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Are OEMs avoiding the FX series?

A

Aaron11

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
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I just went to Costco yesterday and I noticed that if the PCs there had an AMD CPU, they did not have any FX processors in them. I'm talking about desktops specifically. The ones that had AMD CPUs had the A-series APUs. Is anyone else noticing this trend? It seems that the APUs make more sense for the OEMs, considering they give the everyday pc decent graphics-something your everyday computer lacks.
 
Probably. Better performance per watt with Intel. Bulldozer would find it's place in high end / gaming / boutique systems unfortunately Intel has them beat there too. There's a few BD based Boutique machines but not very many.
 
The answer lies where are the most profits, selling a brand machine without a videocard and an APU or selling one with videocard.

And maybe the deal on the APU might be way better then what they are offering on their desktop Bulldozer....
 
The problem is, the Industry knows the FX was a failure. It was slower then the Phenom II's and 6cores, Used more power and heat.

AMD took a step backwards. I too waited for bulldozer....and As you see in my Sig, I went intel because of price/performance.

I think most major OEM's know this. A system that runs cooler over a longer period of time will last longer then one that uses more power and produces more heat.

It really is too bad AMD failed on Bulldozer. But those Liano CPU's are pretty damn good for the price if you ask me.

Liano > Bulldozer.
 
Probably more to do with cheap AMD CPUs just not being as available anymore in OEM type quantities like Pentiums/ i3's are.
 
Intel with its i5 2500 is leading performance / watt and performance / dollar against the FX so I doubt many OEMs will be pushing it. Also OEMs generally design their systems to prevent overclocking.
 
DASHlT said:
The problem is, the Industry knows the FX was a failure. It was slower then the Phenom II's and 6cores, Used more power and heat.

AMD took a step backwards. I too waited for bulldozer....and As you see in my Sig, I went intel because of price/performance.

I think most major OEM's know this. A system that runs cooler over a longer period of time will last longer then one that uses more power and produces more heat.

It really is too bad AMD failed on Bulldozer. But those Liano CPU's are pretty damn good for the price if you ask me.

Liano > Bulldozer.
Click to expand...

Thats really a load of crap. Bulldozer only consumes a ton of watts overclocked. At stock settings its an improvement. My FX4100 had the lowest idle watts ive seen from my own systems (again at stock settings)

If i was an OEM ,i would be all over the APU's. They are cheaper and offer the best overall computing experience with powerful onboard graphics. While the intel system will crunch spreadsheets better sure, but when it comes to multimedia and entertainment i dont think you can beat the AMD APU value. Ive said it many times, but i think people put way to much weight into the CPU, when its the hard drive and GPU that makes a system feel fast.
 
buttons said:
Thats really a load of crap. Bulldozer only consumes a ton of watts overclocked. At stock settings its an improvement. My FX4100 had the lowest idle watts ive seen from my own systems (again at stock settings)

If i was an OEM ,i would be all over the APU's. They are cheaper and offer the best overall computing experience with powerful onboard graphics. While the intel system will crunch spreadsheets better sure, but when it comes to multimedia and entertainment i dont think you can beat the AMD APU value. Ive said it many times, but i think people put way to much weight into the CPU, when its the hard drive and GPU that makes a system feel fast.
Click to expand...

The BDs are on 32nm and should therefore see a decrease in power consumption but the only decrease that was impressive was idle power consumption due to AMD's very very good gating tech. They're also bigger than SB and don't offer the same performance nor any on-die graphics. But that's what makes the Llano so damn good. Unlike BDs the Llano doesn't lose everywhere against an Intel setup (even in cost) and has amazing graphics for an APU without the need for a discrete GPU.

The reason OEMs don't use BD chips is because AMD has better chips that OEMs wanted. Despite yield issues they still managed to sell that many.
 
buttons said:
Thats really a load of crap. Bulldozer only consumes a ton of watts overclocked. At stock settings its an improvement. My FX4100 had the lowest idle watts ive seen from my own systems (again at stock settings)

If i was an OEM ,i would be all over the APU's. They are cheaper and offer the best overall computing experience with powerful onboard graphics. While the intel system will crunch spreadsheets better sure, but when it comes to multimedia and entertainment i dont think you can beat the AMD APU value. Ive said it many times, but i think people put way to much weight into the CPU, when its the hard drive and GPU that makes a system feel fast.
Click to expand...

For making an OEM system, its way better to have a 95 watt CPU then a 125 watt CPU.

