AMD's Phenom Unveiled: A Somber Farewell to K8
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2007 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
First Tunisia, then Tahoe?
As a slightly off-topic but important sidenote, I thought it would be appropriate to let everyone know how AMD wanted this review to happen, and how certain folks within AMD were champions for the right cause and made it actually happen.
AMD knew it wouldn't be able to trounce Core 2 with Phenom, especially not at 2.3GHz, so it wanted to control the benchmarking that was done on Phenom. For the first time in as far as I can remember, AMD wanted all benchmarking on Phenom to be done at a location in Tahoe, of course on AMD's dime. AMD would fly us out there, we would spend a couple of days with a pre-configured system and we'd head home to write our stories.
Now I championed for this sort of early-access to Phenom months ago. I've visited AMD alone three times this year primarily to talk about Phenom, and each time I left without being able to report so much as a single benchmark to you all (everyone remembers those articles right?). I tried and tried to get AMD to part with some early Phenom data, because they were losing the confidence of their fan base and that's a sad thing to see for a company that really took care of this community when we needed it most.
After Tahoe AMD would eventually sample Phenom parts so we could test in our own labs, but there was no word on exactly when that would be. Chances are you would've seen a handful of numbers here today if we had gone to Tahoe with a full review of the chip hitting sometime in December.
Needless to say, I wasn't happy. I refused to go to Tahoe.
Don't get me wrong, a free trip to Tahoe is a wonderful thing, but Phenom deserved better. It deserved dedicated testing, it deserved a thorough review, not a quick glance over a couple of days. And I had a feeling that you all would agree. The time for AMD-sanctioned testing expired months ago, if Phenom was launching this week, we were going to have a proper review of it.
These days, AMD seems to be learning a little too much from the ATI way of doing things. If AMD had its way, today's Phenom review would have been done from beautful Lake Tahoe, on a system that AMD built, running at a frequency that isn't launching. Now there's nothing wrong with allowing us to preview Phenom under closed conditions, after all, Intel does it, but that's simply not acceptable for a review of a product that's four days away from being in stores. You all want to see a thorough review of Phenom, not some half-assed preview, definitely not after waiting this long for it.
An AMD rep, familiar with the Tahoe trip, asked me, somewhat surprised, "what, Intel doesn't work like this?".
Sorry to say, Intel doesn't. Today Intel let us preview the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 processor, do you want to know how they did it? The FedEx guy dropped off a chip. No flights to Tahoe, no hotel rooms, no expenses at all. Don't get me wrong, I felt like an idiot turning down a free trip to Tahoe, but it was for AMD's own good. We've all seen the financials, these aren't times to be wasting money on silly trips around the country, it costs less than $30 to ship a CPU and that's all we need.
I get the point of Tahoe, it's to control the benchmarking, making sure we wouldn't be comparing a 2.4GHz Phenom to a 3.0GHz Penryn, but honestly folks - would we really do that to begin with? And I get the idea to wine and dine the press, with hopes of more pleasant reviews with better relationships - but this isn't a product to toy with. We're here to do our jobs and that is to review the product that will carry AMD for the next twelve months, and honestly we can't do that from some lodge somewhere away from our testbeds.
This isn't the first time AMD has heard of this from me, and there are many within AMD who feel the same way. The reason you're finding this rant in here today is because I am concerned for the future of the company. Competition is a good thing, we need to keep it around, but AMD needs to learn from its competitors. Intel and NVIDIA don't try things like this, business is always first with them, frivolous pleasures come next.
To AMD: if you want to be Intel, start acting like it.
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erikejw - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Good that you did not agree to this.
It is sad though that you agree to Intel tactis.
Reviewing a cpu that has no platform and will not be released for months.
Is that the worst paperlaunch ever and you happily benchmark it(QX 9770 or whatever it is).
Lets not go back to late 90s when Anandtech was a huge Intel fanboysite with payed
reviews by Intel with 90% of your ad revenues from them.
Now you are one of the best quality hardware review sites out there, lets not ruin it.
JumpingJack - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Wait... wait... the entire enthusiast community was beggin', pleading, for any early preview data on Barcelona and Phenom, it is not uncommon for companies in yesteryear to provide test sames weeks or even a month before launch to provide preview data. AMD gave us none of this, but power points, and promises that did not pan out.Now, Intel provided this CPU as a 'spoiler' for the phenom launch no doubt... but has AMD ever pulled the same shibang? Of course, every IDF there is something new announced to spoil the party.... what do you expect??
