I think AMD needs to advertise a little... There are lots of monkeys watching the tv - when it comes to computers. When they need a new computer they'll go out to buy a computer with a P4 chip, cause that's the only thing they know about computers, not knowing anything about ram/hard drive space/or cpu frequency.

AMD, you should feed us a banana here and there, not too much that prices need to be raised greatly, but just a taste. That way when the monkeys see they AMD sticker, they will at least know it is a competitor to intel - one that's doing well enough to be on tv.

Hmm...while I agree with this, I also disagree. While luring in monkies might be a good way to make money, it also might not. Somewhere I read that Gamers account for 40% of AMD's profits or revenue. That's a large percentage, which is probably why AMD focuses largely on that market, and holds most of it.

But yeah...the monkies have money, and right now Intel is selling them some very expensive bananas.

I see HP mentioned below a good bit. They sell AMD & Intel products. There are literally gobs of firms that sell AMD processor boxes. I just bought a new HP intel box because the AMD processors at HP are set in an ATI 200 chipset which all the reviews say is a dog. The Intel onboard video is simply better. Are we to assume that Intel forced HP to offer AMD processors in a dog of a chipset board too ruin AMD's reputation and force them to lose market share? The idea that AMD boxes aren't available is nonsense. Typically, the AMD fan is a BYO dude that overclocks both processor and video card. The mainline VAR builders do not furnish "open" motherboards for overclocking, typically. Further, the business market is an Intel market save for graphics, CAD and video editing where the Opteron processors compete with the Xeon and Macs. AMD has gotten their higher end Sempron processors too expensive as lower priced Athlon 64s offer more performance for about the same price. Their upper end x2 processors were recently priced too high for anyone other than gamers. The 3800 x2 is still not inexpensive. Some of you are that complain about your intel boxes versus your AMD box, why don't just throw the intel boxes in the trash? I still use a Pent II 400 MHz running SuSE 8 for email and websurf. It has run since that distro came out without a glitch. I have a friend that used older AMD box for years for compiling and coding. You folk are mostly shadow boxers. Get a life. Like you all own significant shares of AMD or Intel. Get real!

Isn't it nice to have a choice!

AMD is the American Motors of the chip world. Great products, sometimes ugly side effects, cheap, and dependable. But like American Motors it will eventually be sucked dry by the vampowers that be.

I'll remember that the next time one of my Intel-equipped PC's freeze-up, while my AMD keeps on running flawlessly.

And with a minor 450mhz overclock aswell...

Bah...apparently the complaint/lawsuit is only valid if you have a 'monopoly' (read: majority) of the CPU market. Obviously this is an attempt to dethrone Intel. AMD, this was in bad taste. Quite frankly, I'm half-tempted to return the Athlon 64 3500+ Venice core I just got so I can go back to Intel who obviously has less 'under-handed' practices than AMD. However, I think the A64 is a better CPU than the P4...

Note to AMD: Intel is currently holding the majority because they have proven to be the best choice. Your A64 CPUs have not been out for very long, and the market is slow to s***. People will move from Intel to AMD, but these sorts of 'frivolous' lawsuits leave people with a sour taste in their mouths and do not instill confidence. You did a tremendous job on your A64's (especially Venice), and your Opterons are mind-boggling... Your quality shows, but please give the market more time to recognize that instead of trying to make everyone jump from Intel by filing these sorts of lawsuits...regardless of validity.

Wow.

Did you read the original complaint filed by AMD? Plenty of "underhanded" practices by your beloved Intel there.

Matter of fact, I experienced said tactics 1st-hand back when the k6 came out.

Don't ever tell me Intel plays fair. I'll prove you wrong. Dead wrong.

Kinda hard to sell AMD chips when Intel will force you completely out of the business for doing so, and trust me, they have that ability. All they need to do is make you non-competitive. realativley easy thing to do since most businesses (the largest market for PCs) will buy only Intel. All they need to do is raise the prices for your CPUs and you're gone. End of story.