Less power = less powered PSU = Less cooling to spend on the case = money saved.

Bulldozer was hot and used to much power compared to Phenom II's AND was slower in performance compared to the Phenoms on 45nm. When you go from 45nm to 32nm. You arent suppose to backwards in performace and watt/heat....
 
buttons said:
Ive said it many times, but i think people put way to much weight into the CPU, when its the hard drive and GPU that makes a system feel fast.
Click to expand...

I agree, in a lot of situations the actual perceptible difference between a modern $100 CPU and a $300 CPU are hard to notice. Benchmark bar charts are pointless to actual real life user experience in many cases.

I would rather spend the money on the SSD/GPU combo rather than the old CPU/RAM combo.
 
The APUs are a tremendous value. Almost every lower-end machine I've built for people recently has been based on an APU. From a price/performance standpoint, the APUs are excellent. At the same time, the couple gaming rigs I've built recently were based on i5-2500Ks, which in their own way offer exceptional value.

Is it possible that the new module-based design of Bulldozer can be turned into something better in the future, or is this AMD's version of the netburst experiment? I'm still waiting to see how Windows 8 will fare on Piledriver before making a final judgement, since last I knew Windows 8 would support the proper scheduling for AMD's new architecture and rumor has it that Piledriver won't suck...
 
has nothing to do with the FX chips, has to do with what makes more sense in that market, most OEM machines are not enthusiast / high end machines and an APU makes more sense, when AMD releases trinity, that will go into OEMS as well, and that is BD/PD based.
 
MrCaffeineX said:
The APUs are a tremendous value. Almost every lower-end machine I've built for people recently has been based on an APU. From a price/performance standpoint, the APUs are excellent. At the same time, the couple gaming rigs I've built recently were based on i5-2500Ks, which in their own way offer exceptional value.

Is it possible that the new module-based design of Bulldozer can be turned into something better in the future, or is this AMD's version of the netburst experiment? I'm still waiting to see how Windows 8 will fare on Piledriver before making a final judgement, since last I knew Windows 8 would support the proper scheduling for AMD's new architecture and rumor has it that Piledriver won't suck...
Click to expand...

You'd be willing to put up with a shitty Metro and pay more money for Windows 8 to see your CPU perform 1-10% better?

If AMD gave a shit they'd have been working with MS years ago to announce a proper scheduler update for all modern versions of windows upon the chips' release. Instead, a half-assed scheduler update was released too early, yanked off the site and shelved for month before the actual 2-part scheduler fix was released. If that wasn't enough, it's apparently not the scheduler you want if you're using a new BD-based AMD chip because that'll be featured in win8. Waiting for an OS to salvage whatever they can from your architecture a full year after it's come out and forcing customers to upgrade to a shitty operating system isn't the way to go about it. No, windows 8 won't do anything drastic at all with regards to performance. The most you'll get are single percentage gains at the cost of over a hundred bucks (that you could have put to hardware) and a god awful operating system :p

I don't think the BD architecture has much of a future and certainly not in the enthusiast segment. AMD has all but abandoned that end outside of their GPUs. They have a 30-50% gap in single-threaded performance to make up for and that won't happen with an architecture tweak and it certainly won't happen with Piledriver. If you're looking for an AMD chip you may want to consider a Trinity laptop
 
APUs make more sense for the average home PC user, and are cheaper to build than an FX-based system. I would guess that is why you don't see Bulldozer systems at Costco.

Also, it's not like Costco is a big enthusiast store. They aren't going to stock anything crazy.
 
DASHlT said:
For making an OEM system, its way better to have a 95 watt CPU then a 125 watt CPU.

Less power = less powered PSU = Less cooling to spend on the case = money saved.

Bulldozer was hot and used to much power compared to Phenom II's AND was slower in performance compared to the Phenoms on 45nm. When you go from 45nm to 32nm. You arent suppose to backwards in performace and watt/heat....
Click to expand...

Actually, from an OEM standpoint, performance and power consumption take a back seat to price.

Remember all of the Phenom II and Athlon II OEM systems that were (and still are) sold? Higher power consumption and lower performance than what was available from Intel, but because AMD was selling them to OEMs so cheap, the snapped them up in a frenzy.
 
