Wednesday, April 25, 2007

lovely... just lovely...

Okay, first thing is, I'm not going out of my way to be another Sharikou. In that respect, I don't want this blog to just be about AMD, and just be about Intel... yet, recently, that's the only topic that really needs SOMEBODY fighting back on.

I've gone over several points before in this particular blog, pointing out where things are just wrong, as well as taking a certain Pro-Intel site and it's readers out to the woodshed on Multiple Occasions.

Okay, restart. First thing, AMD is having some financial problems. The revenues expected to come up in didn't show up. Products were late, and, well, everything went broke. Sort of like what happened with Nvidia during the GeforceFX. So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Dailytech is running an article proclaiming that "Intel Wipes out AMD's Lead in One Quarter."

Part of me wants to take a two-by-four to the keyboard of whoever posted that. The other part of me says it isn't worth my time to combat every single idiotic posting that comes out of AT/DT these days.

The problem, as I see it, is that Intel has succeeded in Astro-Turfing the processor market. Anandtech successfully got away with passing off known bugs as factual data in their processor benchmarks, and succeeded in snow jobbing readers about Intel products.

It is my opinion that Anandtech/Dailytechs irresponsible journalism is directly responsible for the problems that AMD is having in money. Okay, fair question, how could one site that has rapidly lost any credibility affect the sales of an international company?

Quick shot is, Anandtech isn't the only one who is Astro-Turfing for Intel. The second thing is, sources. For example, HardOCP is currently running this News Story :

[H] reader extraordinaire TJ spotted some ATi Radeon HD 2900 XT benchmarks over at Engadget today that have the upcoming card from ATi besting a GF 8800GTS. No telling where the card that was tested came from, testing environment and so on but it is still fun to speculate.

While the marks weren't the end-all answer to the ATI vs. NVIDIA question, the Radeon managed to best its opponent in every single trial, including Call of Duty 2, Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R., Oblivion, 3DMark06, Maya 02, Cadalyst C2006, and a few more for good measure.


There isn't any mention made that this news story comes from... Dailytech, not Engadget. Now, in this case, I think Dailytech may be fairly accurate in their testings... although I could be wrong.

Anyways, the point is, there is a constant stream of news stories, comments, and reports made about Intel Dominating the market, Intel's processors being better, and so on. You don't see the qualification made to that... Sure, Intel may have the highest performing processor available... But they also carry the highest price. There is a lot of talk about the wattage consumption and heat output... yet you don't see anybody pointing out the obvious factor of the Memory Controller as I did.

So, everytime Anandtech/Dailytech, or another site lays out a blanket comment about Intel processors, and nobody responds to it... the average reader who DOES NOT know is going to think it's true.

In such a manner, sites like Anandtech/Dailytech that merely gloss over stories, or simply use falsified test data as factual results... directly affect the market conditions.

Now... imagine for a second what would have happened if tech sites had been honest... had they pointed out that if you timed your DDR2 correctly on an Athlon64, there is a clock for clock match with Intel... sorta like what HardOCP has done.

Now, I could go on about Anandtech/Dailytech's irresponsible journalism, but honestly, it's getting a little tiresome.

************

Something else popped into my head a while back and I figure now is a good as time as any to address it. Someone sent me an email pointing out that Intel and AMD processors were not sold in equivalent clockrates.

This is true: AMD Athlon64 processors have clock rates of 1.9ghz, 2.0ghz, 2.1, 2.2, and so on up.

Intel Conroe processors have clock rates of 1.86ghz, 2.13ghz, 2.4ghz, and 2.66ghz.

Part of this is due to the antiquated front side bus design that the Conroe processors use. The other part is that it prevents direct comparisons of Conroe processors to Athlon64 X2 processors.

Say what? Think about it... aside from the 2.4ghz entry, every other Conroe based processor isn't at an "even" stepping. If you normalize the clock rates in order to compare it to an AMD Athlon64, you either have to underclock, or overclock, one of the processors.

Cute trick isn't it.

No comments: