I know all 8 cores can be utilized as I use software that does so, moreso there are plenty of benchmarks that show me the 8 cores are only hobbled on windows, whack linux on there and it performs like a 900 dollar intel cpu :D
with amd you can get a entry-level gaming pc with the a10-7850k at 400€, you can't beat that price/performance ratio with an intel rig, in any means... and if hsa becomes twidely used...
hsa is still nothing more than a promise at the moment on windows with very little actual 'real world' software to back it up.
which is sad as apple seem to be moving full steam ahead with hsa support baked into their os :(
not liking this in the slightest
If apple goes that way, windows eventually will have to, it's easy for apple to go taht way since hsa its supported on Linux since spring, would love to see real users trying it but for now it's only a promise as you say, even though, I'd love taht promise to come alive.
I am betting hsa aware software would make xeon phi cards redundant for most of the workloads that xeon phi cards are aimed at... and look at how much those buggers cost.
apple are riding the linux wave, a lot of people put a lot of love and unpaid work into linux... apple comes along, slaps a fancy gui on top and voila!
"Look at us, aren't we amazing."
apple saw a good thing, wrote an emulator for its old power pc stuff and then made the switch.
One day ms might come to their senses and do the same :D
The amount of debt amd have do severely limit the amount of companies that would be willing to absorb that debt to take them on.
Sigh
on a completely seperate note...
I have an all amd system (cpu+gpus) and I am having surprising luck playing 'next gen' titles at a playable 60fps / 1080p which a lot of intel / nvidia people aren't... at least not without waiting for big game patches / driver updates.
The Evil Within (had to tinker with it.. remove sodding black bars and 30fps cap, 180p.. drops to 50 - 60 fps, but still buttery smooth)
Dead Rising 3 (again, had to set the ini but other than that 50 - 60 fps at 1080p, buttery smooth)
I do think we are seeing evidence that console ports will slightly favour amd right out of the starting gate (not TWIMTBP nvidia titles of course).
-edit
Not sugar coating it... these games are still piss poor optimized, but from what I can tell they run better on amd gpu's out of the starting blocks.
Well there was a time when people said Fairchild semiconductor could not ever crash. For those of you that don't know Fairchild was the tech business most responsible for rise of tech industry in silicon valley. They where the Intel of the 60's early 70's. There circuits and computer systems where used in everything. Even the Apollo space craft computer. They where giants. But there lack of vision and inability to push micro architecture forward did them in.
Many employees left Fairchild for these reasons and went on to spawn other company's like AMD and Intel. When Intel came up with the first marketable microprocessor it took off like wild fire. Fairchild tried to play catch up with Intel but in the end there shortsightedness and lack of investment in the new technology was there undoing.
AMD has there issues and problems. But at least there trying to innovate and push things forward. As long as they do that I think they will be fine. But always be second to Intel.
AMD will never go under/
Agreed; good post.
On a related note, I think it is interesting that so many "gamers" and enthusiasts recommend Nvidia, hands-down, and almost always it relates to their (superior) drivers. I, purposely, one a GPU from each vendor, and while I notice that Nvidia seems to put out more drivers on a regular basis, I don't notice anything necessarily better.
Apparently, though, screen flickering while skyping is an almost common occurrence, and SLI still has some weird kinks to work out. (That's a bit of a cheap shot, though, especially since Crossfire isn't exactly something saintly to deal with.)
AMD overall as a company is doing quite well. The problem is that right now they're trying to diversify and as well as spending a lot of their money on R&D. Yes, Intel is doing much better, but you have to look at this...Intel has government backing meaning, government PC's being Intel based chips, deals with Dell, HP, etc. which end up using Intel chips. AMD is more for the consumer than Intel. Their price to performance ration is still quite competitive. In the general market, they do quite well. They may not sell as much but overall they have the current consoles, budget PC's, budget laptops, Apple utilizing Radeon GPU's, bitcoin miners, etc. you get the point.
Now with that said, if AMD ever went under, i would definitely guess a bigger company to bail them out and buy them right out. I could see Google, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Apple, or companies of that stature.
I could definitely see Google being enticed to purchase AMD mainly because of their route, AMD has done lots of research on ARM and x64, they are major innovators in the market and so they do have a lot to offer. Google may end up manufacturing their own cell phones, tablets, and PC's and it can definitely bring the chromium project to a new level.
With Samsung, i would believe because they're starting to go a different route with the market. Tizen may become something with the initiative of having AMD. AMD GPU's a very powerful and are still competitive unlike their CPU market. Now with CPU's...i can see Samsung placing their tech to AMD and furthering the evolution of CPU's and Samsung + AMD would be a mean team.
Even Apple purchasing AMD sounds quite possible mainly because Radeon already being in the market. As well as Apple having full production autonomy with their product. Meaning they would be producing everything in their products. That may make Apple actually evolve and possibly lower their prices on their products. In overall i believe that Mac is superior to Windows, with Linux in its core, but the issue is support. Windows is supported by the masses MUCH more than Mac. Windows is quite broken and i believe that Windows 10 probably won't change anything. Windows 8 under the shell did a massive overhaul and from what i see with the preview, windows 10 is exactly the same as 8. Windows 10 is just a slight visual change and the fix of the start button. So Apple could play a big part in the market if they bought AMD.
I may be wrong, but anything is possible. As far as i am certain is that if AMD goes down, they won't disappear, someone will rescue them. Competition is necessary and the tech world understands that.
I doubt very seriously that Apple prices would drop if they bought AMD. They'd probably raise them even more and say some stupid reason like "Our chips are 100x more advanced than anyone else's" or somrthing. It would be interesting if Google bought them though, we might see FX based data centers lol. They really should make dual socket 8350 boards those would be AMAZING to have for servers.
What is it, 1.5Bn for AMD(what it is worth in excess of the debt), all of its people, their skills, technical experience and IP including a full X86 license, I think that would be worth alot to some companies. That
Amd should partner up and create thin client solutions, from monitors with propriety arm processors, to back-end server solutions. Make a whole ecosystem, that is going to be a massive business. The software is going to be super lucrative too (like microsoft or apple big), but even if they just did the hardware side it would still be very lucrative.
Just think about how many computers large organizations, schools and whatnot have, those would be much more economical as simple thinclients hosted on a smart monitor, especially when it comes to hardware intensive activites as they can be spread out more efficiently.
Also it doesn't necessarily mater if AMD can't match intel on raw power, as long as the tasks are massively parralelizable and they can compete on price to performance and energy consumption.