Aaron11 said:
I just went to Costco yesterday and I noticed that if the PCs there had an AMD CPU, they did not have any FX processors in them. I'm talking about desktops specifically. The ones that had AMD CPUs had the A-series APUs. Is anyone else noticing this trend? It seems that the APUs make more sense for the OEMs, considering they give the everyday pc decent graphics-something your everyday computer lacks.
Click to expand...

yeah most have shifted the llano chips just due to build costs. there is better profit margin for the oem's with llano and it will be the same thing with trinity. with llano you can use a 250-300w generic PSU, no video card, bare minimum motherboard so they just sell it at the price of a standard build they would done with a normal processor. more money in their pockets makes oem's happy.

as far as bulldozer goes it really has nothing to do with the performance, there just isn't any profit in the high end market for oem's.

JMccovery said:
Actually, from an OEM standpoint, performance and power consumption take a back seat to price.

Remember all of the Phenom II and Athlon II OEM systems that were (and still are) sold? Higher power consumption and lower performance than what was available from Intel, but because AMD was selling them to OEMs so cheap, the snapped them up in a frenzy.
Click to expand...

true, but his statement was still correct, oems only use 95w or less processors due to the fact that the motherboards and overall system costs are cheaper to make. sure you could get custom oem systems with 125w chips but those are the minority of all oem systems sold. oem's could give a rats ass about performance though, all they care about is profit and sales.
 
Yep, it seems AMD's APUs are the way to go for OEMs because they lower cost build a PC. Not necessarily a bad thing. I think most average people don't really care too much about AMD or Intel as long as the PC is inexpensive and fulfills their needs.

AMD should just abandon consumer CPUs after PileDriver is phased out and focus on APUs. Similar to what Intel has done. That's basically what Intel has done.
 
JaguarSKX said:
Yep, it seems AMD's APUs are the way to go for OEMs because they lower cost build a PC. Not necessarily a bad thing. I think most average people don't really care too much about AMD or Intel as long as the PC is inexpensive and fulfills their needs.

AMD should just abandon consumer CPUs after PileDriver is phased out and focus on APUs. Similar to what Intel has done. That's basically what Intel has done.
Click to expand...
This strategy would not be very clever, they would loose quite good income if they would stop making the standard IGP-less processors. We still see it as these companies live from flagship and high end enthusiasts products, so if they are not competing well they should give up, but that's not true and what we buy, is bought by around 2% of customer base, and that's not about it.
 
AMD has no successor planned to AM3+ and AFAIK FM2 will be the only surviving socket into 2013. Originally they planned on Vishera/Piledriver being the last chip without graphics, meaning everything after Vishera on AM3+ (2H this year) will be an APU. It makes sense when take into account HSA/Fusion. Outside of server (though coprocessor integration is slowly creeping in there as well) it makes little sense to continue with a CPU-only die.
 
pelo said:
AMD has no successor planned to AM3+ and AFAIK FM2 will be the only surviving socket into 2013. Originally they planned on Vishera/Piledriver being the last chip without graphics, meaning everything after Vishera on AM3+ (2H this year) will be an APU. It makes sense when take into account HSA/Fusion. Outside of server (though coprocessor integration is slowly creeping in there as well) it makes little sense to continue with a CPU-only die.
Click to expand...

If you are saying that "steamroller" will not be available in any other form then APU I think you are wrong ....
 
APU isn't my cup of tea sorry. I'm sure FM2 will continue along and AMD will clearly introduce non APU processors for that socket.

But right now I'm using AM3+ so all I care about is actually AMD sorting out their issues and offeirng some decent processors, at a fair price, with good performance and improved thermals

The notion of APU only processors isn't one that suits everyone.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
If you are saying that "steamroller" will not be available in any other form then APU I think you are wrong ....
Click to expand...

At the moment there are no set plans for an AM3+ successor. While AMD posted slides that included a steamroller APU they avoided posting any desktop parts. It wouldn't surprise me to see an all-APU lineup after Vishera. Unless things change that's likely what will happen.

http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-2012analystday has all of the powerpoint presentations that were included in the recent financial analyst day. Have a look yourselves.
 
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FM2 will always have APU parts based on AMD's plans. The goal with the APUs is essentially use graphics processing units to handle operations that GPUs excel at, while seamlessly allowing the CPU to excel at its particular operations. If I recall correctly, this means the CPU will handle integer operations, while the GPU will handle FPU operations. In other words, they want the CPU/GPU unit to appear as one processing unit to the developer, and with the proper flags, it will automatically distribute the proper loads for maximum performance. AMD has this planned to happen in 2014. Right now, they are still two separate units.
 
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