AMD Layoffs | Bitcointalksearch.org

SaintDevil

full member

Activity: 126

Merit: 100

Web Programmer, Gamer

Quote from: Desolator on October 25, 2012, 05:57:18 PM

Quote from: underminer on October 25, 2012, 04:34:46 PM

I bought a whole system with 8120, 2 x1 terabyte drives, ssd, windows, full corsair tower, gtx460, and an asus sabertooth motherboard for $600. It was almost exactly what I would have built myself for about half the cost. I am really happy with the sabertooth board speaking of which and want to buy the intel chip equivalent when I get the $$$.

From where? That's not possible. Was it all used/refurb or bought in person or something?

Sometimes you can find a really good deal on barbone kits, after rebates and discounts.

underminer

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

Not for hire.

A personal computer yes, thank you craigslist. Not really that old either I think there is even good corsair ram in in it. I am (hopefully) buying an i5 with a sabertooth saturday for basically the same price... We will see how it goes. When you consider that I spent ~ twice that on my llano computer it gets a bit depressing lol!

Desolator

sr. member

Activity: 392

Merit: 250

Quote from: underminer on October 25, 2012, 04:34:46 PM

I bought a whole system with 8120, 2 x1 terabyte drives, ssd, windows, full corsair tower, gtx460, and an asus sabertooth motherboard for $600. It was almost exactly what I would have built myself for about half the cost. I am really happy with the sabertooth board speaking of which and want to buy the intel chip equivalent when I get the $$$.

From where? That's not possible. Was it all used/refurb or bought in person or something?

regular

sr. member

Activity: 297

Merit: 250

Investmentwise, AMD is probably near rock bottom at the moment. Anyone buying AMD at this time?

SgtSpike

legendary

Activity: 1400

Merit: 1005

Quote from: Lethos on October 25, 2012, 04:32:41 PM

Back on topic though, it's sad that AMD has resorted to such large layoffs, but it is true they have had a mixed bag of success.
High End Desktop CPU - Not good, intel crushes them here.
APU - Excellent, AMD has done amazing here at a great price.
Server CPU - Small Improvements, but Intel has historically had this, and hasn't made much dent.

I'd add one more to that list:
Budget CPUs - For applications like mining or web browsing, where anything available is fast enough, the lowest cost units reign king. And AMD has that low-end market captured quite sufficiently.

The lowest priced AMD desktop chip on Newegg is $39.99. The lowest priced Intel chip is $48.99. A $9 difference, which doesn't seem like much, but it is a 23% increase in the price. Bulk order, and you start to see it add up quick.

underminer

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

Not for hire.

I bought a whole system with 8120, 2 x1 terabyte drives, ssd, windows, full corsair tower, gtx460, and an asus sabertooth motherboard for $600. It was almost exactly what I would have built myself for about half the cost. I am really happy with the sabertooth board speaking of which and want to buy the intel chip equivalent when I get the $$$.

Lethos

sr. member

Activity: 476

Merit: 250

Keep it Simple. Every Bit Matters.

I like the Llano's for their APU and cross-fire potential all in a laptop package that was not expensive at all.
They overclock well and I expect the same from Trinity for the laptop, haven't tried it yet.

I play all the latest games I want to on mine (Llano), I admit I overclock mine, but considering it's A6 3410mx and runs most games I want on high/highest detail, with decent AA settings, I'm not complaining. Trinity apparently shows some improvements, not a lot but nice boost in already powerful graphics.

Back on topic though, it's sad that AMD has resorted to such large layoffs, but it is true they have had a mixed bag of success.
High End Desktop CPU - Not good, intel crushes them here.
APU - Excellent, AMD has done amazing here at a great price.
Server CPU - Small Improvements, but Intel has historically had this, and hasn't made much dent.

If they end up refocusing their attention to APU's and Servers, grabbing those two key markets, instead of going for all 3, they might go back to their roots of what they were remembered for. Atleast what I remember them for, Solid performer, cheaper than Intel, that overclock very well.

