Mildly OT: AMD's latest chip(s)

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Giles Orr <gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
| 
| http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2693130
| 
| I'm a fan of AMD, although I admit that some of my joy in their
| existence is just contrariness.  I've bought systems with their chips
| before, and for a while before Intel let out the Core Duo processors,
| AMD was producing better chips than Intel.  The above URL contains a
| (poorly formatted) review of the new AMD QuadFX platform: two dual
| core chips on one board, meant to compete with Intel's quad core.
| Apparently it's the loudest system they've ever reviewed, and it draws
| 600w with only one graphics card on board.

I've bought mostly AMD processors for my desktop.  Most recently in
January.  Since then, Intel's Core 2 has jumped ahead technically.
The price war makes the best bet change from day to day.  (In the old
days, Intel's name earned a premium, but not from me.)  (On notebooks,
Intel chipsets are a win for Linux users: pretty good open-source
support.)

This review isn't really relevant for most of us.

- it says MS Vista performance may be good, but MS Windows XP isn't.
  That doesn't matter to me -- I guess that Linux can use four
  processors reasonably.  (See the review's notes about NUMA;
  Linux can be NUMA-aware)

- I've long had dual processors on my desktop (dual Celeron 300A's for
  instance).  I would not swear that the two processors were well
  used.  I doubt four processors get well used.

- AMD CPUs are available with reasonable power budgets.  But this
  desktop is built with "FX" series processors which are pushed as
  hard as possible and hence use a lot of power.  If you don't want
  that, don't buy these chips.

- the article claims that it is ironic that AMD is using an nVidia
  chipset.  Not at all: AMD has said that it wants to retain a
  set of non-AMD/ATI chipset makers for the Athlon/Opteron.

- the article refers to benchmarks, but never shows any figures.


"This benchmark probably reveals the QuadFX's weakness: inadequate NUMA
support in Windows XP."

Just whose weakness is this?


"Does quad-core make a difference in PC gaming? We don't have access to
those spiffy new, quad-core enhanced titles, so we have to use our
existing game suites. How will the QX6700 fare in today's games?"

So why test a quad-core system????

Summary: this review is unprofessional.
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