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AMD continues to chip away at Intel's x86 market share
- snovymgodym 1y ago(On desktop systems)
- cmovq 1y agoOn data center as well. I think AMD rightly decided to focus on larger chips for data center instead of consumer laptops where margins are tiny in comparison and growth has been slow for a few years.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoIn general AMD seems to not want anything to do with down-market parts. They still have great laptop & desktop parts, in fact they're essentially the same parts as servers (with less Core Complex Die (CCD) chiplets and simpler IO Die)! Their embedded chips, mobile chips are all the same chiplets too!! And there's some APU parts that are more consumer focused, which have been quite solid. And now Strix Halo, which were it not for DDR5 prices shooting to the moon, would be incredible prosumer APU. Where AMD is just totally missing is low end. There's nothing like the Intel N100/N97/N150, which is a super ragingly popular chip for consumer appliances like NAS. I'm hoping their Sound Wave design is real, materializes, offers something a bit more affordable than their usual. The news at the end of October was that their new low end line up is going to be old Zen2 & Zen3 chips. That's mostly fine, still an amazing chip, just not quite as fast & efficient. But not a lot no small AMD parts. https://wccftech.com/amd-prepares-rebadged-zen-2-ryzen-10-and-zen-3-ryzen-100-series-mobile-cpus/ https://wccftech.com/amd-prepares-rebadged-zen-2-ryzen-10-an... It's crazy how AMD has innovated by building far far less designs than the past. There's not a bunch of different chips designed for different price points, the whole range across all markets (for cpus) is the same core, the same ~3 designs, variously built out. I do wish AMD would have a better low end story. The Steam Deck is such a killer machine and no one else can make anything with such a clear value, because no one else can buy a bunch of slightly weird old chips for cheap, have to buy much more expensive mainline chips. I really wish there were some smaller interesting APUs available.
- init2null 1y agoThe Intel video encoding pipeline alone is worth going Intel on the low end. Those low-power devices simply need better transcoding support than AMD can currently provide.
- jauntywundrkind 1y agoUpdating this post. Found the review I was looking for! Newest RDNA4 fixes a pretty weak encoder performance for game streaming, is competitive. Unfortunately (at release at least) av1 is still pretty weak. https://youtu.be/kkf7q4L5xl8 https://youtu.be/kkf7q4L5xl8 One thing noted is AMD seems to have really good output at lower bandwidth (~4min mark). Would be nice to have even deeper dives into this. And also whether or not the quality changes over time with driver updates would be curious to know. One of the comments details how already a bunch of the asks in this video (split frame encoding, improved av1) landed 1mo after the video. Hopefully progress continues for rdna4! https://youtube.com/watch?v=kkf7q4L5xl8&lc=UgzYN-iSC7N097XZiEB4AaABAg&si=czF4tRtTiuaLqPzH https://youtube.com/watch?v=kkf7q4L5xl8&lc=UgzYN-iSC7N097XZi...
- iknowstuff 1y agoDamn I love the strix halo. the framework desktop idles at 10W and has modern standby consuming less than 1W, but fully connected so an xbox controller can wake it over bluetooth etc. My 3080 sffpc eats 70W idle and 400W under load. Game performance is roughly the same from a normie point of view.
- embedding-shape 1y agoI don't get the feeling that they've focused anywhere in particular (and maybe rightly so), they're in everything from low-powered consoles to high powered workstations and data centers, and seemingly everywhere in-between those too.
- MBCook 1y agoNo, also laptops. The article had a chart for that too. It's all systems.
- brian-armstrong 1y agoWindows 10 EOL is probably helping to churn a lot of aging Intel chips out here. I can't imagine anyone in the know is building a new desktop with an Intel anything in it these days, either.
- colechristensen 1y agoHow I pick a CPU: - Visit https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/ https://www.cpubenchmark.net/single-thread/ and pick the fastest CPU under $400 - Visit https://www.cpubenchmark.net/multithread/ https://www.cpubenchmark.net/multithread/ and verify there are no CPUs at a lower cost with a higher score It has been, for a long time, the latest generation Intel CPU with a 2xxK or 2xxKF model number these used to be "i7" models now there's just a 7, I'm very vaguely annoyed at the branding change. It would be hard for anybody to convince me that there is a better price|performance optimum. I get it, there was a very disappointing generation or two a few years ago, that hasn't put me off. The dominance of Apple CPUs might be putting me off both Intel and AMD and consider only buying Apple hardware and maybe even doing something like Linux running on a Mac Mini in addition to my MacOS daily driver.
