Did AMD "kill" their enthusiast crowd...???

M

mzs_biteme

[H]ard|Gawd
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All PC related forums were buzzing with excitement for months before Bulldozer's release. Lot's of speculations, predictions, hopes, trolling, etc... Fun times...;)

Then, the big unveil, which we all know didn't turn out too well.....:eek: That was followed by very little (more like none) info from AMD. Then news of layoffs (mostly PR and Marketing folks) and the premise of three months of silence, until AMD is "ready" to talk about it's "WIN" strategy.... Doesn't this all sound depressing, and almost arrogant of AMD to basically lock out the enthusiast communities that have supported them over the years...??? Do they (AMD) really wanna give these people more reasons to go to Intel? Or am I way off on this one?
 
I think most "enthusiasts" have made the switch back to Intel, since C2D anyway. I am sure there were many on the sidelines wanting a BD rig, but that was ruined on the release day.
 
The only thing that was really depressing to me was the reaction of the "enthusiast" crowd to the bulldozer launch.

Seems like you see this more and more in this kind of community with other hardware and game launches. The insane amount of hyperbole and immaturity really turned me off of wanting to have anything to do with the "enthusiast" community anymore.

What happened to people evaluating a product by their own standards and then buying what they wanted? Why does everything have to be either the best product ever conceived or the absolute worst most steaming pile of shit and the ceos should die and the company closed, etc?

I'd feel pretty bad if I was a Bulldozer engineer and had just spent the last 5+ years of life working on the project and then had to read the insane shit a lot of people are spewing out about it. Hardware is still exciting and fun, I'm not sure why everyone needs to bandwagon every little thing and beat it to the point of life and death.
 
Well the BD launch was fail. Barely faster then the Phenom II x6 in some areas, slower in others, and ties with it many. That is why everyone was so bummed. Most people on this board I bet didn't think it would pass SB, but at least match the previous Nehalem arc. Not step back in someways behind Phenom II...
 
Not sure if serious.

Abit667 said:
What happened to people evaluating a product by their own standards and then buying what they wanted? Why does everything have to be either the best product ever conceived or the absolute worst most steaming pile of shit and the ceos should die and the company closed, etc?
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Everybody can't make up their own standards. The only meaningful standard is direct comparison to competing products. Everything doesn't have to be the absolute best or worst, I'm not sure where you get this idea.

However if you look at the facts, BD really isn't a great by any measure. Doesn't come close to Sandy Bridge Overall Performance wise. It's power consumption is much higher than Phenom II. It's single threaded performance is lower than Phenom II's. It's multi threaded performance is marginally better than Phenom II. Overall I'd say it's a step backwards compared to Phenom II.

Imagine if the 486 had been faster than the Pentium clock for clock, and then Pentium also used more power. Would you call the Pentium a success?



Abit667 said:
I'd feel pretty bad if I was a Bulldozer engineer and had just spent the last 5+ years of life working on the project and then had to read the insane shit a lot of people are spewing out about it. Hardware is still exciting and fun, I'm not sure why everyone needs to bandwagon every little thing and beat it to the point of life and death.
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I'd have a different reaction if I was a BD engineer. I'd hang my head in shame. If I spent 5 years of my life on something and made it worse than my company's previous offerings I'd be embarrassed.
 
I think the number of bugs is the worst part. People can't game on it. I'd be concerned running one of these on my work machine or running a bunch of VMs on one.

I'm picking up another Athlon II or Phenom II at some point, there's no reason to buy a product that feels beta.
 
Most of my enthusiast friends use AMD since they give a pretty good bang for the buck....and that has nothing to do with intel, really....
 
With regarding to the whole engineering department, what the Hell were they doing for all this time?! It would have been better if AMD did their own tests, realized they had nothing to show, and aborted the release.
 
This is a little off topic, but still AMD.

I think AMD is losing all around lately.
First their latest CPU was a disappointment. I don't think so much a fail as just not what had been projected. Who knows, it may be strong in yet to be released software?

The bigger problem is their lack of suport in driver releases for the new games that have come out this fall. AMD has been playing catch-up. Late on driver releases, no Crossfire for some games yet, just not able to keep up, all-the-while nvidia just keeps churning out betas for each new game, pretty much right on cue.

