this deserves a little attention, i think .. and a big welcome for ABT's newest Contributing Editor, ir0x0r who has made some insightful comments in his opening blog


What DO our members think of AMD in the blog sphere?

- something intel and nvidia do not welcome, it appears

i think its really cool that anybody can talk to the highest AMD employees just like a normal human being and share thoughts, positive and negative both

and welcome and thanks to Dave for writing this

it is a small world


Both of us knew David [ir0x0r] before we started ABT and i remember him from his posts at that 'other forum' - circa '05/'06 - as well as meeting him at Nvision08 at the Palit booth. What caught my attention was the raw honesty of his insightful blogs; i am so pleased to have him join us here.

i believe you are on Twitter with several of the AMD upper management. They do answer questions and you can see it is their passion. They clearly love their company and want to share; it is almost like a religion
.. this is what we do also at ABT - our goal is to educate and entertain

AFAIK ATi employees have never had any constraint with posting online, now we can get the view from second place from AMD staffers as well.

I'm not surprised they're "emotional" - after the debacle that was Phenom launch to the long hard road to get their butts handed to them in the <$300 market, they're probably cranky!

I would agree that media crazed and highly advertised launches are not AMD's forte but I'm not sure I would go so far as to say they've had their butts handed to them.

Have you seen these articles?
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/20 ... -2125.aspx
Intel dropping to 78.2% from the heights of 82.1% in 4Q'2008

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=35
AMD's market share jumps to 20.9%

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/20 ... stock.aspx
the GT300 architecture backfired on the volume 40nm parts, that are nothing else but yet another die-shrink of two year old G92 architecture. GT212, GT216 and GT218 turned out to be a disappointment for the analysts, as nVidia was unable to create a mainstream and low-end models based on real GT200 architecture, and resorted to cheap renames.

Intel has finally started down the path of following AMD out of the FSB but still no real word on Larrabee.
NV has nothing but renames left. No one cares about PhysX will catch on about the same time as the doofy glasses.

So if you are it's only because you aren't watching Intel reinvent the wheel and NV play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzEvcS01Cl0. Be sure to play it all the way through. It's really the best way to describe all this.

I'm a high end gamer iRoXor- what does AMD have to interest me? For CPUs, I have their Phenom II 940, and it's OK, but it certainly doesn't compare to the i7 965 in my main computer. I've been using GTX280 SLi, GTX295, GTX260 C216 SLi for graphics, what does AMD have that makes me want to buy AMD parts?

PhysX is used in more and more games, and AMD will offer nothing comparable this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0xRJt8rcmY

End users are starting to rave about 3d Vision as well, even on the ATi fansite:
http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33932576&page=12

ATi having <33% of the Discrete Desktop market, and AMD having a measly 20% of the CPU market, does not bode well for the company many analysts say will not survive 2009. (bankruptcy looms because ATis $1m profit hardly offset AMDs $400m + losses, and there's all that pesky debt to consider)

So when you post "This is an exciting development! AMD employees venting online, and they're not supposed to!".

I say "yawn" and "They're doing some cheap advertising because they can't afford traditional" and "I'd be "emotional" too if I'd taken a pay cut this year, and it looked like my job might be going away."

No amount of "We make cheaper parts" PR spin explains all that away.

As far as the "butts in hand comment", think about current market share:

For every person that buys an ATi desktop card, two buy their competitor.

For every person that buys an AMD CPU, four buy their competitor.

When getting to 20% in your main product line is considered a "big victory", you're pretty much a bit player in your market. 20% can be fine if you're not deep in debt, or your profit per unit is high- but this is not the case here.

ir0x0r:
Instead of us engaging in a pointless debate about AMDs finances or business model, could you just explain why anyone should care if AMD employees are bitching in public?

Of what value is that to the gaming community? They'll never be able to give a remotely objective opinion about anything- their mortgage depends on their company succeeding.

People discount everything I say because I get some video cards I can easily afford to buy for free, why should anyone believe people who feed their families with the products?

What are the odds these "rebels" in their "coup d'etat" will say anything but "You should all buy AMD parts" after you wade through the rhetoric?

