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Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

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Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#71

Post by nickjj »

zozbot234 wrote: post #33
tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #26

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.

Yep.

They were quite durable 20 years ago too. It's just back then clock speed and performance was increasing very rapidly and it had a huge effect on the usability of your machine (especially if you were a gamer). You would likely upgrade and retire a working machine for the sake of a drastic performance boost every 3ish years.

Nowadays you could happily be using a 5+ year old i5 for full time development and moderate gaming with no issues at all. I'm personally at 5+ years now and I don't see myself upgrading for quite some time because everything I do still feels very snappy.

But compare that to something like a Pentium I at 75mhz (1994) vs a Pentium III at 1ghz (1999) and the performance difference was crazy. Over 10x the clock rate, but it's not just a "paper" boost. They are so different in performance that you can't even compare them. They are in leagues of their own.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#72

Post by delfinom »

alimbada wrote: post #46
Grangar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Operating system architectures can vary a lot. CPU architecture between Intel and AMD can't vary much since they both target x86. Every vulnerability found with Intel CPUs can and has been tested for against AMD CPUs which is something you simply cannot do with operating systems, and AMD CPUs have been found not to have the same vulnerabilities.

>CPU architecture between Intel and AMD can't vary much since they both target x86

Yes they can. Instruction sets are just that, a bunch of op codes and "things" for a processor to do. How a processor actually performs them is open to implementation.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#73

Post by wbond »

lunchables wrote: post #59
andrewstuart wrote: post #27

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…

>Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. Huh? AMD "just works". NVIDIA requires a dance of (Fedora) DKMS kernel modules and binary blobs. What am I missing? I buy AMD just because it's been frictionless to get working, I don't mind if theres a small performance penalty I pay for it.

This is repeated frequently, but I was never able to get my AMD 560 to work on Linux at 4k with MST (or turn down the fan speed). With Nvidia I installed the binary blob and 4k over MST “just worked”. I tried the amdgpu and Pro versions of the drivers.

Neither company is perfect with Linux support. As with most things, there are pros and cons to both sides. But for anyone else reading here, just because you pick AMD does not mean everything is magically trouble free on Linux.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#74

Post by throwaway2048 »

selectodude wrote: post #53
coldpie wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD is finally approaching parity in the past year or two, but Nvidia is still ahead in terms of day-to-day usability. It sucks that they're closed, but if you just want to install a driver and have your system work, Nvidia is ahead. Look at this mess: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg#AMD Do you want AMDGPU, AMDGPU PRO, ATI, or Catalyst? How do you choose? Let's assume you want open source and recent, so pro…

Also their OpenGL performance is abysmal. On windows isn’t not the biggest deal since everything is DX but on Linux?

This was an issue with the previous proprietary drivers, but the modern open source ones just use Mesa like everything else sane.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#75

Post by delfinom »

distances wrote: post #28
Jonnax wrote: 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/…

>It's a different matter for laptops where consumers have much less say on the topic, of course.

The rumor is Microsoft's Surface Laptop announced today will be AMD which will be the beginning of the end for Intel as OEMs will fall in line.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#76

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

zozbot234 wrote: post #32
andrewstuart wrote: post #27

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…

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".

> 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.

I have difficulty placing all the blame on Nvidia here since it is the kernel developers long-held disdain for stable driver ABIs that Nvidia feels forces their hand. There are those who argue otherwise, but that argument is basically "all software should be open source". Even if we go with the more reasonable "all drivers should be open source" that still introduces problems because of bonkers patent law nonsense.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#77

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

coldpie wrote: post #60
onli wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be blinded by prior experiences (yes, that sounds illogical). The choice you have with AMD now is not bad for users, they get a working good and free driver with their distro out of the box. And people like you, who work in gaming under Linux and might use a more custom distro, can figure out which one is the best driver in your specific situation (it's AMDGPU always anyway). I'd never buy a Nvidia…

It's possible. The last time I bought an AMD GPU for my personal use was in 2009 or 2010. But I really do work with this stuff every day. In our QA lab, the AMD machines have far more problems than the Nvidia machines do. Valve's VR software works much less consistently; installing modern versions of the drivers on Ubuntu is a huge pain, you have to use 3rd party repos maintained by some random guy; missing features…

Unfortunately very few Linux people even see a point in actually using their GPU. As long as it can composite terminal emulators, they think everything is great. I've seen such reasoning in discussions about sway, where people are encouraged to throw out their $500+ GPU in favor of the on-die Intel GPU...

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#78

Post by [deleted] »

lunchables wrote: post #59
andrewstuart wrote: post #27

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…

>Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame. Huh? AMD "just works". NVIDIA requires a dance of (Fedora) DKMS kernel modules and binary blobs. What am I missing? I buy AMD just because it's been frictionless to get working, I don't mind if theres a small performance penalty I pay for it.

[deleted]

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#79

Post by sixothree »

llampx wrote: 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.

This incompatible socket thing is driving me crazy. I "just" bought a new motherboard and now I can't use any current products.

Re: Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

#80

Post by onli »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #77
coldpie wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible. The last time I bought an AMD GPU for my personal use was in 2009 or 2010. But I really do work with this stuff every day. In our QA lab, the AMD machines have far more problems than the Nvidia machines do. Valve's VR software works much less consistently; installing modern versions of the drivers on Ubuntu is a huge pain, you have to use 3rd party repos maintained by some random guy; missing features…

Unfortunately very few Linux people even see a point in actually using their GPU. As long as it can composite terminal emulators, they think everything is great. I've seen such reasoning in discussions about sway, where people are encouraged to throw out their $500+ GPU in favor of the on-die Intel GPU...

To be clear, I'm a gamer. The games I play would not run with Intel onboard gpus. And I'm very happy with the performance the AMD driver delivers.
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