before they switched it up again.
well, while I partially agree with you, it's not 100% good on the intel side either. sure they've had the same socket for like, 4 years now, but, try plugging ina new C2Q 6600 into a 2.5 year old motherboard. Won't work.
AMD is still in the market because for about 3 years, they were hands down the better chips. Now intel is hands down the better chip. I love AMD, think they do really good things, but there is just no way to justify buying an AMD part in a gaming machine. If I were to buy a cheap server/media player machine, I'd consider an AMD part, because you can find an Energy Efficent X2 for uner $100, but for anything where I'd do "heavy lifting" intel is king.
The socket itself should be identical for AM2, AM2+, and AM3. The only difference that I'm aware of is that AM2+ motherboards processors support a faster HyperTransport bus, and AM3 will support DDR3 in addition to DDR2. So long as your motherboard gets a BIOS update to support the new CPUs you should be able to use an AM3 processor in an AM2 motherboard, and all that will happen is that it'll use the slower HyperTransport 1.0 and only support DDR2 memory.
Exactly. People seem to forget that with Intel, everything is reliant on the chipset the motherboard is running, and well, Intel switches and changes chipsets like there's no tomorrow.