First of all, I don't discount anything you say because you get free parts. If anything, I would give you more credit for what you say because you get free parts. I get free parts sometimes, too. What that means is we are likely more familiar with all these parts because we actually get to play with them more so than most people.

But to me, the world doesn't revolve around performance alone. That's just too black and white. There are many things that go into deciding what card to buy and it's more than just performance and money. Upgrades, driver updates, new games etc. all play a role. I want to consider the "nature" of the company as well.

I'm using this example of how AMD is interacting with the public not as a specific data point that shows their product is better than another. It speaks to showing what they are trying to accomplish and how. AMD isn't trying to make parts for you and all 15 of your rich/affluent free part getting friends. They are trying to get to Joe 6-pack that wants to game, transcode video for their iPod/iPhone and the other things that MOST people do.

What better way to do that then to engage directly with those people? No, they don't need a focus group of fanbois to pick up torch and spam up forums all over the place. They are talking to whoever shows up. If those people choose to spread what they learn, great. If not, great. While there will most likely be some positive marketing affect from what they are doing, it WON'T happen because they are rewarding people with special titles, privileges, signatures or anything else other than reporting their feedback over to the dev team so that what some random guy off the street said would be cool actually makes it into a real product.

I've seen NV folks at LAN parties and other events and it almost makes me sick sometimes. Up on stage trash talking or blathering on about things that don't really interest anyone on any kind of scale. I was at a LAN in Oregon and caught an NV guy explaining how NV was Intel's exclusive launch partner with the Core2. That simply wasn't true and the Intel guy had to go up on stage to explain that it wasn't true flat out refuting what NV had said. Are you serious? Sheesh.

I see NV getting caught hiring marketing firms to roll out "shills" into forums on a major scale. I understand that both companies have some fanbois that do a lot of posting and they take care of those folks. Nothing wrong with that as long as it's reasonably transparent and they aren't putting out false info. In my mind NV and I, more often than not, don't see eye to eye on how one treats other human beings. I've been dealing with them internally for many years and I haven't seen much change even though they've cycled different people through the marketing positions.

What is important to me is understanding what NV or AMD are trying to accomplish, why and how they are going to go about it. Benchmarks don't tell the whole story. I've seen slide decks from both companies showing their product beats the other and vice versa. Change this driver, use this RAM, bench this app and you can show almost anything you want. Different review sites can review the same part and get surprisingly different results.

So what do we do? We read more than just one review and check out more than just one opinion and kind of average them together. But one data point that is almost always overlooked is INTENT. Why did THG even show the relative performance between the i7 stuff and the 955? It isn't in that performance bracket. The 920 costs about $35 more so it's close on pricing but you have basically rebuild your entire system to use it. If you bought an AM2+ mobo a year ago there's a good chance the 955 is a drop in replacement. Can you do that with a 920?

Intel has a different model than AMD because they have so many different products i.e. motherboards. They gave a us bit of a break from having to buy a new mobo EVERY time we upgraded to a new chip. No one ever really liked doing that but they didn't move away from that model until customers starting moving to AMD who didn't make them do that. There was never any compelling reason for Intel to provide a nice upgrade path especially considering they would get to sell a new mobo and chipset on top of the CPU. AMD didn't make you do that because there's no sense in it.

That's a pretty big statement, "because there's no sense in it." How can I back that up? Besides the fact I was working there when A64 came out, I know some of the people responsible for making these kinds of decisions but the conversation ends there. That's just my opinion and I have never had any way to back it up until now. Now you can go read what these folks have to say. You can ask them questions and you can make comments and suggestions.

Furthermore, it's all public. You can save the link to where you posted and go back in a year to call them out if they didn't do anything about your issue. These guys have a right to be proud of what they do ESPECIALLY because AMD isn't the market share leader. AMD's demise has been predicted to be six-twelve months away for the last ten years. You're predicting their demise as well. If you took the time to engage with them on Twitter or in their blogs you might find out that these guys are fanatics.

