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Radeon R9 290X Retail Prices Hit $900by Ryan Smith on 2/14/2014 11:30 AM EST
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- Radeon 200
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SodaAnt - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIts great! I bought a used 7970 about six months ago for around $220, and now I'm selling it for $370 and getting a GTX 780 for $440, so I only end up paying $70 to go from a 7970 to a GTX 780. Reply
SleepyFE - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkSince you paid for the 7970 and made a profit, you end up paying 290$ to get the 780. Reply
Mondozai - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIn one sentence, you summed up why US lags behind most of the OECD in maths skills both for students and adults. Reply
Tetracycloide - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkNo he didn't. SodaAnt was completely accurate in his assessment of the marginal cost of moving from the 7970 to the GTX 780. SleepyFE subtly changed the subject to the total cost of the GTX 780 to make a snarky comment which implied he said something much dumber. Reply
SodaAnt - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkAs if that has to do with anything? My math was correct, there was just a difference in economics terms, which I still understand perfectly well. Reply
RadicalEntity - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkHe was defending you, why are you jumping down his throat? Reply
SodaAnt - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkMeant to reply to the comment above it. Reply
mdlam - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkSoda ant get off your sofa and take a math course. You have all obviously overlooked the cost of the depreciating dollar and inflation which over 2 years adds #)($*@#()$* to the amount you paid originally. Reply
Kutark - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkLets not forget that we have to put a value on the time he invested purchasing and reselling the cards. Did his assessment include shipping costs? What about electricity or gas costs for heating or cooling his home while he was partaking in these activities? Reply
SlyNine - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkYes, after all, profit can only be determined at the time of sell. Foolish humans. Reply
3DVagabond - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkIf he'd been mining that whole time he could have bought a new PC for free. :D Reply
inighthawki - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIn one sentence you summed up why, regardless of being from the US, you can still be dumb.
Both of you, please reread his post and pay closer attention to the last 10 words or so. Reply
SlyNine - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkYes but the *sarcasm ahead* moron forgot to consider for inflation and return on investment. sheesh. what does a frame per second equal out in USD these days? Reply
Teizo - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkWatch out, we got us a bad $%^ over here! Reply
chrnochime - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkIn one sentence you have joined him as one of the countless people who fail at reading comprehension. Bravo sir. What a joke LOL.
BTW great of you to be so specific yet vague enough with that "most of OECD". Can't be more specific about WHICH countries are failing? Scared of raising the ire of citizens of those countries? Haha Reply
SodaAnt - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkCorrect, but that wasn't my point. My point was that I paid $70 to upgrade my GPU. I consider the 7970 purchase to already be paid for, and I was already looking to do a GPU upgrade, so I did not factor the $220 into my calculation.
Even a few months ago, the difference would have easily been $200 or more for the same upgrade, so I was commenting that it was an excellent deal for me. Reply
khory - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI think they knew that but just wanted to play semantics with the way you phrased it so they can make snide comments. Reply
sajara - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkand in the end I thank you all for some very entertaining five minutes... Reply
Teizo - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkNo, he paid $440 for the 780. Just he only had to pay an extra $70 out of pocket since he profited $150 on his used 7970. Nice try. Reply
Makaveli - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkthat was a great upgrade SodaAnt.