It's a disappointment. I want AMD to succeed, but they just aren't trying hard enough or don't have the resousces?
 
canna said:
I'd have a different reaction if I was a BD engineer. I'd hang my head in shame. If I spent 5 years of my life on something and made it worse than my company's previous offerings I'd be embarrassed.
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I don't agree. The Bulldozer is a big departure from a lot of classic x86 design, and as far as we know it is an all original internal AMD design unlike a lot of the K10. The fact that they did this and still released a pretty competitive high end processor is quite impressive.

Not saying it's a realistic option for most people or that everyone should go out and replace their precious 2500Ks. The rampant hyperbole shitting all over innovation is incredibly immature from a community of people who call themselves enthusiasts.
 
Abit667 said:
I don't agree. The Bulldozer is a big departure from a lot of classic x86 design, and as far as we know it is an all original internal AMD design unlike a lot of the K10. The fact that they did this and still released a pretty competitive high end processor is quite impressive.

Not saying it's a realistic option for most people or that everyone should go out and replace their precious 2500Ks. The rampant hyperbole shitting all over innovation is incredibly immature from a community of people who call themselves enthusiasts.
Click to expand...

Top that off with JF getting threats through email and the forums screaming HE LIED!!!!111, "I hope the business closes down and they all lose their jobs " etc etc etc..... Why would Amd bother.
 
mzs_biteme said:
All PC related forums were buzzing with excitement for months before Bulldozer's release. Lot's of speculations, predictions, hopes, trolling, etc... Fun times...;)

Then, the big unveil, which we all know didn't turn out too well.....:eek: That was followed by very little (more like none) info from AMD. Then news of layoffs (mostly PR and Marketing folks) and the premise of three months of silence, until AMD is "ready" to talk about it's "WIN" strategy.... Doesn't this all sound depressing, and almost arrogant of AMD to basically lock out the enthusiast communities that have supported them over the years...??? Do they (AMD) really wanna give these people more reasons to go to Intel? Or am I way off on this one?
Click to expand...
"The enthusiasts" turned out to be bunch of 13yr old metalhead nerdboys, who never appreciated anything but company currently offering the fastest desktop CPU or GPU. What happened over last month among tech communities is just pure stuidity. No one of those however has a clue how CPUs are developed and manufactured and what semiconductor engineering costs.
The fact that every entity(company, organization, band, group etc) has success only limited time during its existence is everwhere. Although AMD is not very successful last years same way as intel, they still earn shit-alot of money so who cares if their best processor is not faster than intel best processor. Buy intel if you need it and it's done.

To the end, I suffer from depression and BD fail would be the last thing that would depress me.
 
Abit667 said:
I don't agree. The Bulldozer is a big departure from a lot of classic x86 design, and as far as we know it is an all original internal AMD design unlike a lot of the K10. The fact that they did this and still released a pretty competitive high end processor is quite impressive.
Click to expand...

A new architecture would be impressive if it did it's job, but BD seriously failed to deliver. What is the point of completely redesigning the wheel if it ends up square and doesn't roll as well as the last wheel? It was a step backwards, through and through, and that makes it look like the engineers wasted their time and money. Doubling the transistor count for less performance and higher power consumption than the phenom in single threaded applications makes me wonder how they could go so wrong.

Maybe it's a hitch on the road of a new design, but it should have been seriously examined before release. At least with another delay they'd still have a huge fan base of support. But they released too early and lost a lot of customers. Somebody should have tested, and realized that it did not deliver much over the phenoms, and that would do damage to them when people actually managed to benchmark them. It fell short of expectations; it fell short of their pre-release claims; it even fell short of the false benchmarks made before release that were propaganda to spread doubt in the buyers, and that is truly sad.
 
The marketing didn't help them. The gaming events, the FX branding, all the slides showing it supposedly better than a 990x in select things.

I know they want to sell the product, but they dug their own grave in a lot of ways. They should've been quiet about the desktop counterpart and released it as a server chip because they've just angered the enthusiast/gaming community.
 
The most disappointing product released by the most boneheaded marketing effort in recent CPU history (as bad as Barcelona... or maybe even worse). Everybody who lost their jobs deserves to be slinging burgers for a living. They would have been better off formally announcing WE SUCK and walking away from the high end CPU business than releasing this silicon turd.
 
well their marketing department did a good job hyping it up, most of us were drooling for it. Oct 12 came and the reviews popped up and most of us were shocked (in a bad way) some of us myself included didnt believe the reviews, assumed bios update issue, driver, issue, poor overclocking -- so we got one for ourselves and realized the reviews werent way off base.