SaintDevil

full member

Activity: 126

Merit: 100

Web Programmer, Gamer

Quote from: crazyates on October 25, 2012, 04:10:27 PM

Newegg got the Desktop Piledrivers in stock, and also coincidentally dropped the price of the Bulldozer CPUs. I picked up a 8120 for $140, paid for with a gift card from btcbuy.info, of course. GC showed up in 12 hours, and the CPU should be here tomorrow. Grin

Their price went ridiculously down, I wish I haven't bought my 8150 on the first day it came out.

crazyates

legendary

Activity: 952

Merit: 1000

Newegg got the Desktop Piledrivers in stock, and also coincidentally dropped the price of the Bulldozer CPUs. I picked up a 8120 for $140, paid for with a gift card from btcbuy.info, of course. GC showed up in 12 hours, and the CPU should be here tomorrow. Grin

underminer

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

Not for hire.

My friend just bought one with the new chips and it is coming in the mail anyday now. I am going to show him how to mine in his spare time and we will see if he can make enough coin to play for plex and play eve with me, lol. Now that he has bought this computer (his other just got stolen) he will be very poor for a long time. Can let you guys know what kind of mhs it is and what the specs are sometime next week if anyone is interested.

SaintDevil

full member

Activity: 126

Merit: 100

Web Programmer, Gamer

Quote from: underminer on October 25, 2012, 03:05:59 PM

Does the crossfire help? I had more trouble than it was worth trying to get a performance boost out of the llano. For one thing the best card that could crossfire with the apu was a 6670 (I've sold this card) but I wasn't impressed. I like the "free" gpu though. I can run the integrated gpu as if it were a video card all of its own but it takes up no space in the case...

I don't know about mining performance, but for gaming it gives me quite a good boost. I was always a fan of nvidia cards for gaming, but a laptop apu with gpu feels quite powerful. And they just released their newer series of apus too. I just wish my laptop didn't have the damn 1377 resolution.

underminer

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

Not for hire.

Does the crossfire help? I had more trouble than it was worth trying to get a performance boost out of the llano. For one thing the best card that could crossfire with the apu was a 6670 (I've sold this card) but I wasn't impressed. I like the "free" gpu though. I can run the integrated gpu as if it were a video card all of its own but it takes up no space in the case...

legolouman

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 504

Decent Programmer to boot!

Quote from: SaintDevil on October 25, 2012, 02:17:46 AM

Quote from: SgtSpike on October 15, 2012, 12:02:27 PM

I've kind of been out of the loop on mobile chips lately, but have been looking at buying a new laptop... are the "APU's" the chips that contain both a process and a GPU? And they are good? I'm looking in the $600 or less range, but can only find integrated graphics on the Intel side with those, and decent dedicated GPUs on the AMD side. So I like the looks of the AMD offerings on paper, but I am just concerned about the CPUs themselves - power usage, actual processing power compared to the i3/i5's, etc. And what's the difference between A6/A8/A10?

I have a laptop with AMD A10 processor and it has an integrated graphics 6620G. A6/A8 and A10 I believe differ in what graphics card integrated into them.
My laptop also has a dedicated 6650 and what I love about amd apus is that you can crossfire them.

Actually, each different CPU has a different integrated GPU model, not just the different series cpus.

SaintDevil

full member

Activity: 126

Merit: 100

Web Programmer, Gamer

Quote from: SgtSpike on October 15, 2012, 12:02:27 PM

I've kind of been out of the loop on mobile chips lately, but have been looking at buying a new laptop... are the "APU's" the chips that contain both a process and a GPU? And they are good? I'm looking in the $600 or less range, but can only find integrated graphics on the Intel side with those, and decent dedicated GPUs on the AMD side. So I like the looks of the AMD offerings on paper, but I am just concerned about the CPUs themselves - power usage, actual processing power compared to the i3/i5's, etc. And what's the difference between A6/A8/A10?

I have a laptop with AMD A10 processor and it has an integrated graphics 6620G. A6/A8 and A10 I believe differ in what graphics card integrated into them.
My laptop also has a dedicated 6650 and what I love about amd apus is that you can crossfire them.

underminer

full member

Activity: 210

Merit: 100

Not for hire.