i've been thinking about it myself as I have a 7970 Boost Edition basically Ghz card that I paid $400 for in june. I can sell it now for a profit but it only works if you go NV with the new card and since I prefer AMD kinda no point for me. Reply
Krysto - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkIf this continues, Nvidia cards will definitely be the ones to get for gaming in the future. I hope this ends up making some nice profits for AMD to get themselves out of the hole they're in, but if I were them I'd be very careful with this "strategy", because they might end up losing a lot of market share chasing these short term profits, and it might not be very easy to recover that market share once the crypto-miners stop needing them, and force the AMD card prices to fall again. Reply
Warren21 - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - linkAMD does not make any profits here, only retailers. Unfortunate, greedy reality. I honestly just wish this foolish 'craze' would go away so I can buy an R9 290 at MSRP. Everyone is trying to cash-in on a get rich quick scheme. So desperate. Reply
DigitalFreak - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkCan't wait until the whole cryptocoint thing crashes and burns. Reply
nathanddrews - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI'd rather cryptocoins continue, but have GPUs been replaced entirely by ASICs. It won't be much longer... Reply
Divide Overflow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkCouldn't come soon enough for me and other gaming enthusiasts. Reply
Bucu - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI didn't know you were on here, or rather that you would partake in childish online forum posts as to the kind on anandtech. Reply
Friendly0Fire - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIf you think the comments section at AnandTech is childish, you haven't been on the internet much. Reply
Makaveli - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkyup eventually you will see a flood of 7xxx and the new series cards for cheap once ASIC's take over litecoin mining. The problem will be is anyone going to buy a card that was mining 24/7 I would be worried about the longevity of those cards. Reply
robbertbobbertson - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI second that. Crap shouldn't exist to begin with. Reply
Tetracycloide - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWhy not? Reply
Mr Perfect - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIf all these altcoins do the same thing Bitcoin did, the miners will all have to move to ASICs as GPUs become to slow to mine profitably. At that point the world of GPUS will come crashing back to reality. There will also be a glut of heavily used cards on sale for peanuts. Reply
JDG1980 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkUnfortunately/fortunately (depending on your point of view), this is unlikely to happen. There are already alternative cryptocoins out there (Vertcoin most notably) which use different algorithms designed so that they can still be GPU-mined, but will be resistant to at least the current round of ASICs. Sure, if Vertcoin becomes the next big thing, there may eventually be ASICs for that too, but by that time the GPU miners will have invented another altcoin. There are a lot of people with massive racks of GCN GPUs and a vested interest in keeping that hashing power valuable. Reply
Mil0 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkHow do you see that happen? It doesn't seem likely for the time being. I'd say well beyond the regular lifetime of the 290X Reply
bountygiver - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkOr if you can't beat them, join them, I bought r9 290 at $500 and I have almost mined enough to break even the difference from its suggested price in the past 2 weeks, also power cost is not really that much as I actually turned down my heater while mining. (I still mine while gaming as they uses different operations, a low intensity mining does not impact gaming performance much) Reply
Anonymous Blowhard - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWell, someone's angry they missed the boat. Reply
1Angelreloaded - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkNot Gunna lie this is bad news for ATI fans, in fact like the SodaAnt posted this will ultimately drive people into NVidias top end single card solution the 780 Ti. Even getting 2 780's in SLI for 1k is going to be better and post higher frame rates. This is for Gaming not others aka the miners driving up GPU prices. Reply
Drumsticks - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkAs long as AMD cards are always seen and reviewed as gaming kit and do well, they will stay in the minds ofgamers. And as long as that is happening, I doubt AMD will complain about selling nearly every high margin card they can. Reply
Drumsticks - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkPsuedo-edit: Although it is a good point that AMD doesn't really see any of these benefits from the price increase, so it's not all good. Reply
twtech - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWhat it does mean for AMD is that if people are willing to pay $900 for their cards, they can sell as many as they can produce at $550. Reply
Mondozai - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"Even getting 2 780's in SLI for 1k is going to be better and post higher frame rates"
This is a US/NA-centric phenomenom.
Apparently a lot of people don't get this, so you need to bash it into their heads on a repeated time schedule. The vast majority of sales of GPU cards is outside NA. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkSeriously? Could you provide a source for that? I love it when some random guy from eastern Europe says it's 'only happening in the US', as though the US isn't the largest market for components/electronics in the world, and certainly a far larger market than where ever they're from. Reply
MrSpadge - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkBecause it's only in the US that electricity became so cheap again due to fracking. *coin mining is significantly less profitable in most of the remaining world. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkHe's not talking about the financial viability of mining. He's talking about relevance (or lack thereof) of the elevated card prices in the US. Reply
anubis44 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkNah, there's plenty of people who can't stand nVidia or who have too much to gain from Mantle's performance enhancements. I'll stick with my bios-overclocked Windforce 7950 until I can get an R9 290 for under $400.