Less under-handed practices? I suppose deliberately under-cutting your competetitors with boderline illegal tactics isn't under-handed?

Business is Business and technology is technology.

The Athlon 64 X2 is clearly better then the Pentium D but if Intel gets it's way then it will be difficult to find them selling at any store.

AMD should have sued 5 years ago when Intel became Nazi's with the OEM's in an attempt to rid AMD from the retail market.

I hate comments like this.

PROVE that the x2 is better than the D. Provide links. If you can't do at least that then keep the comment to yourself.

Reviews:
1. Anandtech
2. Toms Hardware
3. PC Mag
4. PC World
5. xbitslabs: http://www.xbitlabs.com/...lay/athlon64-x2_17.html

http://www.google.com/se...?q=Athlon+64+X2+reviews

Read them all yourself !!!!!!!!!!!

I've read 20 reviews so far and it almost always favors the X2 over the Pentium D.

No no, not "borderline illegal", "purely illegal" tactics.

Let us not forget, if it was not for AMD we would be paying much higher prices on processors.

Its all my arse

Arse....Powered by iNtel?

AMD and Intel are both capible of being the same thing, Greedy. There's room for 2. When AMD got a leg up they raised their prices too. You're going to pay for bleeding edge, no matter who makes it. I have yet to see a benevolent chip maker who's in it for the people's cause.

When did AMD get a leg up? Seems Intel has been preventing that very thing.

AMD got a leg up when they started making a CPU with better acrhitecture then Intel does.

If that's the case, I would rather have AMD's innovation, rather than Intel's inefficiency.

They have admited it in japan and got a fined. AMD just wants them admit it and pay the penalty for doing it here too, in hope that it will give the oem builders the free choice to use any processers they want to. which means the Opportunity for AMD to increase its sales to more oems. which is why they are so active about it
This is not going to be settled as quick as it was in japan but sometime next year when they both bring out there processer revision.

WE HAVE THE LAW FOR A REASON. To PUNISH those who do WRONG and to guide those who wish to do RIGHT!.(for lawyers it mite mean soming different all together)

PS

intels GHz hype is funny, when a intel p4 mobile processer 2.13ghz gives an intel desdtop p4 3.8ghz a run for it's money. You know there is more to a processer chips and just how fast they run. (though HT does give it the lead media encoding.)
Intel knows this and there next desktop/server processers a is going to be based of the mobile processers with HT.
intel has know for years that amd was going to bring out duel core when and AMD informed every one back in 2001(i was shocked and couldnt wait to get my hands in one) so why being out such crap processer that they admitted saying they rushed it to market.

I agree that the Ghz hype is funny, but the speed at which the CPU operates is only a moderate consideration in determining how well it will perform. That's the reason why I switched to an A64. Intel rushed the dual core to compete with the X2, as all manufacturers do, so this really is a moot point. Game console manufactuers do this all the time...it's just a part of the competition/market.

As for admitting it in Japan...what did Intel admit exactly? That Ghz isn't the sole determining factor in the performance of a CPU? That Intel current has a monopoly in the server/mainstream market because they are time-proven. Of course Intel gives OEM/VARs discounts on pricing for using solely Intel chips...but why are they getting targeted? Nike, Reebok, and wait...AMD do the same things! Abit has a similar practice...Oh, and let's not forget that NVidia will not sponsor your LAN Party if you are primarily using anything other than NVidia-based graphics cards. Why is this? It's promoting their product, of course. The sheer notion that this would be illegal is like the idea that just because you donate to your State Police and you get nice little sticker -- just doing this means that you will not get pulled over for speeding... Common sense, please!

As for giving OEMs/VARs freedom of choice...they already have it. If the lawsuit follows though, this only means that you will see a percentage increase in the number of OEM/VARs that sell AMD computers as well as Intel, and the Intel computers will cost a little bit more. Choice isn't the matter...it's 'which brand will I be able to make the most money with'. I was a VAR and I know the routine. It's all political 'bottom-dollar' stuff.