I have a desktop with a 2.9ghz llano fm1. The apu mines at 68mhs by itself and the motherboard has 2 pci express card slots and one x1 slot. So theoretically I could be mining with 3 cards and one "crappy" one (the apu) for a pretty cheap price. I bought the socket because it looked like it was going to be expandable but what did they do? They make fm2. Fuckers. Alienating the people that invest in their experimental products is part of their problem. I also have the 8120 8 core "bulldozer" chip, (which I bought because the name is AWESOME) its far from abysmal but doesn't stack up to an i5 from what I understand.

legolouman

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 504

Decent Programmer to boot!

Quote from: Desolator on October 15, 2012, 11:06:55 PM

for any laptop, I tell people that AMD's fusion APUs are quite fast and decent but they get a lot hotter and worse battery life. They're similar in performance but if anything, slightly slower than most intel products. Either one will get you to a high def netflix or youtube stream and not much farther so if graphics are a concern, you'll probably just have to step up to something with an Nvidia 540m inside or even faster.

That said, we use an older A6 APU quad (it's only like 1.4GHz!) for a 3D software demo to customers machine and it's alright. It's about 95% fast enough for that at a large res and since it's a 17" it doesn't get too hot. I have a feeling a modern i3 would outperform it. The current mother of all perfect laptops is the Toshiba Satellite C855-S5206, which I have sold 3 of so far at my shop. It's insanely good for $400 and has every feature imaginable for a reasonably priced laptop.

APU's are a bit better at multitasking and rendering than anything Intel has to offer. I use an APU based laptop for programming in LabVIEW, and I personally feel that it is a step above any other laptops that I have worked on. It loads faster, it compiles faster, etc.

Desolator

sr. member

Activity: 392

Merit: 250

for any laptop, I tell people that AMD's fusion APUs are quite fast and decent but they get a lot hotter and worse battery life. They're similar in performance but if anything, slightly slower than most intel products. Either one will get you to a high def netflix or youtube stream and not much farther so if graphics are a concern, you'll probably just have to step up to something with an Nvidia 540m inside or even faster.

That said, we use an older A6 APU quad (it's only like 1.4GHz!) for a 3D software demo to customers machine and it's alright. It's about 95% fast enough for that at a large res and since it's a 17" it doesn't get too hot. I have a feeling a modern i3 would outperform it. The current mother of all perfect laptops is the Toshiba Satellite C855-S5206, which I have sold 3 of so far at my shop. It's insanely good for $400 and has every feature imaginable for a reasonably priced laptop.

crazyates

legendary

Activity: 952

Merit: 1000

Quote from: Desolator on October 15, 2012, 11:42:24 AM

Okay first, I just corrected the naming in my post Tongue

I meant Streamroller. And secondly, whaaat? I thought Piledriver was in the new desktop CPUs? According to wikipedia, The A10-5800K, A10-5700, A8-5600K, A8-5500, A6-5400K and A4-5300 APU models were released on 2 October 2012 and are all classified as 2nd gen Piledriver chips.

Those are all APUs. By Desktop chips, I mean a higher performance chip without a GPU. The FX series is about to release new models with Piledriver modules, With the FX-8350 being the top end, 4GHz octo-core. That's the one I want, cuz Steamroller won't be out for quite a while.

SgtSpike

legendary

Activity: 1400

Merit: 1005

I've kind of been out of the loop on mobile chips lately, but have been looking at buying a new laptop... are the "APU's" the chips that contain both a process and a GPU? And they are good? I'm looking in the $600 or less range, but can only find integrated graphics on the Intel side with those, and decent dedicated GPUs on the AMD side. So I like the looks of the AMD offerings on paper, but I am just concerned about the CPUs themselves - power usage, actual processing power compared to the i3/i5's, etc. And what's the difference between A6/A8/A10?

Desolator

sr. member

Activity: 392

Merit: 250

Okay first, I just corrected the naming in my post Tongue

I meant Streamroller. And secondly, whaaat? I thought Piledriver was in the new desktop CPUs? According to wikipedia, The A10-5800K, A10-5700, A8-5600K, A8-5500, A6-5400K and A4-5300 APU models were released on 2 October 2012 and are all classified as 2nd gen Piledriver chips.

crazyates

legendary

Activity: 952

Merit: 1000

Piledriver is just the next improvement of Bulldozer. The new Trinity APUs (the A10s) actually do have Piledriver modules in them. And sure enough, it shows about a 10-15% improvement over Bulldozer modules, which is what they were expecting. Piledriver has not made it into a Desktop CPU yet, but it hopefully will soon.

