AMD Goings On...

Nside said:
- Then how they handled 400 series AM4 backwards compatibility for upcoming Zen3 CPUs. While nobody in the press said it, AMD's plan all along was likely to support it on B450/X470 boards, but they needed a way to weasel out of support on older boards, and to justify the necessary BIOS update being an exercise in hoop-jumping. Yes, it would be that way no matter what, but AMD made the promise at the beginning of AM4 of socket support through 2020, and needed a way to get out of it without looking like the bad guy. So take support for 300 and 400 series away, but then give 400 series back... "Oh look, they did what they could!"
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it's a little more complicated then AMD just wanting to drop support for 300 and 400 series.. GN did a pretty good video/article about it and it all originated from choices that were made during zen 1 where zen 1 required a 16MB bios rom so to continue support of zen 1 to 400 series boards board partners had a choice of using a 16MB rom or partitioning a 32MB rom to 2x16MB partitions(sadly most of the board partners went full cost savings mode on b450 and went with the 16MB option). this in turn led to a new issue which is why x570 dropped support for zen 1 in the first place due to the 32MB rom requirement to make sure there was enough space to support zen 3 in the future. thus began the domino effect that further leads into more problems for the 400 series, how do you decide what chips to drop support for? officially they're required to support zen 1, zen+, and zen 2. so the option was drop support outright or make it a confusing mess for consumers? dropping support on paper was the right choice because as we all know consumers can't be trusted to actually do any research into what they're buying and companies can't be trusted to give correct information up front for those consumers. i mean we all saw it with 400 series and supporting zen 2, it was a mess on day 1 and it's still a mess now. luckily though with consumer pressure a proper solution was found that would benefit everyone while also hopefully not cause the mess they were trying to avoid. although i fully expect to see reddit and even these forums getting lit up with stupid threads about people getting zen 3 bios from 3rd party sources and their zen 1 or zen+ cpu's not working anymore but we'll see.


Aegir said:
Lisa Su is an engineer, and currently represents the entire modern success of AMD.
If Lisa Su is replaced, the entire face of the company changes. I'm sure we will see AMD differently if someone wicked rises to power.

Lisa has earned her place.
All of the best engineers and scientists at AMD earned their positions. Investors need to know their place.

Engineers and scientists come before shareholders on the ladder of corporate authority.

Engineers, programmers, and scientists are the only ones that *really* make the company, no matter how you want to spin it.
And people WILL spin it. It might even be you who tries to "correct" the statement: "Engineers come before shareholders." Don't even try.
Their power is great, but it lies with money alone. We need intelligence to advance.

So remember who's in charge here: Lisu Su and her team of engineers, marketers, programmers, scientists, and the other vital parts of AMD. The glorious Radeon team can't be forgotten. Look what they're about to do to Nvidia. Even if they don't "beat" the top dog of the 3000 series, they're still making incredibly impressive strides. The only reason they can't beat Nvidia so easily is because Nvidia respects its scientists and engineers too.

The moment a powerful CEO or leader within the company is replaced with some sort of "yes man" corporate slave, instead of a proper engineer, that's when the company begins to falter. Stick with engineers who have passion, intelligence, creativity, and every other decent human trait, including benevolence, at least to the degree that they don't maliciously manipulate everything.

Of course profits are important, but being the builder of the pinnacle of human computer technology is surely worth more than mere profits.
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stock holders don't give 2 shits about that, they just want who ever will make them the most money and that's just the sad reality of being a publicly traded company.
 
Aegir said:
Lisa Su is an engineer, and currently represents the entire modern success of AMD.
If Lisa Su is replaced, the entire face of the company changes. I'm sure we will see AMD differently if someone wicked rises to power.

Lisa has earned her place.
All of the best engineers and scientists at AMD earned their positions. Investors need to know their place.

Engineers and scientists come before shareholders on the ladder of corporate authority.

Engineers, programmers, and scientists are the only ones that *really* make the company, no matter how you want to spin it.
And people WILL spin it. It might even be you who tries to "correct" the statement: "Engineers come before shareholders." Don't even try.
Their power is great, but it lies with money alone. We need intelligence to advance.

So remember who's in charge here: Lisu Su and her team of engineers, marketers, programmers, scientists, and the other vital parts of AMD. The glorious Radeon team can't be forgotten. Look what they're about to do to Nvidia. Even if they don't "beat" the top dog of the 3000 series, they're still making incredibly impressive strides. The only reason they can't beat Nvidia so easily is because Nvidia respects its scientists and engineers too.