The increased demand for AMD video cards will ultimately be met with increased supply. After all, AMD is still making the same profit off of each card sold, so it stands to reason they will ramp up production as fast as they can, and eventually, the equilibrium in the system will be restored, and AMD's graphics card market share will likely outstrip nVidia's again. Reply
MrSpadge - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI sure hope AMD is getting at least some of that additional profit. From my point of view they could shift all Hawaii stock to the US and sell them for whatever for works there. Order more from TSMC and once the dust settles give them to the rest of the world at prices as planned. Reply
JDG1980 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkUp until a few weeks ago, when the increases over MSRP were fairly modest and limited to just Tahiti and Hawaii, AMD was probably coming out ahead. After all, they were selling out of all their silicon, even though Tahiti is a 2-year-old design that hadn't exactly been moving like hotcakes prior to December.
But things have gotten way out of control now. The price increases have spread to Pitcairn (270/270X) with Newegg hiking these to a minimum of $229.99, and hurting AMD's competitiveness with gamers at the important ~$200 price point. And retailers are now gouging *hundreds* of extra dollars on Tahiti and Hawaii cards, of which AMD sees nothing. Either AMD needs to recapture these extra profits or they need to do something to ensure that MSRP is honored by AIB vendors and e-tailers. Right now Newegg is getting the gold mine (windfall profits) and AMD is getting the shaft (bad publicity). Reply
hpglow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkYou are assuming that none of this inflation is comming from AMD or it's board partners. I would surprised if everyone just let Newegg throw their biscuits into the free gravy. Sales are sales and any plublicity is good plublicity to most companies. But I don't think that inflated prices look that bad to anyone other than gamers. To investors and company big-shots it just looks like an eago boost and lost proffits. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkYep I'd tend to agree, I think AMD is getting a cut of this too, there's no way they'd let retailers gouge and not get a taste of it when it ultimately hurts their image.
The solution is easy is simple if they wanted to hold retailers to MSRP: only distribute/authorize retailers who are selling at MSRP and withhold shipments from retailers that are gouging. Reply
anubis44 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkThere's an even simpler solution: increase Radeon graphics chip production until you can supply all the cards the market wants at the MSRP prices. Reply
buttgx - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWow, we're all amazed by your brilliant comment. Thanks for being obvious and so worldly. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI think they would if they could, but they can't, leading to a supply shortage capable of sustaining MSRP. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkNope, AMD isn't seeing any additional profits from these price hikes, retailers are. This has been confirmed by multiple sources, including Anandtech. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkGreat, please provide 1 source where AMD says they're not gaining from this. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWhat? You don't trust Anandtech? Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link... but you would trust AMD? What are you, some kind of a fanboy? ... oh wait. Reply
chizow - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkRyan's a smart guy but it is just his informed opinion and he has been wrong before (see Mantle & DX link), but yes an official denial from AMD would be great.
AMD has admitted to jacking up the price after the fact in the past, so this really wouldn't be anything new (see 5850/5870). The story wasn't broadly advertised of course, people just chalked it up to greedy retailers etc back then too, until AMD was pressed and finally fessed up to it.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/2009... Reply
anandreader106 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkJDG1980 - I see where you are coming from but I slightly disagree with your conclusion.
As long as AMD continues to sell the silicon they make at amazing rates, it's good for their business regardless of a missed opportunity to further mark up their products. They are selling everything they make with margins they deemed appropriate. Trust me as a buyer in the retail industry, what's happening to AMD's graphics division is what most vendors would kill for.