For the $109 i paid for my FX4100 i have to admit im pleased with it overall so far. It uses 10% less power while gaming then my AMD 925 and it overclocks to 4.2ghz on stock voltage / heatsink without any hassle. (havent tried any further yet) I havent noticed any performance issues, crashing issues, heat or power consumption problems --

i think our expectations were way to high but no reason to threaten people's lives or wish they became unemployed.
 
Abit667 said:
I don't agree. The Bulldozer is a big departure from a lot of classic x86 design, and as far as we know it is an all original internal AMD design unlike a lot of the K10. The fact that they did this and still released a pretty competitive high end processor is quite impressive.

Not saying it's a realistic option for most people or that everyone should go out and replace their precious 2500Ks. The rampant hyperbole shitting all over innovation is incredibly immature from a community of people who call themselves enthusiasts.
Click to expand...

The issue is that enthusiasts aren't forgiving and nor is the average consumer.

Why would you pay for something that chews through more power and is a worse product than cheaper alternatives? You wouldn't. I sure as hell won't.

Let me mimic what has been said elsewhere and here and state that the PR/Marketing for AMD really dropped the ball, along with the engineers and likely the people up top that pointed the dozer in that direction. Benchmarks showing 50% improvement over Phenom II or 30% over first gen core i5/i7 were quite obviously either bogus or extremely selective and they led themselves up a mountainside only to fall off the steep cliff.

As an AMD fan, I wasn't happy. The engineers, too, probably weren't happy. I'm sure they knew it was a turd and yet it was put on a throne. The extreme reaction by fanboys on both sides is in part to how it was handled by AMD. The build up, the supposed performance increases and the delays didn't help. But the single strongest sentiment before and after bulldozer has been that people genuinely hope(d) AMD would at least catch up to Intel. I think nearly everyone wanted, and still wants, to see AMD do well, because as consumers and enthusiasts a healthy AMD is something everyone needs
 
pelo said:
The issue is that enthusiasts aren't forgiving and nor is the average consumer.

Why would you pay for something that chews through more power and is a worse product than cheaper alternatives? You wouldn't. I sure as hell won't.

Let me mimic what has been said elsewhere and here and state that the PR/Marketing for AMD really dropped the ball, along with the engineers and likely the people up top that pointed the dozer in that direction. Benchmarks showing 50% improvement over Phenom II or 30% over first gen core i5/i7 were quite obviously either bogus or extremely selective and they led themselves up a mountainside only to fall off the steep cliff.

As an AMD fan, I wasn't happy. The engineers, too, probably weren't happy. I'm sure they knew it was a turd and yet it was put on a throne. The extreme reaction by fanboys on both sides is in part to how it was handled by AMD. The build up, the supposed performance increases and the delays didn't help. But the single strongest sentiment before and after bulldozer has been that people genuinely hope(d) AMD would at least catch up to Intel. I think nearly everyone wanted, and still wants, to see AMD do well, because as consumers and enthusiasts a healthy AMD is something everyone needs
Click to expand...

+1. Agree with every word.
 
Abit667 said:
The only thing that was really depressing to me was the reaction of the "enthusiast" crowd to the bulldozer launch.

Seems like you see this more and more in this kind of community with other hardware and game launches. The insane amount of hyperbole and immaturity really turned me off of wanting to have anything to do with the "enthusiast" community anymore.

What happened to people evaluating a product by their own standards and then buying what they wanted? Why does everything have to be either the best product ever conceived or the absolute worst most steaming pile of shit and the ceos should die and the company closed, etc?

I'd feel pretty bad if I was a Bulldozer engineer and had just spent the last 5+ years of life working on the project and then had to read the insane shit a lot of people are spewing out about it. Hardware is still exciting and fun, I'm not sure why everyone needs to bandwagon every little thing and beat it to the point of life and death.
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Viral marketing .

And no doubt many are associated with this debacle over here.
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/AMD
 
AMD didn't kill their enthusiast crowd. Intel won the enthusiast market with enthusiast products. The day AMD out performs Intel without major cost or draw backs the enthusiast will flock to AMD.

But I highly doubt Intel relax its technological advancement enough for AMD to catch up let alone surpass. So that leave AMD with scraps of people who don't mind spending less and getting less.
 
