AMD Phenom X4 CPU Prices Emerge

[Basard]

I highly doubt Diablo II was designed for a dual core system, being as it came out when systems were at 400Mhz. I'm just saying that it uses both cores almost equally on my 4000+. splits it about 60/40%, so that tells me that the AMD dual core pretty much splits up the load between the core--meaning native dual core, right? So, in theory, the native quad core will split it up amongst the 4 cores, equally, if the program is multi-threaded or not, unless I'm just plain wrong about that.

 

[Mediocre]

AHAHAHAHHAHAHAH I'm a post whore at less than 2 per day AHHAHAHAAHAHHAH

I take almost as much pleasure in that as I do when I get acussed of 'cheating' b/c I'm decent and the other person has no skillz...

I bet my 'dissection' upset you somehow...

Well I'm at it again...

How many times has AMD been under investigation for anti-competitive practices?

Are we talking about processors or business practices? Not sure that statement applies here...sorta like saying 'how many times has MICROSOFT been under investigation...' And I don't see Linux in your system specs...

And saying that Intel can drop their prices 10% and still make $$ just shows the greed there.

FYI - Most companys like to avoid RAZOR sharp margins. And you won't find an established company selling for a loss (unless there is a business case for it - take a loss on a console and make it up selling s'ware for that console).
So it's greedy to make $$? I guess you missed the whole section on 'free market economy' and 'supply and demand' in class...
Companies don't last long unless they are making $$ (or borrowing $$). I guess AMD's 1/4 BILLION dollar losses (every 3 months) are better?
But again we're talking PROCESSORS not BUSINESS...

AMD keeps their CPUs priced fairly,

Is that why they lost over 200 million in the last 3 month period??

Intel overcharges for the brand name.

I'm guessing you have access to Intel's accounting? How do you know what it costs to R&D, Market, and sell a PAPER CLIP, let alone a microprocessor...

If the roles were reversed and AMD was under investigation, and overcharging for their cpus, then yes, I would cry for Intel. But, the roles aren't reversed.

You can charge WHATEVER YOU WANT. Their is no PRICE GOUGING for processors. It's supply and demand. If your demand is high, you can charge what you want - think Wii on ebay for $500...
I'd like to see proof of this 'investigation'. There is an ANTI-TRUST suit right now...not a 'did intel overcharge' investigation

It all depends what type of business practices you want to support when you buy a CPU.

um....Microsoft...

Perpetuate the SLOW moving lonely giant. Yes, Intel was crawling along, sucking our wallets dry, with no innovation in site, until the release of the Athlon.

So are we talking about socket 939, or 775 and AM2(+)?
If there is NO competition, why would you SPEND $$ to stay ahead. What exactly are you staying ahead of?
This is why I don't support ANY MFG over another. Competition only helps the consumer. AMD's in-ability to produce a competitive product is EXACTLY why intel was 'crawling'...Oh and how do ANY of us know what Intel was up to behind closed doors?

I'll tell ya this much. Intel isn't crawling anymore. Fastest CPU's out now (hands down), and new generations coming every year.

IMO I'm glad AMD got their shit together a few years ago...I sincerly hope they can do it again.

I would say that AMD's "greed" is more like an aspiration.

Aspiration doesn't take the books outta the red

Now I'm an "evil fanboi" because I have a valid opinion about something.

Never said you were 'evil'...

Post whores with nothing better to do than cut peoples opinions down by exaggerating the facts

First off, less the 2 posts per day is no 'post whore'. Sounds like you're the one 'exaggerating the facts'
Oh and BTW, I learned this format from one of the best - DantheBanjoMan...Yes its intimidating, but it sure worked when he sent one my way. Set me straight right off.

, and using big words should be banned, hunted down, and exterminated.

I can't resist - Do the big words confuse you? I guess we should just exterminate everyone with some writing skills and an education. That would fix EVERYTHING


And FYI - I'm the only one out of 6 pc's (that I care for) that is intel. The rest are 939 (one 754) systems. I've got nothing against EITHER company. Just trying to give FACTS and not OPINIONS...(but science tells us that people with OPINIONS overlook the FACTS so as not to change their OPINION - Think politics - its been case studied...)