Secondly, AMD has ensured that they will remain relevant in the minds of gamers for the next generation of gaming. XB1, PS4, Wii-U (i debated about adding that one) are all AMD. As long as game developers are developing and optimizing for AMD GPUs, Nvidia doesn't have much ground to gain.
Third point to consider: The ~$200 price point is all important like you said, but let's remember to who. It's important to the hardcore gamer on a budget. The casual PC gamers, which represent a much bigger market actually shop in the price range of the 250 and 260 Radeon series.
I'd love if Ryan and Anand could weigh in on their opinion on whether this is good or bad for AMD. Obviously there are points to both sides and we don't know which is right, but it's fun to debate :) Reply
anandreader106 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI'd like to clarify my comment above about "Nvidia doesn't have much ground gain"
Nvidia is clearly the top dog in the PC gaming house. Developers know that the majority of PC gamers (not using integrated graphics) are using Nvidia GPUs. So when I say Nvidia doesn't have much to gain, it's because they are already ahead. Reply
Will Robinson - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkYup I agree.
Your product is selling out and demand is booming.
Good for AMD. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI just don't buy the notion AMD isn't getting a cut of this cryptocoin price rush. They could easily cut supply to retailers looking to gouge without their consent by cutting supply to those who sell above MSRP, but they have no incentive to do so if they are getting a cut of the extra margins.
Also, you could buy any 290/290X you wanted at the original gauged prices of $500-550 for a 290 and 630-700 for a 290X for quite awhile, but only recently has everything been selling out and prices going even higher.
I think there's a supply issue with AMD chips/cards as well playing a part in this. Launch 290/290X were near impossible to get and then they were never really restocked as everyone waited for custom cooled cards. Those only started appearing last month but in small quanties and came with the first set of markups...and now we have this huge shortage of cards leading to insane markups.
We will see the results in AMD's Q1 financials, but their Q4 FY2014 financials didn't really indicate them selling everything out, as they saw higher ASP but reduced GPU revenue. Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce business absolutely cleaned house. Reply
Death666Angel - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"I think there's a supply issue with AMD chips/cards as well playing a part in this."
You realize that you are describing the most basic economic principle, right? There is clearly high demand for AMD cards in NA because of cryptocoin mining. But that would be no issue if the supply was equally high or higher. Since it isn't, that constitutes as a supply issue. Duh. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkCryptocoin mining isn't a new phenomenon, there was obviously plenty of supply before Hawaii to keep the miners and gamers satisfied. This insane price gouging only occurred after Hawaii, which has been notoriously scarce on the market. Point is production is LOWER than previous AMD high-end parts, coupled with high demand this is what is leading to a much steeper spike on the supply/demand curve. I know a basic economic principle that you apparently glossed over. Duh.
We know for a fact they are not selling more GPUs at a higher price, ie. more supply and more demand, because their QoQ GPU revenues were down but their margins were up. I am sure we will see more of the same in Q1, don't be surprised to see much higher ASPs and margins btw. Reply
yuhong - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI think it started around the time Bitcoin/Litecoin prices increased in November. I hope AMD will respond by increasing production of the cards. Reply
chizow - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkYes it did, but Hawaii was already scarce and AMD started ramping down and fire-selling their old lines of GPUs (7950/7970 could be had for dirt cheap, like $150 for 7950 and $250 for 7970). But something happened in AMD's supply chain and they didn't ramp Hawaii enough and even 280X became scarce and price was quickly jacked up. Reply
Observanator - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkHow do you know for a fact that AMD started ramping down Hawaii chips? I see you are very active on the comments and trying really hard to prove that this is all some sort of AMD' scheme to increase the price. Instead of just casting baseless claims just go and read some of the comments people have left under review section of R9-290X board on NewEgg. You see quite few comments by miners who are saying they have mining rigs with 6 or more of these boards. If these guys are buying this number of R9-290X boards, the reason for increase in price is indeed crypto-currenty and nothing else. Reply
chizow - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - linkI didn't say AMD was ramping down their Hawaii chips, if anything they have been doing their best to ramp them up, but Hawaii is also the biggest chip they have ever made and the hottest GPU ever created, so it would not surprise me if they were having trouble getting the yields they would like on it.
