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Opteron's big weakness
- Thread starter xonik
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Yep and, the seller keystones the product at initial sale.
Batoman yes Dell and, Gateway have always favored Intels. Fact is most people in the industry on the sales end do as, well. I remember when I was first purchasing computers, I was going to get an AMD rig and, the sales guy was saying it was inferior. He was trying to get me to buy the more expensive 386 model at that time. So I went to another store, this one was a local builder and, he only used AMD. So that is who got my business.
Alot of the end sellers are as brainwashed as the buying public, on Intel v.s. AMD too.
That is AMD's weak spot is in advertising. Hell even Apple got back on its feet with it. AMD need to focus more on promotion and, gain more name recognition, that is what gets you sales.
And Photoshop is geared more towards Apples as, are most Adobe products.
eh, adobe is moving away from apple, premiere is windows only, they really liked how that worked out, I expect to see more adobe products become windows only in the next few years. especially as apple continues to marginalize adobe by releasing competing products.
Adobe actually has favored intel for over a year now, even making comments as such in 2003 I believe. They said the Intel chips would run Photoshop (as an example) faster and all around had better performance. In general they still stick to that, especially given the performance to cost ratio over the G5s.
http://www.jscustompcs.com/products.php?parent=CPUs:Server:Xeon
Uhhh? No. They're selling for $150-$700.
Pricewatch.com is your friend. You can find Mainboards with a CPU for $700. I'd like AMD to keep the 64 bit ball rolling. They could really run away from the Itanium2 and the G5 if they have the right revision history.
As for prebuilts, that's a mixed bag. I'm almost afraid to see AMD Inside stickers on computers now. That industry has made such an ass of itself in the past, I'd hate to see them use quality components.
At least, they would have to make their products upgradable, and that is a no-no for that industry. They want sales, not kick ass products. They have a price war, where cheaper components means more sales.Yea its like that. The MP chips have big caches too, but now it seems Intel is extending that to the full line of Xeon chips to try to catch the Opteron. As ALL of AMD's chips are currently coming from Fab30, I don't think AMD is any position to release large cache chips. Larger die sizes means more chip fails and less chips per wafer. As Fab30 supports the Duron, XP, A64 and AFX/Opteron lines, adding a large cache chip probably isnt an option. Chips with 2MB of L2 are supposedly on the horizon for Opterons after the 90nm switch but this could change. Once their new fab is created for the 65nm process, large cache opterons become a possibility.
In the corporate space, what AMD needs to do is build a reputation and create the right relationships. Their past hurts the second more than it does the first.
A typical CEO may or may not be even mildly tech-savvy, in which case they'll have some very vague impressions, but those impressions drive purchase decisions. My boss couldn't tell you what makes AMD or Intel better. But he won't approve a purchase if it is running AMD instead of Intel. And he doesn't want to hear about it, or read articles or charts or benchmarks.
If an Intel machine breaks down, he will ask what happened. If an AMD machine breaks down, he will ask 'oh, that's the AMD system, isn't it?', as if he already knows what the cause of the problem is. That attitude can be extremely difficult to change.
However, my boss also trusts Dell to produce good and reliable systems. If Dell went with AMD he might still be skeptical, but less so. And if AMD's track record in Dell servers and workstations is stellar, then he might just agree to purchase a few. And if they perform well with no problems, he will become less wary of AMD purchases in the future.
That is not an easy roadblock to overcome. It isn't about performance in terms of benchmarks and statistics. It isn't about price/performance ratios. It isn't even about price, you're not going to quibble about a $500 difference in CPU costs when you're buying a $100,000 server. It is about the perception of reliability and the peace of mind that you get from it.
Some of the moves that Intel makes look very transparent to a tech-savvy person, but not to your average CEO, and probably not to your average CIO either. Changing that perception takes a long time and a lot of work.
Chris_Morley
Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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...and design wins from IBM and Sun go a long way in doing so.
Which is why people with MBAs and english degrees should be serving fries to engineers. Allowing the stupidity and ignorance to continue only makes the lives of those of us in the field more miserable. Vigilante Darwinism needs to start taking place in corporate America.
Yeah, but this could be said about so many things, that it is really futile to worry about it. Businesses, in particular the businesses that buy expensive servers, are going to have their bureaucracy and inefficiencies. And that's not even counting all of the shady stuff that may or may not be going on.
We all do it to some degree in our daily lives, because we can't spend the time to research every last thing that could possibly affect us. In business environments, those of us who have a more specialized role get to see just how bad it is. I'm sure the guys who handle copiers and fax machines (and hell, pens and pencils) get to see some amazing stuff as well.
When it comes to corporate short-sightedness, AMD isn't being singled out for punishment.
GodsMadClown
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High memory bandwidth and low latency. Image processing workstations need all the RAM that they do because photoshop holds all the image information in main memory. Running Photoshop calculations on that information is all about memory bandwidth and latency.