I am NOT trying to start flaming (or finish any pre-existing flaming). I invite you to dispute everything i've said (I invite you to post a reference or two). I just wish you would read, re-read, and investigate before calling someone out.
Oh and staying on the topic of the debate helps too

 

[kwchang007]

I highly doubt Diablo II was designed for a dual core system, being as it came out when systems were at 400Mhz. I'm just saying that it uses both cores almost equally on my 4000+. splits it about 60/40%, so that tells me that the AMD dual core pretty much splits up the load between the core--meaning native dual core, right? So, in theory, the native quad core will split it up amongst the 4 cores, equally, if the program is multi-threaded or not, unless I'm just plain wrong about that.

lol just wrong, sorry. Just that windows or what not uses the 40%....hardware doesn't dictate how the load is balanced, software dictates that.

 

[Basard]

AHAHAHAHHAHAHAH I'm a post whore at less than 2 per day AHHAHAHAAHAHHAH

I take almost as much pleasure in that as I do when I get acussed of 'cheating' b/c I'm decent and the other person has no skillz...

I bet my 'dissection' upset you somehow...

Well I'm at it again...




Are we talking about processors or business practices? Not sure that statement applies here...sorta like saying 'how many times has MICROSOFT been under investigation...' And I don't see Linux in your system specs...


FYI - Most companys like to avoid RAZOR sharp margins. And you won't find an established company selling for a loss (unless there is a business case for it - take a loss on a console and make it up selling s'ware for that console).
So it's greedy to make $$? I guess you missed the whole section on 'free market economy' and 'supply and demand' in class...
Companies don't last long unless they are making $$ (or borrowing $$). I guess AMD's 1/4 BILLION dollar losses (every 3 months) are better?
But again we're talking PROCESSORS not BUSINESS...


Is that why they lost over 200 million in the last 3 month period??


I'm guessing you have access to Intel's accounting? How do you know what it costs to R&D, Market, and sell a PAPER CLIP, let alone a microprocessor...


You can charge WHATEVER YOU WANT. Their is no PRICE GOUGING for processors. It's supply and demand. If your demand is high, you can charge what you want - think Wii on ebay for $500...
I'd like to see proof of this 'investigation'. There is an ANTI-TRUST suit right now...not a 'did intel overcharge' investigation


um....Microsoft...


So are we talking about socket 939, or 775 and AM2(+)?
If there is NO competition, why would you SPEND $$ to stay ahead. What exactly are you staying ahead of?
This is why I don't support ANY MFG over another. Competition only helps the consumer. AMD's in-ability to produce a competitive product is EXACTLY why intel was 'crawling'...Oh and how do ANY of us know what Intel was up to behind closed doors?

I'll tell ya this much. Intel isn't crawling anymore. Fastest CPU's out now (hands down), and new generations coming every year.

IMO I'm glad AMD got their shit together a few years ago...I sincerly hope they can do it again.


Aspiration doesn't take the books outta the red


Never said you were 'evil'...

First off, less the 2 posts per day is no 'post whore'. Sounds like you're the one 'exaggerating the facts'
Oh and BTW, I learned this format from one of the best - DantheBanjoMan...Yes its intimidating, but it sure worked when he sent one my way. Set me straight right off.


I can't resist - Do the big words confuse you? I guess we should just exterminate everyone with some writing skills and an education. That would fix EVERYTHING


And FYI - I'm the only one out of 6 pc's (that I care for) that is intel. The rest are 939 (one 754) systems. I've got nothing against EITHER company. Just trying to give FACTS and not OPINIONS...(but science tells us that people with OPINIONS overlook the FACTS so as not to change their OPINION - Think politics - its been case studied...)


I am NOT trying to start flaming (or finish any pre-existing flaming). I invite you to dispute everything i've said (I invite you to post a reference or two). I just wish you would read, re-read, and investigate before calling someone out.
Oh and staying on the topic of the debate helps too

Wow, cry more man, I have no idea why you think I was talking to you.