They most likely ramped down Tahiti production prematurely, as they went into a firesale phase on 7950/7970 parts shortly after R9 280X launched instead of just rebadging those parts. You can verify this easily in any Hot Deals forum with 7950s hitting $150 and 7970s hitting $220. R9 280X stock quickly ran out, and only now are we getting the successor to the 7950 in the R9 280 (to be launched in a few weeks). Again, this coincides with the 8-10 weeks it would have taken AMD to bake new wafers at TSMC from that 1st week in December timeframe.
I just find it amazing people think AMD is not profiting from this at all and also unfair to retailers like Newegg taking the blame, given the fact many GPUs have sold out instantly in the past due to incredibly high demand and the MSRP was never raised in such a manner. GTX 480, 580, 680 and even Titan all come to mind as examples from the last few years. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"I just don't buy the notion AMD isn't getting a cut of this cryptocoin price rush."
Believe it. Like I said in an earlier post its been confirmed by multiple sources, including Anandtech. Retailers are seeing the benefits from the price hikes over MSRP, not AMD.
Facepalm to the rest of your post. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkAgain, a single link would be great, I've seen plenty of links to the contrary. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkReally? Cause you didn't provide any.
I've seen editors on Tom's say the same, but this is was the first example that came to mind. It's from Ryan Smith's most recent "Best Video Cards" article:
"Truth be told we had figured this would blow over by now (if only due to increases in mining difficulty multipliers), but AMD card prices have held their inflated prices for almost two months now. Which on a side note is good for AMD – they're clearly selling almost everything they can make – but it's also not great because they're not the one setting these new card prices, or the ones collecting the higher profit. The same goes for the partners, who are still selling the finished cards to retailers at normal prices. Instead the profit between MSRP and these inflated prices is being captured by retailers, which although is good for them (retail is a notoriously low margin business), it does mean that the always financially precarious AMD doesn't get to further improve their balance sheets in the process."
http://anandtech.com/show/7703/desktop-video-card-... Reply
chizow - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkSure here you go from their Q4 financials: http://www.zdnet.com/amd-suffers-q4-loss-a-rough-e...
"•GPU revenue decreased quarter on quarter and year over year due to lower unit volume shipments. Operating income was $22 million, compared to $18 million in the third quarter and $27 million in the same quarter a year ago."
"◦GPU ASP increased sequentially and year-over-year. "
Despite claims they sold out everything, their GPU revenue for Q4 was LOWER but their ASP was HIGHER both sequentially and YoY. If supply was not an issue and constant from Q3 as many here claim, they would have seen both HIGHER revenue AND higher ASP from their GPU division, especially given the fact they had two high-demand single GPU parts selling at higher prices than they have seen since the X1950XTX.
Rumblings of AMD GPU shortages, even back in Dec. 9th. AMD sending their "top man" out to Asia to try and ramp up supply, probably a bit too little too late given these chips take months to bake.
In summary, I think AMD is using cryptocoin and the blame vendors are getting as a convenient excuse for the supply shortages and price hikes so they don't look like the bad guy in all of this.
