AMD a Conteder Again?
Tech - March 16, 2009 6:42 am
I used to be the biggest AMD fanboy. Back in the K6 days when AMD cheaps were slowly eeking up to their Intel counterparts, I jumped on board. The next few years there was fierce competition at the top-end with AMD and Intel constantly exchanging the ‘Fastest Desktop Chip’ trophy. Through the Athlon days AMD chips were almost always solidly in the lead in the oh-so-important speed-per-dollar benchmark. Their chips were enthusiasts’ dreams; cheap, fast, and highly overclockable. Those were the golden days of AMD.
Fast forward to a couple years ago. Intel announces Core2Duo and AMD has nothing to counter it with. Their multi-core Phenoms couldn’t hold a candle to the Core2Duo. When Quads were hinted at AMD was quick out of the gate but older process, poor yields, and lack of innovation left it battered in bruised in Core2Quad’s wake. A couple months ago Phenom 2 was finally released to fairly low expectations. Luckily the chip benches out pretty well compared to chips in its price bracket. It’s by no means a contender for fastest processor. Intel’s new i7s trounce anything a normal human could purchase but at a current premium of almost $300 for chip + board + memory, the Phenom 2 940 is a fantastic bargain.
Most benchmarks place the Phenom 2 940 in the same ballpark as the far more expensive Core2Quad 9550 and sometimes the (still more expensive) 94xx series. With recent drops the 940 is around $200 street with great sub $100 boards and good ‘ole cheap DDR800 memory. This makes it great for a specific set of enthusiasts, namely those with quad core requirements and dual core budgets. Unfortunately for AMD, Core2Duo still owns in the horsepower per core (err… per dollar) arena. Those chips will bench out great when not being taxed on a bunch of threads (ie: gaming and most single application marks… most benchmarks). There is no mark for running a dozen office apps, a video encode, and a simultaneous VM or two and even if there were only the hardcore enthusiast would give a crap. What that boils down to is the hardcore-light will likely see impressive in-game benchmarks on the Core2Duos in their budget and go that route and those with a decent amount of cash will skip the middle and head straight to the i7s. That’ll leave AMD with a great little chip in a great price bracket that ends up overshadowed and underselling. In fact, I can think of few people I know personally other than, well, me that would fit in the mid-range quad-core wheelhouse.
Even I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger on the Phenom 2 as I sit with finders crossed that the new i7s, boards, and proliferation of DDR3 memory will drive prices down by a landslide even though we all know that with no competition at the top Intel et al have little reason to reduce prices at this time… even more reason to buy AMD I suppose.
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