And both of my cores are at 0-1% usage at idle, when I load diablo, both cores start working, and they keep working, as with every other game I play. Let me load up Duke Nukem 3D and see how the cores work on that. ill post a screenie.

 

[Mediocre]

^^^^ AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH^^^^^^^^^^^^

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA


So it IS true....you're completely BONKERS

EDIT: Nice edit by the way...


If you post in a forum, you are talking to EVERYONE that reads it.

And whether I'm talking to you or not, does that make my points invalid?

I hope for your sake you read it through TWICE. Maybe you could get over it and put some sense in your head. But as I said above, science has proved that humans hold onto opinions even when presented with clear, concise facts.

It would be better for the entire community if people would get over their fanboi status and embrace competition.


As for your CPU usage, I would bet that you could explain it with the AMD dual core optimization driver. Neither of those applications are multi-threaded (natively). So they get ZERO performance increase by using more than one core. I would even go out on a limb and say theat it makes everything else (in the background) run slower because it is taking resources it doesn't need. With your PC you SHOULD be able to do a virus scan and play EITHER of those games with minimal performance hit. But with your screenshots, doing a scan (while gaming) would kill your FPS.

One of the purposes of multiple cores is to increase application speed (another would be running many apps at once).
Whether thats encoding, decoding, or playing a game, a truly multi-threaded app will enable that program to perform better than it would on a single core. That does not fit the case for duke or diablo....why are we talking about 5-10 year old games?

Edit 2 - but then again none of this should be going on in a NEWS thread. Maybe if we stayed on topic (that topic being 'AMD Phenom X4 CPU Prices Emerge'
not
Look at my task manager -> performance....see DukeNukem3d is MULTI-THREADED!!!

 

[Basard]

mediocre, i was never talking to you in the first place, so we weren't having a discussion.

heres my duke nukem 3d using BOTH cores

 

[Mediocre]

mediocre, i was never talking to you in the first place, so we weren't having a discussion.

heres my duke nukem 3d using BOTH cores

LOL, another good laugh. Man you ARE funny, I'll give ya that...BTW...I edited my previous post too...

Again, I bet what you're seeing is from the AMD dual core driver...

Well looking into that BRIEFLY (as I'm at work )

AMD Dual-Core Optimizer - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized.

So IMHO IDK whats going on with your system.

I can tell you that you don't get a performance increase from that (not on those games).

So I'd say you actually have a PROBLEM:
You can't run two things at once (maybe diablo and winamp or something) without seeing a performance drop in both. And that really sux.

With that old single threaded game, you SHOULD be able to run that and something else on another core nearly independantly (as the cache isn't shared between cores..HDD is...)

If I were you I would try and fix that. Doesn't seem right, and you get ZERO performance increase (in those games) with them running on both cores...

 

[Tatty_Two]

This is most likely the reason Intel's chips need so much more cache. Since a native quad core acts more like a single CPU, it uses its cache more efficiently. Every game I run on my system, Even Diablo II (very old), uses both cores of my X2 4000+ about equally. I'd say most NEW games are multi-threaded, at least the ones worth playing are... and if they aren't multi-threaded, they probably don't need to be.

So AMD isn't the king of performance per watt. But they are the king of performance per cache, it that even exists. I'd like to see how a Core2 performs with 512k cache per core.

Again you are confused between "multi thredded" and dual core optimised, there are currently only 8 multi thredded games (1,2,4,8 cores - no matter how many you have a genuine multi thredded app will use them all).

By Christmas there will be 11-13 available. And I agree about the native quad core being more efficient but it dont mean much if it's slow, to be competetive it has to match the competition in performance, price and efficiency.

 

[Basard]

Yeah, I never downloaded, or installed the Dual-Core Optimizer. I read about it and it seems pretty pointless. I'll get it and see what the CPU does then.

Weird, theres no difference... It didnt even ask me to restart, I did though and still no difference. My friend's X2 5200+ has the same pattern on almost every game. What program would the driver actually make a difference on anyways?

 

[kwchang007]

Yeah, I never downloaded, or installed the Dual-Core Optimizer. I read about it and it seems pretty pointless. I'll get it and see what the CPU does then.

Weird, theres no difference... It didnt even ask me to restart, I did though and still no difference. My friend's X2 5200+ has the same pattern on almost every game.

Well I mean part of it is that your computer has to run more than just the game. Like your firewalls, your antiviruses, keeping everything that needs some cpu time happy. Seeing as that's an old game, I'm guessing it itself doesn't push a core to 100%, and the os moves some things around to the other core. Now if you really really want to know if its the game doing that, do this limit the game's affinity to one core. If one core jumps to 100% and the other is quite low, than that's weird imo.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Yeah, I never downloaded, or installed the Dual-Core Optimizer. I read about it and it seems pretty pointless. I'll get it and see what the CPU does then.

Weird, theres no difference... It didnt even ask me to restart, I did though and still no difference. My friend's X2 5200+ has the same pattern on almost every game. What program would the driver actually make a difference on anyways?

And you have it showing as a ACPI multiprocessor in Hardware Manager? And did before dual core optomiser?

Start > settings > control panel > system > Hardware > device manager > computer

 

[Basard]

Ok, yeah, my friend's X2 5200+ does the same thing with every game I've seen him play, including diablo. My firewall is not using 50% cpu useage on my second core, thats for sure, and neither are any of my other background processes. I've always seen it like that. I figured it was somewhat weird, because of how dual cpu systems work, but then I just figured thats what they meant by Native Dual and Quad core.

Yes, it is running as an ACPI Multiprocessor PC. I dont know what to tell you guys, other than to run the same tests on your system, because as far as I know, this is how the cpu is supposed to act.

And by the way, regarding the actual topic here, if you look at the prices for all of the other cpus on the page, they all see pretty HIGH, like the X2 4000+ lists at $76 (in quantities of 1000.) I paid newegg $65 for the same cpu with free shipping. So maybe this is just a shitty supplier, and maybe the phenom prices will actually START around 200 from a better supplier.

Btw, how do I limit the affinity to one core?

It seems like you are all running intel cpus in your specs. Does anybody with an Athlon x2 have any input?

 

[Solaris17]

what do u need input on? though i dont see how core usage varies between intel or amd...they both have 2 cores their going o act relatively the same imo

 

[Basard]

I don't even know. Maybe core useage does vary between the two, since everyone is saying that mine is weird. Does Intel's show the same pattern in the same games? If not why is it different?

 

[Solaris17]

idk perhaps its because intel core2's dont have this time stamp problem because they use a diff arch as for my rig in single threaded apps i get both my cores fireing up it happens all the time i just assumed it was windows or the optimizer adjusting for me so i didnt get stuttering etc..

 

[kwchang007]

Ok, yeah, my friend's X2 5200+ does the same thing with every game I've seen him play, including diablo. My firewall is not using 50% cpu useage on my second core, thats for sure, and neither are any of my other background processes. I've always seen it like that. I figured it was somewhat weird, because of how dual cpu systems work, but then I just figured thats what they meant by Native Dual and Quad core.

Yes, it is running as an ACPI Multiprocessor PC. I dont know what to tell you guys, other than to run the same tests on your system, because as far as I know, this is how the cpu is supposed to act.

And by the way, regarding the actual topic here, if you look at the prices for all of the other cpus on the page, they all see pretty HIGH, like the X2 4000+ lists at $76 (in quantities of 1000.) I paid newegg $65 for the same cpu with free shipping. So maybe this is just a shitty supplier, and maybe the phenom prices will actually START around 200 from a better supplier.

Btw, how do I limit the affinity to one core?

It seems like you are all running intel cpus in your specs. Does anybody with an Athlon x2 have any input?

Oh no no single background process is going to take up that much....but together maybe...maybe

 

[Basard]

Single process, no, together, no.... As I type, CPU usage is at 0%.... Background processes cant be at 50% thats impossible, unless something is horribly wrong.