I guarantee you we see even more of this in Q1 2014, flat or lower GPU revenue (AMD's own revenue guidance was -16%) but higher ASP and higher margins. Reply
Observanator - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkHey Genius, the first link that you have provided and based your argument on, is for Q4-2012 NOT Q4-2013. Reply
chizow - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - linkYep was late, I couldn't find a breakout of Q4 2013 numbers but they did show an increase in Q4 revenue for GPUs but most of the increase was due to console numbers. Either way I think there would have been a much higher spike in revenue in Q4 if there was not a shortage on AMD's part. Reply
dragonsqrrl - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkWow, just wow. Those are your "plenty of links to the contrary" huh? The Revenue and ASP figures you're comparing are from two completely different years. I think you're trying a little too hard to connect the dots dude, and I hate to break it to you, but you're just not as smart or informed as you think you are. If you think you know something that Ryan Smith and a bunch of other tech editors don't know, take it up with them, but I would strongly suggest checking your conspiracy theories for inconsistencies before you do. Reply
chizow - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - linkAgain, I never said Cryptocoin wasn't increasing demand for AMD cards, I simply stated I believe AMD did not anticipate demand and/or were having yield issues on high-end Hawaii chips, leading to the current situation of high demand AND low supply.
If the situation was as AMD said and they were able to supply the channel as they would have liked, I doubt we would have seen such a small gain in Q4 GPU revenue while Nvidia cleaned up due to low supply and low competition from AMD. I think Q1 2014 will see more of the same. Reply
chizow - Thursday, February 20, 2014 - linkAs I predicted, JPR's Q4 2013 numbers start bearing this out. Guess I am as smart and informed as I think I am.
"• AMD's quarter-to-quarter total desktop AIB unit shipments decreased 3%."
Could certainly be AMD's console APUs cutting into their wafer allocation at AMD, given they shipped and sold roughly ~8M APUs to Sony/Microsoft in Q3/Q4. Those wafers had to come from somewhere and it looks like desktop discrete supply took the brunt of it. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 21, 2014 - linkAnd more evidence of ASIC shortages from AMD leading to low supply of their higher-end GPUs:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?ref=IE8... Reply
MrSpadge - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - link> In summary, I think AMD is using cryptocoin and the blame vendors are getting as a convenient excuse for the supply shortages and price hikes so they don't look like the bad guy in all of this.
Then why wouldn't they try it in Europe (and Asia?) as well? Here prices are still normal. Supply is not great, but we're not sold out either. And it's not like there wouldn't be a ton of gamers, hardware enthusiasts, BOINC crunchers etc. here. It's just that the electricity is too expensive to make big money with whatever-coin. Reply
chizow - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - linkBecause the additional demand isn't there in Europe and Asia from cryptocoin. I think you are seeing what true supply and demand is for AMD parts, strictly for gaming, where supply is not great but not completely sold out either. Reply
buttgx - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkTheir incentive is maintaining vendor relationships. Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkVis-à-vis burning their customer relationships??? What kind of relationship with a vendor would you have if you knew your vendors were selling your parts at 2x the price but keeping the additional profits for themselves? Reply
chizow - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkAnd would you continue selling to them without demanding a cut? Maintain supplier/vendor relationships and all that, right? Reply
Makaveli - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkThe only way I can see AMD fixing is to start selling Radeon's directly from AMD.com at msrp.
But i'm sure this will upset all the Resellers like New Egg because they won't be able to price gouge everyone. I will most like cause with any contracts agreement they have setup. And would probably hurt amd more in the long run. Sad state of affairs but what can you do.... Reply
chizow - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkAMD fixing this is easy.
1) Withhold shipments from vendors that are gouging.
2) Ship only to vendors who agree to sell at MSRP.
Problem fixed.
But obviously AMD has no interest in doing this, because they are obviously getting a pro-rated cut from the increased in ASP. Reply
Gigaplex - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWhy do you keep mentioning these options without mentioning the option of raising the price the vendors have to pay AMD? Reply
chizow - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkBecause I think they are already doing this....thus there is no incentive for AMD to force vendors to drop prices.
What is being asserted here is that:
1) Only vendors are responsible for the gouging.
2) Only vendors are profiting from the gouging.
I do not believe this is correct, because if that was the case, AMD could easily do as I suggested to stop this price gouging.
Right now they gain nothing, only a bad reputation from their customers while their vendors profit?