The moment a powerful CEO or leader within the company is replaced with some sort of "yes man" corporate slave, instead of a proper engineer, that's when the company begins to falter. Stick with engineers who have passion, intelligence, creativity, and every other decent human trait, including benevolence, at least to the degree that they don't maliciously manipulate everything.

Of course profits are important, but being the builder of the pinnacle of human computer technology is surely worth more than mere profits.
Click to expand...
While true look what happened to Intel once management and the bean counters started ignoring the engineers. When you have a successful product and profits. The investors demand more profits then the year before. It can happen to AMD also.
 
travm said:
Im afraid I disagree.
No fanboy here. I wouldn't hesitate to buy Intel if I thought the value was there and it met my needs. In the past ten years price has been the biggest issue for me. Along with how I approach upgrades has made AMD CPUs my best option by far. In fact now that they are more competitive it's harder to choose, and I tend to fall back on platform longevity. The ability to buy last year's chips and put them in five years ago motherboard and drive on is huge for me.

But none of this is relevant to the fact Intel is about as shady as you can get.
Trying to make that seem less bad by calling all companies just as bad with 0 evidence, might make you a shill. Or a motivated employee. Either way it's weak.
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You are really going to try with the backward "compatibility" BS? Did you forget that AMD literally just this year said that they WEREN'T going support Zen 3 on 400 series boards? It was only after public outcry and rage that they partially caved and said "certain 400 series" board will support them if the manufacturers want to make them compatible. And apparently you have no concept of time either since the AM4 platform is from 2017 and simple math puts that 3 years ago. How do you get "5 years" from that? They already said this is it. Current 300 series boards (X370 and B350) are NOT going to support Zen 3 and only select 400 series boards will at the discretion of the OEMs. Where the hell do you get 5 years from? At best you're looking at a window of 3 years. Which is actually not that far off from Intel which is typically 2 years of platform compatibility.

Speaking of Anti-Trust it's convenient that you are "forgetting" that AMD owes literally everyone who purchased one of their "8 core" Bulldozer based CPUs money. Did you just block that recent fiasco from your one way memory? Of course you did, because you only see things the way you want to see them. AMD isn't the champion you think they are. Or lets talk about how AMD rebranded a RX 570 into a RX 580 so they could sell it for more money? RX580 Core 2048 is a thing and it's literally identical to a RX 570. Why didn't they just leave it as a 570? Oh that's right it was to make more money. There are many more examples of AMD trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.

Intel is no better, they've had their fair share of nonsense I don't root for them either. I trust no company who's only motivation is money. Calling me a "shill" or even more hilariously "a motivated employee" is perhaps the single most ignorant thing you've said here.
 
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CraptacularOne said:
You are really going to try with the backward "compatibility" BS? Did you forget that AMD literally just this year said that they WEREN'T going support Zen 3 on 400 series boards? It was only after public outcry and rage that they partially caved and said "certain 400 series" board will support them if the manufacturers want to make them compatible. And apparently you have no concept of time either since the AM4 platform is from 2017 and simple math puts that 3 years ago. How do you get "5 years" from that? They already said this is it. Current 300 series boards (X370 and B350) are NOT going to support Zen 3 and only select 400 series boards will at the discretion of the OEMs. Where the hell do you get 5 years from? At best you're looking at a window of 3 years. Which is actually not that far off from Intel which is typically 2 years of platform compatibility.

Speaking of Anti-Trust it's convenient that you are "forgetting" that AMD owes literally everyone who purchased one of their "8 core" Bulldozer based CPUs money. Did you just block that recent fiasco from your one way memory? Of course you did, because you only see things the way you want to see them. AMD isn't the champion you think they are. Or lets talk about how AMD rebranded a RX 570 into a RX 580 so they could sell it for more money? RX580 Core 2048 is a thing and it's literally identical to a RX 570. Why didn't they just leave it as a 570? Oh that's right it was to make more money. There are many more examples of AMD trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.

Intel is no better, they've had their fair share of nonsense I don't root for them either. I trust no company who's only motivation is money. Calling me a "shill" or even more hilariously "a motivated employee" is perhaps the single most ignorant thing you've said here.
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The factual incorrectness of almost all of this is staggering.
 
Hearing the way some people talk here, I wonder why you're even on Hard forum. Don't you like hardware? Who do you think makes it?

I'm currently using a great Intel System, with an Nvidia card, and I also own plenty of AMD CPUs and video cards too.

I just LOVE technology and the companies that make it! I can't believe everyone here is acting so hostile towards the producers of our favorite technological equipment. This focus on "they make money so they must be evil" is absurd, at least to the extent I see it talked about.

Profit isn't even the most evil thing I can imagine.