You point out that they should be pissed because they got hit with a pay cut. Pffft. While I'm sure they aren't happy about that, they still managed to start this new effort of interacting with the public in spite of that. While NV enjoys a greater volume, their stock price fell and got downgraded. I'd be willing to bet that's going to affect pay checks at some point if they can't get out of their slump.

How will NV react to adversity? My guess would be another model name change. Why bother releasing new hardware when you can just manage your press better and spin out a new label? And I don't want to hear any crap about how they just changed model numbers to make things easier to understand. What a line of crap. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... rder=PRICE That's the NV-based cards currently available at Newegg and it has 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx parts. If you're going to clean up the naming scheme of your product stack, fine. But don't just pick and choose which parts you want to make easy to understand if that's really what you want to do.

Just to confuse you I'll let you in on a little secret. Right now I'm writing all this on an Intel-based system and an NV video card. Yup, not an AMD part in the whole mix. I don't think it would be very good for me to go spouting off about how great AMD is if I didn't use Intel/NV stuff as well. How could I possibly know the difference between them if I only have the one platform? And I don't just mean having a system on hand to use for running benchmarks. I actually use this PC every day. It has a Q6600 and a 9800GTX+ in it. It games and it runs all my Office apps, UPS Worldship, Photoshop and so on.

At home I have an M2R32 with a 6400+ and a 4870. It runs all my games and drives the home theater since HDMI on NV is a joke. I paid for every part in it.

This makes no sense whatsoever as neither firm is committing genocide, or wiping out a species. There's performance, there's usable vendor specific features, and there are drivers for the most part.


Since they've had such a low market share for so many years, they're either asking people to switch from Core2 platforms (no reason) or save a few measly bucks and get less performance and upgrade path than they would going i7.


Wouldn't Joe be far better off with any of the CUDA driven transcoding programs than anything AMD has going?


The people talking to them KNOW they're going to get an AMD-centric spin on everything, so the information is of limited value. I'm sure AMD would be happy to tell you the Phenoms are the cheaper equivalent of Intel products, and that no one needs CUDA, PhysX, or 3d Vision- but that's what they're PAID to do.


So you've decided to recommend we go check out AMD trash talk? To what end?


AFAIK NVIDIA's only forum reps are the NFG who have displayed their affiliation for several years. Can't say the same for ATi "High Road" viral marketers.


Are vague allusions to NVIDIA being "mean" to people supposed to be a criteria for hardware purchases? Why?


Amazingly enough, the slides from AMD always show their products winning- so I guess we know what we'll hear from these "rebel bloggers"- that AMD always wins and offers the best value! Errrr....wait.....


OK- sounds good.


Like I said, AMD's problem is so very, very few people were buying AM2 motherboards a year ago, and with very good reason. So you're building a system either way if you're 80% of the people, or just upgrading your Intel CPU and calling it a day.


Apparently there is as my i7 965 pretty much tramples all things AMD.


Those glory days are pretty much behind AMD, they haven't even caught up to the QX9770, let alone 965. Intel is beating or equalling them even in their bargain basement, and that's bad news for the firm that never had the mindshare or marketshare.



Have they ever been closer? Have they ever been forced to liquidate their fabs? Write down billions? Been worth so little? Been at a disadvantage on all fronts? Been servicing this much debt? Had such a low average cost per unit on all fronts? Been doing business in a recession of this magnitude?



Errr what did this effort cost? Pocket change? Twitter is free, blogging is as well?



You mean even though they had almost enough to buy AMD/ATi outright in the bank at the end of last year and no debt?



Hmmm. And AMD/ATi has never renamed parts to match their current naming scheme?


[/quote]
Why would that "confuse me"? I have an AMD rig as well, that I use frequently. I don't currently have an ATi graphics card, but it's not uncommon. (used to have a 4850)


Lots and lots of spin here, and a person who isn't adept at reading such things might come away from this thinking," Hey, this guy is a smart industry insider! (which I'm sure you are) He seems to be saying we shouldn't trust reviews, or Intel and NVIDIA reps! We should listen to those good guys at AMD who are passionate about hardware, and treat people well!"


Nonetheless, I'd rather speak with smart people, so I can appreciate your craft and persuasive writing style.