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Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

anandtech.com

31–40 of 167 posts

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#31

At that price point I'd rather spend a little more on AMD and get 24 cores. Because let's be honest, if you got the money to build a REALLY high end PC why are you penny pinching on the CPU? 200-300 isn't a big leap when the motherboard costs more than that difference.

Gotta hand it to this place, it's one of the few places I visit where 200-300 dollars is considered penny pinching. The other is the country club.

When you have $1000 to drop on a CPU I'm quite sure you can also afford a country club membership ;-).

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#32
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess so but for a lot of buyers they're not even considering AMD. They're just using it as a stick to beat Intel with for a better deal.

The real problem is that AMD doesn't invest enough in the software. Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. The biggest lesson in hardware is that "it's the software support, stupid". Too many hardware manufacturers think they are selling hardware alone. They are selling hardware AND the software that makes it work. A computer is useless without software support. Witness the vast array of essentially use…

Nvidia's Linux support? AMD actually has open source drivers these days, just like Intel, Nvidia just gives you a binary module, which means in order to make use of that hardware you have to taint your kernel and aren't free to update it if the in-kernel ABI changes. It's basically on par with the vendors of all those "useless ARM devices out there", none of them with "usable Linux support".

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers at this level are durable goods and ostensibly help you take an income, so it's not too strange.

Mass market computers and components being described as a durable good...HN surprises again!

Computers are quite durable these days. You can easily run a useful, general-purpose OS on a computer from 10 years ago and perhaps more, even one with baseline specs. If that's not enough to be considered a 'durable good', I don't know what is.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#34
post #12
post #6

Thanks, but I'd still rather buy AMD since they actually offer competition. I fear that if I buy Intel now, I'm basically saying to them that they can pull whatever shenanigans they like and they're still untouchable.

You're missing out on a host of vulnerabilities.

At risk of missing sarcasm, a large reason all these vulnerabilities in Intel are found is their market share. Same as when OSX was considered "unhackable" - it just wasn't worth the effort. AMD is likely just as bad, but it's not uncovered (yet).

Supporting the underdog is a good idea nonetheless, but not for this reason per se.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#35
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess so but for a lot of buyers they're not even considering AMD. They're just using it as a stick to beat Intel with for a better deal.

Which buyers exactly? Enthusiasts seem to be switching overwhelmingly to AMD: e.g. Mindfactory having AMD at 81% now. [0] Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of resentment towards Intel for their shenanigans, I don't personally know anyone who's even considering Intel for their own builds. It's a different matter for laptops where consumers have much less say on the topic, of course. [0] https://m.imgur.com/gallery/…

Now that a large segment has swapped to AMD for performance they're also going to see the light about not getting screwed by the cpu socket changing in intels platforms.

This is a big deal IMO.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would the GPU have its own RAM or simply share address space with a CPU?

It's own RAM. The memory bandwidth of my GPU (616 GB/s) is about 23 times higher than that of my system memory (26.5 GB/s). And I have applications that utilize 90% of that GPU memory bandwidth.

Thanks! I've written code for discrete GPUs but not integrated, and so I'm unsure what the advantages would be. Would there be lower latency for transfers, then, if not higher throughput?

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#37
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess so but for a lot of buyers they're not even considering AMD. They're just using it as a stick to beat Intel with for a better deal.

The real problem is that AMD doesn't invest enough in the software. Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. The biggest lesson in hardware is that "it's the software support, stupid". Too many hardware manufacturers think they are selling hardware alone. They are selling hardware AND the software that makes it work. A computer is useless without software support. Witness the vast array of essentially use…

This is exactly true. Especially on CUDA and the deep learning front. Basically, only option is NVIDIA as the competition has almost nonexistent software framework (maybe OpenCL).

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#38
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess so but for a lot of buyers they're not even considering AMD. They're just using it as a stick to beat Intel with for a better deal.

The real problem is that AMD doesn't invest enough in the software. Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. The biggest lesson in hardware is that "it's the software support, stupid". Too many hardware manufacturers think they are selling hardware alone. They are selling hardware AND the software that makes it work. A computer is useless without software support. Witness the vast array of essentially use…

AMD's Linux support is terrific now. Nvidia is much more of a hassle and also impeding progress by insisting on their own window system - driver interface for Wayland.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass market computers and components being described as a durable good...HN surprises again!

Computers are quite durable these days. You can easily run a useful, general-purpose OS on a computer from 10 years ago and perhaps more, even one with baseline specs. If that's not enough to be considered a 'durable good', I don't know what is.

Tell that to my 9 year old iMac with the dead GPU that I can't replace, won't start up, and is going straight into the trash. Never again, Apple.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#40
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is that AMD doesn't invest enough in the software. Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. The biggest lesson in hardware is that "it's the software support, stupid". Too many hardware manufacturers think they are selling hardware alone. They are selling hardware AND the software that makes it work. A computer is useless without software support. Witness the vast array of essentially use…

This is exactly true. Especially on CUDA and the deep learning front. Basically, only option is NVIDIA as the competition has almost nonexistent software framework (maybe OpenCL).

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