Hehe....Amen.
The stupidity of corporate managers and officers is a constant source of amusement for myself and my peers.
I must admit, I'd rather the corporate idiots buy the bottom-of-the-line Celeron crap being shoveled out at rock-bottom prices by all of the first-tier manufacturers. We get to bill the same amount to install and service them, and they break a lot more == more billable hours.
Thanks to ignorant corporate officers my company's profits keep climbing.
I've tried to educate them, but they don't care to listen...so we just keep on invoicing for the inevitable 'just-out-of-warranty' crash.This is why Im working for a small Mom&Pop concretepumping company. THe corporate heads piss and, moan we are costing them pennies, while they throw dimes out the window. One company paid an outrageous amount for a server, that was constantly plagued with problems. I offered to build them a Sever and, LAN for half. They just said I was a pump operator so, I didnt know anything.Originally posted by relic
Hehe....Amen.
The stupidity of corporate managers and officers is a constant source of amusement for myself and my peers.
I must admit, I'd rather the corporate idiots buy the bottom-of-the-line Celeron crap being shoveled out at rock-bottom prices by all of the first-tier manufacturers. We get to bill the same amount to install and service them, and they break a lot more == more billable hours.
Thanks to ignorant corporate officers my company's profits keep climbing.
Chris_Morley
Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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The arrogance of engineers never ceases to astound me. Lemme guess...you're a first year engineer student, and the first thing you learn is how to stroke your own ego.
What's funny is that 95% of first year engineering students have no egos because they are getting the shit kicked out of them by classes and social situations. So here we see the truth is already shining through the troll.
If you want to flame and troll, please do it somewhere else or you may find yourself on the short end of a ban. Ignorance is a shameful hat to wear.
My personal status as an engineer is quite irrelevant. Yes, we're arrogant as all hell, but by and large, we have the brains to back it up.
Unfortunately, a good portion of management doesn't have the brains. Guys that have english degrees (and the like) with MBAs don't know much about making Opterons, integrating systems, or why Opterons are good or bad. Like it or not, this is the way it is, not only in my bloated head, but on the street, too.
xonik: Sorry for the hijack.
Chris_Morley
Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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When you get into a real company and learn first hand what those people you look down on really do, then talk to me.
You have no idea what it takes to be a marketeer, or in PR, or sales for that matter.
You have no idea what it takes to close large deals, properly position a product, or know how to reach a target market. The Director of Sales and Marketing at my company, along with our Director of PR have almost single-handedly brought in more business that we have had in a LONG TIME. They understand this market, they understand the machines we sell, and they understand the customers. Our engineers are good, damn good, but not one of them is as arrogant as that pathetic drivel I read on the other page.
You ask ANY of our sales guys about Opteron, and they'll wax poetically for an hour on its strengths and weaknesses. They aren't engineers. But they do use the programs that our customers use. Ever done 10-bit uncompressed HD editing? Didn't think so. Our sales guys do, however.
I have an extremely technical background. My college education encompassed marketing, sales, and economics...no engineering degree. Just because I can't fab an Opteron doesn't mean that I don't know its architecture, strengths, and weaknesses.
I thanked god for that training when I started my first company. Ever had to fight the government over taxes? That degree doesn't help you any.
One of my friends is finishing his masters in EE, he still comes to me for PC advice. He's also got a major superiority complex. Just because you can do wonderful things with complex math equations does not mean you know how to do everyone's job at the company.
You want to know what trolling is? Telling someone like ME that I need to be serving fries to YOU. Short end of a ban. ROFL.
You have no idea what it takes to be a marketeer, or in PR, or sales for that matter.
You have no idea what it takes to close large deals, properly position a product, or know how to reach a target market. The Director of Sales and Marketing at my company, along with our Director of PR have almost single-handedly brought in more business that we have had in a LONG TIME. They understand this market, they understand the machines we sell, and they understand the customers. Our engineers are good, damn good, but not one of them is as arrogant as that pathetic drivel I read on the other page.
You ask ANY of our sales guys about Opteron, and they'll wax poetically for an hour on its strengths and weaknesses. They aren't engineers. But they do use the programs that our customers use. Ever done 10-bit uncompressed HD editing? Didn't think so. Our sales guys do, however.
I have an extremely technical background. My college education encompassed marketing, sales, and economics...no engineering degree. Just because I can't fab an Opteron doesn't mean that I don't know its architecture, strengths, and weaknesses.
I thanked god for that training when I started my first company. Ever had to fight the government over taxes? That degree doesn't help you any.
One of my friends is finishing his masters in EE, he still comes to me for PC advice. He's also got a major superiority complex. Just because you can do wonderful things with complex math equations does not mean you know how to do everyone's job at the company.
You want to know what trolling is? Telling someone like ME that I need to be serving fries to YOU. Short end of a ban. ROFL.