- dangus 1y agoFlawed way to pick a CPU if you ask me. - generic benchmarks don’t pick up unique CPU features nor they pick up real world application performance. For example, Intel has no answer to the X3D V-cache architecture that makes AMD chips better for gaming. - You can’t really ignore motherboard cost and the frequency of platform socket changes. AMD has cheaper boards that last longer (as in, they update their sockets less often so you can upgrade chips more and keep your same board) - $400 is an arbitrary price ceiling and you’re not looking at dollars per performance unit, you’re just cutting off with a maximum price. - In other words, Intel chips are below $400 because they aren’t fast enough to be worth paying $400+ for. - If you’re looking for integrated graphics, you’re pretty much always better off with AMD over Intel
- lostlogin 1y ago‘Stupid’ is more than a bit strong. Your points are good and the tone undermines them.
- Neywiny 1y agoGoodness I still can't stand his articles. For me, my understanding of the situation was that everything before maybe Ryzen 2-3000 was like "meh, it's good enough". You can actually see a bump in Q1 2017 when Ryzen first came out. I really hoped to see annotated graphs, long term analysis, etc.
- hereme888 1y agoThis could swing so hard with sudden geopolitical triggers. I also see Intel positioning itself very strongly for its next generation chips.
- general1465 1y agoUnless they will do something stupid like damaging their 13th and 14th generation of processors by usage and then going great lengths to deny it, until finally being forced to fix it. https://www.digitec.ch/en/page/intel-has-a-big-problem-unstable-cpus-will-always-be-broken-34134 https://www.digitec.ch/en/page/intel-has-a-big-problem-unsta...
- hereme888 1y agoI hear the frustration. I have an intel 13th, and I hope it lasts long enough.
- lostlogin 1y agoAre you saying that Intel is well positioned if Trump let’s China think it can invade Taiwan without consequences? If so, that’s a hell of a way for Intel to secure its future.
- mschuster91 1y agoIntel is screwed because their foundry is nowhere near up to speed but AMD has zero alternatives to TSMC in Taiwan so they got it worse - at least for now, I don't think TSMC Arizona is ready yet.
- kcb 1y agoTSMC in Arizona has been at full scale production of 4nm chips for a while now.
- MangoCoffee 1y agoIsn't TSMC Arizona and Japan the hedge for such geopolitical changes? Their best engineers are probably still going to be in Taiwan, but with the rate at which TSMC is building fabs overseas, it shouldn't matter much.
- polski-g 1y agoAMD chips are just as fast but with lower thermal output. Why would anyone use Intel at this point?
- shmerl 1y agoCan anyone explain what prevents AMD from making x86_64 chips competitive with ARM on the lower end like in mobile phones? I doubt it's about ISA.
- wmf 1y agoTheir lowest end chips are probably competitive already. I think x86 support was removed from Android though.
- shmerl 1y agoSo why did for example Valve decide to use Qualcomm Snapdragon for Steam Frame and not some AMD APU?
- kube-system 1y agoI have seen speculation that mobile app architecture compatibility was part of it
- shmerl 1y agoI see. But aren't they emulating x86_64 on ARM64 there anyway? Can't they emulate ARM64 on x86_64 the same way?
- rincebrain 1y agoYes, in theory. But there's not a huge market (and therefore, FOSS dev time spent on it) for emulating AArch64 on x86 the way there is x86 on AArch64, so if your options are to build your own AArch64 emulation for x86 (or drop a fortune into an existing FOSS option), or building something based on AArch64 and using the existing x86 emulation implementations, one of these has much more predictable costs and outcomes today.
- shmerl 1y ago
- braiamp 1y agoI find interesting that despite many years of being reminded that DYI market doesn't represent a significant portion of these sales... we are still thinking that individual customers are the one driving the consumption. The one driving this are big OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc.
- mmis1000 1y ago> The one driving this are big OEMs like Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. That's why monopoly is a bad thing. It allows manufacturer to pressure the vendor. The reason amd don't sells much in laptop market is extremely simple. Because you can't buy it. These vendors usually have far less version of amd laptop than intel one. And those are usually sells out quickly.
- rincebrain 1y agoMy experiences with trying AMD CPU laptops is that they're not good. Every time I've tried it in the last 10 years, it's felt like I was teleported into the late 90s PC era - weird bugs in specific drivers that you can find lots of reports of for this specific model and no resolution, heat management that feels like someone in a basement strung things together in 5 minutes and never tested it again, strange failures in "plug and play" support for USB devices that work on every other machine flawlessly with the same cable and device, and don't get me started on Bluetooth. (My favorite ever might be the time that attempting to pair a specific pair of headphones to the laptop shut off every USB port, reproducibly, apparently because the BT adapter was connected over the USB M.2 pins to the root hub, and was crashing in firmware, so both Windows and Linux did the same style of dance of "try to reset it, once that fails, go up a level and turn off the complex to make sure other things keep working"...except up one level was the root.) (Though, to be fair to AMD, that was an Intel BT/wifi chip in an AMD laptop...) I really want to like and recommend AMD mobile hardware, but every time I've tried it has been a shitshow without fail.
