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Author Topic: AMD computer George.  (Read 8358 times)

natpub

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Re: AMD computer...
« Reply #15 on: April 30, 2004, 12:12:04 AM »

George Massenburg wrote on Thu, 29 April 2004 22:26


My dear friends, please do not even THINK of starting a MAC vs PC flame war here.  



Thank God  Rolling Eyes

-KT
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Kurt Thompson
Vibrational Arts, Inc.
Blue Skyway Music
Sonic Sorcery Studios
Austin,TX/Columbus,OH

Rob Darling

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Re: AMD computer George.
« Reply #16 on: April 30, 2004, 01:15:03 PM »

Hey guys, in case you didn't notice, this is computer technology we're talking about here.  Unless you are really keeping up on things and testing things, passing on knowledge about experiences from years back just doesn't work.  

Check this thread out if you want to know about the current state of the art.

http://forum.nuendo.com/forum/Forum3/HTML/005409.html

It doesn't get good until Brian T. (Brian Tankersley, well known for always trying to push things to as far as they'll go, but doing it thoroughly) chimes in, but you will learn a lot by reading all the way through.

r.

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tptman

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Re: AMD computer George.
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2004, 02:37:17 AM »

One of the reasons developers tend to develop on Intel machines is that Intel optimizations are available on Intel CPU's before they are available on any others (of course), and developers are naturally going to want to write code to take advantage of these technologies for the speed gains available.

That being said, I am fairly intimate with this side of the business, as some of you may know, and routinely use several different Windows boxes. I am speaking of current technology, not historical technology. In my experience, there is little or no difference in the reliability of current AMD-Asus combos compared to Intel-Intel.

If we put aside the reliability debate, we are left with essentially two factors that may play into a purchase decision, and those are performance and cost.

Once again, Intel optimizations are a big deal here. New code is going to be written to take advantage of the latest optimizations available. In many cases, developers pass their DSP intensive code to Intel engineers, who then make suggestions on how to better utilize Intel optimizations. IF you are using newer software, and if that software is written to use the very latest Intel optimizations, you will realize a performance gain over the AMD option.

That being said, there are many factors which may cause your favorite software to NOT take advantage of the very latest intel optimizations, in which case, cycle per cycle, the AMD product beats the Intel one on pretty much every level (except perhaps in the case where hyperthreading is advantageous to the process at hand).

As for cost, we are all very familiar with the advantages of AMD.

Really, the reliability problems of AMD machines has little to do with AMD and much to do with OUTDATED motherboards. For someone considering what to buy today, reliability should not enter into the equation. Get a good Asus MB (there are others that are good) with an AMD64 processor, or get and Intel/Intel combo, and you'll see no difference in reliability. You will see a difference in performance/cost, and that's a difference I suspect you'll like.
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Peter "tptman" Green

natpub

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Re: AMD computer George.
« Reply #18 on: May 03, 2004, 12:50:11 AM »

Yah, I was just going to ask if anyone was familiar with how 64 bit might affect us in the future, as the O/S is updated and software begins to be written for it?

Thx,
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Kurt Thompson
Vibrational Arts, Inc.
Blue Skyway Music
Sonic Sorcery Studios
Austin,TX/Columbus,OH

Rob Darling

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Re: AMD computer George.
« Reply #19 on: May 03, 2004, 10:18:58 AM »

Until Microsoft is at least one or two revisions into a 64 bit os, I can't imagine music software really being ready for it (witness the lack of music support in OS X until well into 10.2) How long will that be?  Don't know- two, three years?

In the meantime, the real advantage is that the AMD CPU's are being designed in a way that the PCI bottlenecks of the past can be alleviated deeply.  Also, some of the more troublesome tasks that the motherboard and chipset used to do are now on the CPU, so the mobo will be less of a variable.

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Phillip Graham

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AMD from someone who interned there
« Reply #20 on: May 06, 2004, 07:02:16 PM »

Hello All,

I interned in the AMD Austin wafer fab for most of 2001.  That was known as AMD's FAB25, but now makes flash RAM for Spansion.  I had several friends doing design side work.

AMD's internal reference test motherboards were, at the time, made by Tyan.  The more budget conscious internal people used ASUS at home.

In raw FPU performance the Athlon (i.e. Thunderbird and later) core outpaced Intel's designs.  The last Intel P3 core (Norwood?) had better FPU performance than the P4's of the time.  AMD did consitently lag in implementing all the extra SSE extensions.

What really hurt the Athlon core, other than lower MHz, was lack of integrated thermal protection.  This was more due to great patents on Intel's part than on an inability to implement such things.

What is now the Athlon64 was not yet "taped out" when I left, but I know that they were going to address the thermal issues.

I don't think anyone has ever gotten so much life out of a fundamental CPU design as AMD did out of the Tbird.  Tweaked, prodded, expanded, hot rodded for many years to keep competitive.

Many of the DEC Alpha people are now at AMD, and I think this explains their good chip architectures.  At the time we definitely lagged Intel in terms of our ability to fab some fundamental steps that allow for the high GHz clock speeds.

Being tied to VIA chipsets is definitely an issue for AMD, but they continue to do better and better.  It is a bit nerve wracking when they release a new design.  AMD's simply not large enough a company to be able to do chips and chipsets at the same time.

Anyways, AMD was a wonderful place to intern, Austin's a great town, and I still use AMD processors to this day, even though the Ali chipset in my laptop has crappy USB implementation.

Some perspective
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Phillip Graham
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