Intel chips will likely *not* cost more. If the largest VARs (Dell/HP/etc) sell both, Intel will be *forced* to lower prices even further to compete with supirior products frm AMD.

Of course, after reading Intel's roadmap, AMD may have a real fight on it's hands when/if this happens as far as performance/heat/efficiency go.

Intel admitted to a lot - read the PDF if you haven't.

It's not really a matter of what they're doing for sponsering. It's more of a matter that companies that had signed contracts with AMD, and wanted to sell AMD processors, were basically told to stop or extreme retribution would follow. Most companies(80 or 90% or companies that sell computers?) largely stopped. A few pushed their luck, and one was "crushed into guacamole". There's proof in the PDF if you're willing to read 50 pages of stuff.

AMD currently has the attention of all serious power users and gamers, and their procs are definately more than capable. One huge issue is that Intel has made out the CPU's frequency to be the only performance factor.

90% of the public firmly believes more GHz = more performance, which is simply not true. I mean, my Athlon64 is running at 2.4GHz and kills Intels running much much higher.

Intel needs to be stopped.

My point exactly. Two of my "testbed" machines are identically configured, save for one running Intel, and the other running AMD. (Both are 1.1 GHz) My AMD-equipped machine does better than twice the work without even breaking a sweat.

Yeah, I agree. My brother used to have a P3 1.0ghz, and I recently talked him into taking my old AMD 2000+(1.6ghz), and he was amazed the framerates in many games went from 20fps to 80fps.

Not new games ofcourse, but still a huge increase, since in any game at all the CPU has to feed graphics data around and perform calculations every frame.

The thing most people miss in this lawsuit is that Intel was bribing people not use AMD or to use just a limited number of AMD CPU's.
Even mom and pop operations were not immune to Intels pressures.

AMD cpu's have improved dramatically and yet they can't get OEM's to use them because BIG BAD INTEL says they will destroy you if you do. That can't be legal.

I use to see a lot of AMD machines at Best Buy but now they are all Intel.

That is because AMD cheaps run slower then intel chips. Out of about 500 computers I saw for the last month or so about 100 were AMD chips, and those computer ran much slower then the intel chips did. I tell my customers when they buy a new computer to get an intel chip. I just built myself a new machine got a 3.2 with hypo, the machine blows every AMD chip I have ever seen. I am not saying AMD is not getting better, they are. They are also helping to bring the prices down some what.

Stupiest reply ever. Even Intel admit the latest AMD is faster.

"That is because AMD cheaps run slower then intel chips"

ahhhh hahahahahahahah. You pretty much lost all credibility and respect from your very first sentance, good job I think that's the fastest anybody has ever made themselves look ignorant....there's gotta be some kind of award for that, right?

The problem is people just look at the Ghz and assume that is all that matters.

Example:

2Ghz times 9 = 18 Billion IPS

3Ghz times 6 = 18 Billion IPS

An Intel CPU running at 3Ghz is about the same as a AMD cpu running at 2Ghz because it does less IPC {Instructions Per Clock} then the AMD.

Also add in hypertransport and cpu memory controller and the performance begins to really improve.

The Athlon 64's and Athlon 64 X2 models also consume less electricity and produce less heat.

/////////////

Why do AMD chips run faster for games?

-No, they're not actually optimized for games, they're just faster.

Why do Intel chips run faster(equivalently speaking) for everything else then?

-Because most compiled applications have a different code path that is extremely clunky, slow, and will likely throw problems at the AMD processor(sometimes resulting in), while the Intel processor skips over it.(proven in lawsuit PDF)

AMD's incredible performance is only noticible in games, because that's the only legit comparison. Their Opterons are also nice though...

Actually, AMD chips are about even with Intel. I'm not saying your wrong, but look at some performance results from various tests: http://www.anandtech.com...ets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275

It's quite long, but that is because they like to run quite a few tests. Go ahead and read it if you want, but I find that if you want a little more gaming power go with AMD and if you want better office program performance go with Intel. It's a matter of preference.

What do you think School1012?