- mmis1000 1y agoThis is honestly not my experience though. I'd like to know what vendor and model are you using (and get so much problems). Also I don't have experience about heat management issue either. On the other hand, the intel mac I used before is just underpowered and have giant issues about heat management. Every single mac-pro in my office apartmentmet have an early battery fail at really low cycle count. (And it's also just underpowered thus make working painful)
- MBCook 1y agoI'd love to see a market share chart going back far far more. At least to the middle of the 90s or so. I'm very impressed though. I had no idea there were near 1/3 of the desktop market. Good for them.
- flomo 1y agoI know when AMD had the K8/Opteron, they were obviously doing really well, but their marketshare didn't really change because they were capacity-limited.
- hengheng 1y agoHow's AMD's engineering support these days? I've heard through the grapevine that many laptops were mostly engineered by intel engineers, creating a natural moat because the laptop brands are used to not having to do much PCB layout or thermals. AMD, I heard, seemed less capable, or less interested, or couldn't justify at their quantities, to do the same, which meant their engineering support packages were good for atx mainboards only, and maybe the occasional console. This must have changed a while ago, does anyone have the tea?
- embedding-shape 1y ago> and maybe the occasional console. To me they seem to be dominating the console scene, doing the CPU and GPU for all consoles from the last two generations, except for Switch and Wii U.
- mpyne 1y agoAnd even there, AMD did the GPU for the Wii U, that console was an evolution of the Wii (which was itself an evolution to the Gamecube). AMD had acquired the makers of the Wii/Gamecube graphics chip, and also separately designed the Wii U-specific upgrade GPU used for native Wii U games.
- seabrookmx 1y agoRest in Peace ATI.
- refulgentis 1y agoThat’s more done by ex. Compal than shrinking Intel, the myth you could trust that was shattered by their insistence up until 4 months before release date that Haswell(?) was going to hit its thermal envelope and perf targets. In 2018, iirc, that was the beginning of the end. Apple had to ship a MacBook generation that struggled with thermals for 3 years and decided to never again be put in that position. Similarly at other important OEMs.
- tw04 1y ago
- TinkersW 1y agoNova lake looks potentially pretty good, AVX512/APX and very very high core count, so maybe we will see AMD have some competition next year.
- varispeed 1y agoI had to buy two laptops recently, so I got Intel's 9 ultra 285k and Ryzen AI 9. The latter on paper should be slower, but it's a night and day difference. Intel's laptop sounds like a hairdryer when opening a browser tab. Ryzen's fans are far gentler on the ears and trigger less often. Still both laptops are league below even my old M1.
- betaby 1y agoAre any of those laptops Linux compatible?
- teaearlgraycold 1y agoM1 is
- esseph 1y agoIf you want Linux compatible, buy a Lenovo ThinkPad
- 64718283661 1y agoIntel has better and more developed virtualization, security features, and other hardware features. AMD seems to make what feels like an MVP that can do the core functionality, but lacks the extra 20% that makes the better product.
- ACCount37 1y agoAnd when has anyone ever needed those features? I'm serious. Doesn't seem like those are useful at anything short of high end server market. And even there the benefits are questionable.
- esseph 1y agoThis is actually not true. https://onidel.com/amd-sev-snp-vs-intel-tdx-vps/ https://onidel.com/amd-sev-snp-vs-intel-tdx-vps/
- bee_rider 1y agoI imagine it would be kind of hard to switch away from Intel in the workstation/cluster space. Like you have to replace OneAPI, which sounds easy because it’s just one thing, but like do you really want to replace BLAS, LAPACK, MPI, ifort/icc… and then you still need to find a sparse matrix solver…
- squidgyhead 1y agoThat is really more of a switch from CUDA to HIP; for most HPC applications, cpu speed isn't the question any more.
- MITSardine 1y agoWhat do you mean by this? I've been using those libraries on mac ARM and AMD processors, are you referring to intel-specific implementations? How about the sparse matrix solver, what do you use?
- stevefan1999 1y agoHere's one nice thing about AMD is that there is znver4 and znver5 support baked in from CachyOS, so any Zen 4 laptop (7000, 8000 series) and Zen 5 (Strix Halo AI Max) would get good performance early on. I got a 8745HS laptop for just $400 and I swapped the 1T and 32GB RAM for 2x2T and 64GB RAM, and switched to CachyOS. Except for a weird keyboard issue when resuming from sleep, and some Arch kernel shenanigans, I got no problem so far.
- ksec 1y agoThis is not the first time I criticise AMD haven't been doing enough to steal market share. If Intel is doing so bad right now and has been so for 5 years, and AMD could only take 20 - 30% market share. AMD really needs to think about their execution..