Desolator

sr. member

Activity: 392

Merit: 250

Someone's getting the future Steamroller chips and the current Trinity (aka Piledriver, yeah, it's out already) chips mixed up. Steamroller is very lacking in details but everyone's hoping it comes in and destroys everything Intel has in performance numbers.
The the Trinity series is out now though and AMD's own release notes for it say it will outperform an i3 but they're slower than an i5 but at an i3 type of price.

i3's are around $115 still with the Ivy ones a lot more and the new i5's are around $185 so here it is (the Trinity A10) for $129:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113280

but it uses 100 watts :-P If I'm not mistaken, that onboard GPU absolutely demolishes the latest intel graphics capabilities. I still wouldn't game on it though, so it's kinda pointless Tongue

Both can run a full HD netflix stream and play facebook games and if you hop from that to Skyrim, you're probably not going with an onboard GPU, lol.

They also make an A8, A6, A4 for a lot cheaper but still in the trinity series but I'm not sure how those stack up against comparable Intel products.

kokojie

legendary

Activity: 1806

Merit: 1003

AMD simply don't have the cash to compete with Intel in the long run. Intel's capex per year is far larger than AMD's entire company value.

crazyates

legendary

Activity: 952

Merit: 1000

Quote from: meebs on October 14, 2012, 05:42:16 PM

their highest end chips are barely competing with friggin core i3's that use like 1/3rd the power (i have a i3 3225 that barely uses 25 watts at full load...)

Link? Most of the stuff I've seen puts them competing with an i5. Sometimes they lose to the i5, sometime they beat even the i7s.

Desolator

sr. member

Activity: 392

Merit: 250

Quote from: meebs on October 14, 2012, 05:42:16 PM

their highest end chips are barely competing with friggin core i3's that use like 1/3rd the power (i have a i3 3225 that barely uses 25 watts at full load...)

That's not possible. They use 55W.

legolouman

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 504

Decent Programmer to boot!

Quote from: crazyates on October 14, 2012, 10:40:13 PM

Quote from: GernMiester on October 14, 2012, 09:37:09 PM

AMD CPU's suck so no surprises there.

I'm still waiting for Piledriver to hit. Tongue

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012092001_Pre-order_prices_of_AMD_FX_Piledriver_CPUs.html

Relevant, as am I.

An 8 core processor running 4.0 Ghz is crazy.

crazyates

legendary

Activity: 952

Merit: 1000

Quote from: GernMiester on October 14, 2012, 09:37:09 PM

AMD CPU's suck so no surprises there.

I'm still waiting for Piledriver to hit. Tongue

legolouman

hero member

Activity: 504

Merit: 504

Decent Programmer to boot!

Sure, they lost the high end CPU war, but APU's are the best thing ever. I love them.

GernMiester

sr. member

Activity: 285

Merit: 250

AMD CPU's suck so no surprises there.

crazyates

legendary

Activity: 952

Merit: 1000

Quote from: meebs on October 14, 2012, 05:42:16 PM

Quote from: herzmeister on October 14, 2012, 09:21:27 AM

damn ASICs Sad

i'd say it has more to do with them being absolutely ABYSMAL in the desktop CPU market the past few years....

their highest end chips are barely competing with friggin core i3's that use like 1/3rd the power (i have a i3 3225 that barely uses 25 watts at full load...)

Their APU products are quite the product, tho. Cheap, good battery life, and very good reviews. Buying ATI was actually one of the smartest things they could have done.

meebs

hero member

Activity: 616

Merit: 500

Quote from: herzmeister on October 14, 2012, 09:21:27 AM

damn ASICs Sad

i'd say it has more to do with them being absolutely ABYSMAL in the desktop CPU market the past few years....

their highest end chips are barely competing with friggin core i3's that use like 1/3rd the power (i have a i3 3225 that barely uses 25 watts at full load...)

herzmeister

legendary

Activity: 1764

Merit: 1007

damn ASICs Sad

tiberiandusk

hero member

Activity: 575

Merit: 500

The North Remembers

http://allthingsd.com/20121012/exclusive-amd-to-cut-up-to-30-percent-of-workforce/

Topic: AMD Layoffs (Read 4111 times)