Too bad he isn't coming from a techncial perspective on that one...otherwise I'd agree. An Athlon 64 3500+ Venice running @ 2.4Ghz IS *slower* than a P4 2.6Ghz in terms of speed (measured in Ghz). However, the processing marks are a completely different story. Office-ran benchmarks will show the P4 being a solid performer over the AMD, as will multimedia benchmarks. HOWEVER, gaming benchmarks and 3D benchmarks will clearly show a purely AMD dominance over the P4 (literally trouncing...flat out - no comparison). Throw in HyperThreading and bump it up to the P4 3.2Ghz and toss it against the Athlon 64 3200+ and you get pretty much the same results, even though the 3200+ is running at less Ghz than the P4. You can see this on almost every legit hardware comparison forum in the world. What did we prove? :
AMD: Mainly for mainstream and gamer-based computing (excluding Opterons).
Intel: Mainly for business-based PC's and multimedia encoding

Server CPU's are a completely different beast, but both the Xeon market and the Opterons really pull their weight. Though I have yet to get to play with the Opteron line enough to measure the comparison...

Gah...can you please stick to 'reality'. The only pressure is the bottom line...which Intel currently has a better effect on than AMD because of the 'incentives'. BIG BAD INTEL doesn't say anything if you choose to go AMD, and this is coming from a VAR (Value-Added Reseller, for those not 'in the know'). I ran for 4 years pushing largely AMD, and not once did Intel say anything about it. I didn't get as low of pricing on Intel as some of the other guys, but I had gamers to please...and Intel wasn't cutting it in that market. Businesses are always willing to pay more, so I always threw Intel at them.

My company has just recently begun testing opteron processors for some of our market data feed server and some in house applications that do heavy number crunching...opteron processors are consistantly 20% faster for both those applications (running on linux adds ANOTHER 20% performance gain over windows). We're a dell shop so we really don't have any AMD servers until we recently got a few of these hp's, but we're definetly considering getting more opteron servers (we already have 6 production opteron servers running market data feeds).

Just switching from Dell to HP could have caused a 20% performance gain. ;-)

I know that calling Dell for support alone causes a 45% performance loss on any other activities you may need to get done for the WEEK.

lol...actually dell support has been nothing but stellar, we've had 0 problems with any of their servers and support (well except one incident about 2 years ago I had with them). Usually I call dell and they get me parts without much hastle at all, a few months ago I called in about a bad tape drive and they had a new in my hands within 2 hours.

You're pretty wrong there...intel is far from faster in "everything else". Anything that requires heavy calculations will run faster on AMD, there are a few "synthetic" tests that show Intel faster in a FEW tests...but the majority show AMD to be much superior.

When you bring in the opteron this is even more evident. We recently purchased 6 opteron servers (recently as in about 6 months ago) beceause they run our market data feed software 20% faster then Intel procs....and you'll notice alot of financial companies who require heavy processing are moving towards AMD.

I wish I could say the same. :-(

I disagree because the place I worked at said Intel would bury us if we sold more AMD cpu's then was the quota.

Nothing was in writing on this of course but it was well known that to much AMD meant payback from Intel.

Computer makers have only a 2% margin while Intel has a 20% margin so they can simply crush anybody that does not follow their rules.

And just how much is Intel paying you to say this? I'll rmember that the next time my AMD walks all over my Intel.

Rhetorical questions man....or perhaps the opposite of those. No one asked them, but they got an answer.

I have gotten similar questions frequently from novice computer users though.

A little off topic, but let me say this much about dell specifically, but true for any PC vendor:

If you buy several hundred PC's on a single order, you take a risk. Eithar all of the machines are perfect in manufacturing, or they all have the same 'glitch' or 'defect' as they all came from the same assembly line. Sorry, but if you bought 400 GX270 tower PC's in October 2003 and they all had that 'special' 40GB Maxtor drive, you have or will soon need to replace about 390 hard drives, motherboards, and power supplies. Sux to be you. However, buy the same config of 400 tower GX270 PCs in April 2004 and you have perfectly stable systems.