I find Dell to be losing namesake in the corporate market and IBM to be the strong catch phrase this year. If AMD is solidly pushed by IBM then there is no reason to believe that AMD won't have a solid year. The problem is that IBM has alot of different options to offer in the market that Opteron is currently at work. Until the Opteron 4-way+ systems start showing up in all of the trade magazines as "server of the year", or at least in popular techno magazines like Popular Science, then its going to be an uphill battle. I remember Pentium had all the publicity back in the day that we still had at least six competitors in the game...
S
SlickJesus
Guest
thats why i love where i work...EVERYTHING here is AMD from the workstations to the servers, and everything is great!
tell your dummy CEOs and CIOs they need to take a closer look at AMD!!
tell your dummy CEOs and CIOs they need to take a closer look at AMD!!
Chris_Morley
Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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We sell AMD to those 'dummies' all the time. I've got 17 dually opteron workstations waiting for 248's because they're in short supply!
200 1U rackmount Opterons? Yeah, we've done that.
My GOD some of the comments in here are mindblowing...
YES, there are companies out there that are sticking with what they perceive as 'safe'. THAT is a good move for them, and a good one for their stockholders. AMD has finally started to gain some traction in the credibility area. Their reliability is getting to the point that it's a non-issue when debating Intel/AMD. You'll start to see more an more AMD in the enterprise, but those 'dummies' don't make the flippant decisions you want them to.
Indeed. I've no idea what it takes to close big deals and sell product. I tend not to want to deal with mindless masses and stupid people driven by greed and money and metoo. It's pretty simple, actually. I wash my hands of you. I stopped caring after I wrote the first post. I'm just enjoying you wax poetic[sic], as you call it, from On High. All hail the market-droid, he'll even do your taxes.
DocFaustus
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This has been a great thread, lets not kill it now.
Chris_Morley
Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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ROFL, I'm not on the high horse, buddy. I'm not the one that said that managers should be serving you french fries. And from your reply it's painfully obvious that you're completely ignorant on the workings of a real company. And if you didn't care so much why did you reply?
Enjoy finishing your degree. With an attitude like that you wouldn't last a week at our company.
Fact is, someone has to fill those roles. You may not like them, but your inventions and creations will get no where without them. And you better hope that they're damn good at it so they can pay your salary.
To think you're superior because of your degree is folly. You'll learn someday that everyone is vital (especially in medium sized business like ours) and has a role to play.
Here's the bottom line. You do not get paid without someone like me selling the product, and I have no product without someone like you. Now, I understand this basic concept, do you?
GodsMadClown
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64 bit computing is all well and good, but MS support for a chip-specific feature to protect against buffer overrun? That's a major coup! Wouldn't you say?
DocFaustus
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Damn, I was just gonna copy that here. You beat me to it.
Chris_Morley
Former [H] Consumer Managing Ed.
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I apologize for not taking it to PM's earlier. I don't like people telling me that I need to serve them french fries. I will refrain from going off topic in this thread from now on.
I think you guys misunderstood my posts, heh. My bosses are engineers (geotechnical and structural engineers, specializing in subsurface investigation), just as my co-workers are.
For the most part, my co-workers are no more knowledgeable about computer hardware than my bosses are. Heck, in time some of those co-workers will become my bosses.
AMD's problem regarding reputation and corporate reputation isn't due to stupid bosses or arrogant engineers or anything like that. It is the result of the same problem that many companies face when trying to build name recognition and brand trust-- not everyone does deep in-depth investigation into every facet of our lives, and sometimes that means we don't spend our money in the best way possible. We go with what we know and trust, and sometimes that isn't as reliable as we think it is. But the stuff we get works well enough and we're happy with that.
That is what AMD is facing in the corporate space. It is what they've faced there for a long time, only now it's more pronounced because they have a competitive product and are in a tight spot. They need to get some momentum faster than they'd expect to, so there's a bit more hope that people will look past hype and old perceptions. But things don't work that way in the corporate space. So we cross our fingers and hope for the best.
For the most part, my co-workers are no more knowledgeable about computer hardware than my bosses are. Heck, in time some of those co-workers will become my bosses.
AMD's problem regarding reputation and corporate reputation isn't due to stupid bosses or arrogant engineers or anything like that. It is the result of the same problem that many companies face when trying to build name recognition and brand trust-- not everyone does deep in-depth investigation into every facet of our lives, and sometimes that means we don't spend our money in the best way possible. We go with what we know and trust, and sometimes that isn't as reliable as we think it is. But the stuff we get works well enough and we're happy with that.
That is what AMD is facing in the corporate space. It is what they've faced there for a long time, only now it's more pronounced because they have a competitive product and are in a tight spot. They need to get some momentum faster than they'd expect to, so there's a bit more hope that people will look past hype and old perceptions. But things don't work that way in the corporate space. So we cross our fingers and hope for the best.