It's things like backdoors, closed source code, products that are deliberately limited in stupid ways, and other twisted schemes to make money that will drive me away from a company. Otherwise, most companies actually do sell hardware at the price I want it, even if it's lower binned. Or I can just buy the good stuff from two generations ago, and get it cheap.

I'm not about to complain about money though, when I have so many options. That's the least evil aspect of a corporation.
Things can be so much darker, and it's when they venture into seriously malicious activities that we must bring forth the hammer of justice.
 
I liken this behavior to monkeys at the zoo having a good old fashioned dung fight. Whoever flings the most crap wins lol.
 
travm said:
The factual incorrectness of almost all of this is staggering.
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Oh it is? Or are you just wearing your blinder too tight you can't see anything?

FX processor class action suit
https://www.amdcpusettlement.com/

RX 570 rebranded as RX 580
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-rx-580-2048sp,37933.html

Or how about them changing the spec of the RX 560 and not telling anyone?
https://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/3163-rx-560-controversy-4gb-means-4gb

People like you are who these companies really like though so keep it up. You people conveniently forget all their transgressions while chastising their competition for almost anything. AMD is no saint, they aren't "for the people" they are "FOR PROFIT".

Like I said though Intel is no better they've done their fair share of BSm same with Nvidia. None of them are saints, all that matters to them is the bottom dollar.

Aegir, yes I do enjoy hardware very much. I would wager I have more hardware than most of the people here. I love tinkering with it, learning about it and using it. I however don't enjoy any of their practices and will never champion one over the other.
 
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sirmonkey1985 said:
it's a little more complicated then AMD just wanting to drop support for 300 and 400 series.. GN did a pretty good video/article about it and it all originated from choices that were made during zen 1 where zen 1 required a 16MB bios rom so to continue support of zen 1 to 400 series boards board partners had a choice of using a 16MB rom or partitioning a 32MB rom to 2x16MB partitions(sadly most of the board partners went full cost savings mode on b450 and went with the 16MB option). this in turn led to a new issue which is why x570 dropped support for zen 1 in the first place due to the 32MB rom requirement to make sure there was enough space to support zen 3 in the future. thus began the domino effect that further leads into more problems for the 400 series, how do you decide what chips to drop support for? officially they're required to support zen 1, zen+, and zen 2. so the option was drop support outright or make it a confusing mess for consumers? dropping support on paper was the right choice because as we all know consumers can't be trusted to actually do any research into what they're buying and companies can't be trusted to give correct information up front for those consumers. i mean we all saw it with 400 series and supporting zen 2, it was a mess on day 1 and it's still a mess now. luckily though with consumer pressure a proper solution was found that would benefit everyone while also hopefully not cause the mess they were trying to avoid. although i fully expect to see reddit and even these forums getting lit up with stupid threads about people getting zen 3 bios from 3rd party sources and their zen 1 or zen+ cpu's not working anymore but we'll see.
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I'm not sure if I wasn't clear, or if you just wanted a reason to dump difficult to read a wall of text. They knew the BIOS chip capacity, they knew the CPU roadmap through 2020. They made the promise anyway. They didn't HAVE to make that promise, yet they did. Was it shortsighted, or just careless? Doesn't matter.

And you forgot the asterisk after "...luckily though with consumer pressure a proper solution was found that would benefit everyone..." ...

* "Everyone" excludes owners of B350, X370, and 400 series boards the manufacturers won't build a separate BIOS for, It also excludes motherboard manufacturers that don't really want to figure out how to bifurcate their BIOS revisions.

Again, my point is that I think they planned to make 400 somewhat-compatible from the start, but needed a way to let themselves and MoBo makers off the hook. Take it all away, and then give a little back... everyone forgets about the 300 series.

I don't care personally, I don't have a single 300 series board, nor do I plan on putting 4000 series CPUs on a B450... My point is that they backtracked on a specific claim they officially made. THEN tried to cover it up later by changing "through 2020" to "to 2020" ... like nobody would catch it.

I like AMD, but I'm not going to praise them for any of that. And if you don't see all of that as a shady situation, well... Apple would be glad to have another customer, they do stuff like that all the time.
 
Are we actually comparing business decisions to actually breaking the law as if it's the same thing?

The Israeli security report bull shit and the kickbacks to customers to keep AMD or off their prebuilt systems are shady. Releasing incremental improvements and giving those products new numbers is on a completely different planet in the shady universe.
 
jlbenedict said:
They are trending in that direction (IMHO) with these "XT" releases..
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Please explain this opinion. The XT perform better and slide in at the exact same price point as their non XT counterparts launched at.

While I fully expect for AMD to charge a premium for a superior product, im perplexed by how you think the XT series is trending in that direction. Did you expect them to release the better product at a discount??
 
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