They havent lost me. I was a broke ass gamer not that long ago but AMD was giving me quad core procs for under $100 and unlocked multipliers for lots of fun overclocking. So they earned my loyalty for a while, at least thru one failed line.

Bulldozer was a disappointment, no doubt, and the silent treatment leading up to and kinda after the release/fail has been aggravating to say the least but Im not giving up on them just yet. Im gonna hold onto my Thuban a little longer and see if AMD can come out with anything solid in the next few months. If not, then Ill jump ship when Ivy Bridge comes out cause loyalty or not, I cant pass up the extra performance. Til then, Ill still be an AMD fan.
 
MacLeod said:
They havent lost me. I was a broke ass gamer not that long ago but AMD was giving me quad core procs for under $100 and unlocked multipliers for lots of fun overclocking.
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Agreed. The first PC I ever completely put together on my own was my Socket 939 Athlon 64 rig. Nowadays I use their mid-range products in customer PC's all the time.

I went ahead and picked up an FX-8120 and I'm honestly pretty happy with it. It's fun to overclock (I'm up to 4.8GHz now...) and it actually gives me some justification for maintaining my water cooling gear. It feels a lot faster than the Q6600 it replaced, and I haven't had any stability issues or problems launching games. I do think it's overpriced at the moment, I would have strongly considered an i5 if I didn't already have an AM3+ board on hand.
 
I think AMD was hoping Bulldozer to be like their Athlon/PIII killer that they dropped on us years ago. I think the fallout from this perceived failure is enough for big changes to happen at AMD.
 
I haven't used AMD in one of my computers since 2006, I was hoping that AMD would have a successful bulldozer launch and I even considered a build based around Bulldozer, however I went with the i5 2500K and haven't looked back since. I am sure that AMD will recover, competition among AMD and Intel benefits enthusiasts like us by ensuring high quality products and rapid innovation.
 
What can I say, BD brings out the poet in me:

The boys from AMD ducked
When the world found their CPU sucked
The situation was dire
Though Rory did fire
Everything about BD was fucked

:)
 
BD may have been a weak CPU, but AMD is doing great things with their video cards. 6950 seems to be one of the best values out there right now.
 
That is true. Theyre more than just bang for the buck, theyre the best cards at pretty much all their price points. Hell the 6970 comes very close to the GTX580 despite costing $150 less.

Im not predicting gloom and doom for AMD yet. Theyre a tenth the size of Intel so I dont expect them to come out with Sandy Bridge killers anytime soon. I think theyll get the joint squared away and start putting out competitive procs fairly soon. Ya cant be as good as they are in the GPU world and suck in the CPU world.
 
They didn't lose me. I'm simply going to stick with my 1100T and see what new revisions of BD bring.
 
I'll continue to use AMD for the time being for "bang per buck" builds.
I can't see why anyone would buy a 4 core FX as a previous poster said even overclocking the heck out of it a quad core Athlon II thumps it!

Nobody wants "pay more get less"
AMD seem to be trying to keep prices high as well obviously the reality has not sunk in yet. I'd rather have a tweaked Ath/Ph II 32nm CPU that these FX disasters.
 
MacLeod said:
That is true. Theyre more than just bang for the buck, theyre the best cards at pretty much all their price points. Hell the 6970 comes very close to the GTX580 despite costing $150 less.

Im not predicting gloom and doom for AMD yet. Theyre a tenth the size of Intel so I dont expect them to come out with Sandy Bridge killers anytime soon. I think theyll get the joint squared away and start putting out competitive procs fairly soon. Ya cant be as good as they are in the GPU world and suck in the CPU world.
Click to expand...

I agree on the vid cards, that's why I have the fanless 6770. However, AMD is much smaller than a tenth of Intel by market cap:

Intel: $126.5 billion
AMD: $4 billion

Regardless of their size, there is still no excuse for cranking out the FX suckmonster.
 
The affordable range is where it's at. I build PCs professionally (out of my dorm...but I get paid to do it!) and I've not once used a high end CPU for a build I've done (highest end thus far is an Intel Core i5 2400). I generally shove as much budget as possible into the GPU.
 
HardOnForMe said:
They might have to "cut back" on sponsorships to "save" mula now that BD was a FAILURE! :D
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You know what sucks for AMD? Ecclestone's net worth is greater than AMD's market cap! Dang! That makes Petra & Tamara even tastier! What a threesome! :D
 
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