Come on... not only is intel providing more performance and more options, but they are doing it with ease... give them credit for that... if there is a travesty here it is that AMD cannot be competitive and the cost factor, if you want top notch performance, is going opposite of what we would want... you blame Intel? Blame AMD for a crappy showing.
Ohji - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
I don't think Anand's preview of the QX9770 shows any favoritism for Intel at all. Yes, Intel is distributing a pre-release version of its chip, but this fact was clearly stated in the review. Allowing AT to benchmark the chip prior to release is similar to what they did prior to the C2D lauch and is therefore not a paper launch but simply a performance preview. Being a site for computer enthusiasts, AT would be crazy to refuse to evaluate this processor -- such a decision would only drive readers to other sites.I believe that an enthusiast site's primary duty is to remain objective when evaluating products, and in this case I feel Anand's preview of the QX9770 was quite objective, highlighting both the positives (performance) and negative (throttling at stock speeds, heat, power). Truth be told, in my many years of visiting this site, I have never felt that any review has ever been unfairly biased...
strikeback03 - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Well, they also went ahead and OCed the Phenom chips they had to simulate the 9900 and 9700, which are supposed to arrive in Q1 '08, i.e. roughly the same time frame as the QX9770 and X48 chipset. Furthermore the article for the most part seemed to emphasize the performance of the OCed chips and ignore the stock-clock parts, which will actually be available soon. So in a way you can say they did no more favors to Intel than AMD, in that this review here largely hangs on future processors as well.ViRGE - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Uhh, did you even read the article? AnandTech didn't review that processor, the fastest processor AT used was a Penryn clocked at 2.66ghz (the improvised Q9450).AssBall - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Oh, this must NOT be a 3.2 Intel ghz review then.....http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc...
ViRGE - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Good point, somehow I missed that on the front page. My bad.MrKaz - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Good point.Why preview something that will not be out soon?
I wonder if Intel also send Prescott’s for preview months earlier to everyone knowing that it would suck.
gochichi - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Have you ever played monopoly and had too good of luck for your own good at the beginning? Then your opponents start making ridiculous deals amongst each other to bring you down? I'll trade you Park Place and Board Walk in exchange for Water Works and $50. What should Nvidia do?AMD has really managed to slow progress down this year. We're still talking about beating an 8800GTX, and can't seem to find a better deal than a Q6600 for miles to come.
AMD's products aren't really terrible, but they just can't compete with the very best. I think we can talk about Intel/Nvidia b/c though they are different companies, they are run the same way... faster, leaner, more agile, more desirable.
It's interesting to look at the AMD roadmap, and see that they expect there to be an integrated GPU on the CPU by 2009. Is this why they merged? Do they really think Intel and Nvidia wouldn't cooperate if they had to on a competing product? When AMD was successful, NVIDIA was a big part of that success. Now NVIDIA has to buddy up with Intel and nobody could fault either Nvidia nor INtel for "monopolistic practices" for giving each other preferential treatment. Amd needs to choose it's opponent... is it Intel? Or is it Nvidia? Cause at this rate it's going to loose to both. They need to make sure to treat NVIDIA right when it comes to their CPU business. It has nothing to gain from buddying up with Intel... but maybe cooperating on a chipset with NVIDIA that allowed for SLI or crossfire at the same time would be good.
Anyhow, hopefully AMD can continue on until they come up with something good. CPU wise I think they're handily more screwed than graphics wise. Just to think, if Intel were under pressure it could sell a 3.0Ghz quad for $215.00 without breaking a sweat... it could do so within a month's notice. Intel is going to start releasing it's next generation because it absolutely has to in order to survive... they can't wait much longer ... and it's not about drowning AMD. It's about the fact that Intel has to compete with the Intel chips it sold last year and the year before that. Cause CPUs keep ticking for decades, and that's a huge part of the competition (paid for chips that are 80% as good as new ones, are going to beat pricey new chips, that's all there is to it).
Aenslead - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
Well, we where all kind of waiting for something like this.Lets see if the comercial value of a new line of CPUs helps AMD at all.