What a load of crap from Intel. As with most of their junk.

Ahh...hillarious. Yes yes, AMD is attempting to reap the benefits from higher prices, even though 80% of processors are Intel ones, so 80% of the profits would go to them.

Nice logic there Intel!

Kramy Wrong again buddy! Did you really read this article, and did you comprehend what it is saying?

You guy's are killing me, but I finally figured it out.

The problem is you just don't understand what a free enterprise system is. You will never be a successful business person on a large scale because you just hate big business period.

It doesn't matter who it is Microsoft, Intel, Google etc, I've been reading your comments for months bashing big business, and others, you seem to think you have all the answers.

Why not see if you can talk one of these CEO's into letting you run one of their companies, because you seem to know more than the people making billions.

Nice to see such an expert on all subjects. And to know so much about the legal system to boot, I'm impressed.

LOL, are you trying to tell us that you are a successful business person in a large enterprise?

Most of us are, welcome to the club.

Thanks for your opinion, though many of us don't agree with it.

Hmm...you're right, it was 90% of the profits.

Now...KSzostek, if you had actually read my post instead of immediately writing an insult, you'd have realized I made a JOKE. It's this funny thing, where you put some words together and people laugh...In this case it was known as Sarcasm. Here's a link, incase you don't know what it means:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sarcasm

Now, from this "sarcasm" and "joke", you have derrived that:

1) The problem is you just don't understand what a free enterprise system is.

2) You will never be a successful business person on a large scale because you just hate big business period.

3) It doesn't matter who it is Microsoft, Intel, Google etc, I've been reading your comments for months bashing big business, and others, you seem to think you have all the answers.

4) And to know so much about the legal system to boot, I'm impressed.

I must say I am truly impressed at how well you disected my comment. As for hating big businesses...no, I don't hate them. I only dislike ones that try to screw me, and those would be Intel/Microsoft. I have no problem with AMD, Apple, IBM, Google, Yahoo, GM, Ford, Toyota, etc.

And where, I wonder, did I ever say I knew anything about the legal system? I think you're mixing my comments up with someone else's...

Final thing - "Logic" does not mean "Legal system and law", it means "Logic", as in human logic, or the logical thing to do.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=logic

big business is not bad if it is ran right \. sure go make as much money as you can but dont charge 100% more for a crapy pice of s***. or do what google does "do no evil"

!!!BORING!!!
Kramy, if that was being 'sarcastic' then it was a f**kin lame attempt! I think you need to visit England to truely distinguish what sarcasm really is. 90% of everything we say is sarcastic, but we can pull it off.
You just made yourself look like a dumb motherf**ker who doesn't know s**t. Wake up.

So much for the British being better at spelling and grammar.

I could expect to get a reply like yours from the one that knows all about all. But then your from Canada!!

Don't turn this on me you are the one that shows your real intelligence or (ignorance)by your posts!

>> you are the one that shows your real intelligence or (ignorance)by your posts!

Yes, I think that's the point. You have yet to ever make a comment that explains your position, so there's no real way to talk to you...

"AMD is attempting to "shield itself from competition" by preventing Intel from lowering prices on its processors"

The above quote had me almost choking with mirth. Only intel's own overwhelming GREED prevented it from lowering its prices. That's like Kirstie Alley saying "GOD forced me to eat and gain all that weight!".

I shouldn't wonder that AMD hasn't bothered to prepare a counter to intel's hysterical hyperbole - none is necessary.

You're right. And why I wonder is Betanews titleing this "Intel Blasts AMD in Lawsuit Filing"? They refuted it, well DUH, if they acknowledged it was true it'd be a stupid idea either way, so of course they refuted it. That's hardley "blasting" AMD in any way.

the article headline got you to click on it didn't it? mission accomplished =P

lol...ah...first time reading a news headline I'm guessing? Once you start reading headlines more often you'll find that many headlines use "extreme" words like that to grab attention..."attention grabbing" is what I believe they call these headlines...I'm sure there's a technical term...but I'm not a reporter someoneone else can tell you what that term would be.