Sorry, this does not happen in the real world, and we will see this reflected in their Q1 financials (flat or reduced revenue with MUCH higher GPU ASP/Margins). Reply
Drumsticks - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link....holy cow Reply
leliel - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkAren't electricity prices lower in North America than elsewhere in the world? Could have something to do with it if nobody can turn a profit elsewhere. Reply
MrSpadge - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkOf course - that's pretty much the only reason for this craze. Reply
The Von Matrices - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkCorrect. Market forces dictate that mining migrates to the areas with the lowest electricity prices. The greater the disparity in electricity prices, the more concentrated the mining becomes. Since North America has the world's cheapest electricity by a large margin (barring exceptions like Kuwait), this shortage of cards is primarily a North American issue.
However, unlike what is being said in other posts, there is no electricity price threshold at which cryptocurrency dies because of high electricity prices. The mining market is almost perfectly elastic. An increase in average electricity prices will initially result in lower profits per miner, which causes some people to stop mining, which will cause difficulty to drop, which causes average payout to increase for the remaining miners compensating for the pricier electricity. Reply
Hrel - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"even we can't fail to notice what Radeon prices are quite literally up to." up to what?
I feel like that sentence was going somewhere then just stopped. Reply
Nalerian - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIt is fine...
What are you up to? Reply
skiboysteve - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWhat makes this phenomenon AMD specific? Reply
JDG1980 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkThere is a particular integer operation (BIT_ALIGN_INT) used in cryptocoin mining that takes only one cycle on AMD's architecture, but three cycles on Nvidia. As a result, AMD's cards have considerably higher hashrates per core / per watt. Reply
anandreader106 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI've wondered that same thing. Are AMD cards that much better for mining that Nvidia GPUs aren't even a consideration? Reply
bountygiver - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkYes
https://litecoin.info/Mining_hardware_comparison Reply
dragonsqrrl - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkBasically, yes. Reply
jimhsu - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkYes; however, improvements recently on the Nvidia side have been dramatic recently (as in, 100%). I can routinely squeeze 550-580 khash/sec from a 780 (non-Ti), and with some voltage modding and further overclocking, I imagine 600+ khash/sec is inevitable. Compare that to the 320 khash/sec on that chart. Reply
ArthurG - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linknext news, R9 290X hits $1k ! Reply
3DVagabond - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkNo, that would be the Titan Black that will be $1k. Reply
nicolapeluchetti - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkIn Italy mining seems not to be convinient because of electric energy prices and proces are normal
http://www.hw1.it/sapphire-radeon-r9-290x-21226-00... Reply
asd87afsda9087 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkAnd $290 - $220 = $70, thus he only paid $70 to go from a 7970 to a GTX 780. Don't worry, it's Friday. Reply
designerfx - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkNot all versions follow said pricing. I see a gigabyte version for $599. http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GDDR5-4GB-2xDVI-Gra... Reply
Death666Angel - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"Usually ships within 2 to 5 weeks." Counting anything that is not in stock as a proof against this trend is a bit misleading. Reply
Despoiler - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI just got that model for 598 shipped Fedex 2 day from another online vendor. They are out of stock now, but if you do a little digging you can get a not terrible deal. At least not as terrible as Newegg's prices. Reply
Alanreichel - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"They are out of stock now, but if you do a little digging you can get a not terrible deal."
Agreed. You have to be willing to search and spend some time waiting but there are still decent prices to be found.
Yesterday I picked up 2 XFX 290 DD's for $493 each. Only $94 over the reference card MSRP for a non reference card. 25 were in stock yesterday here:
http://www.shopblt.com/cgi-bin/shop/shop.cgi?actio... Reply
3DVagabond - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkNo, that's just another facet of the market. If you have to have instant gratification you will pay extra for it. If you don't mind waiting a few weeks you can save money and pay reasonable prices. Reply
konondrum - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"The culprit, as has been the case since the start, continues to be the strong demand for the cards from cryptocoin miners, who are willing to pay a premium for the cards in anticipation of still being able to turn a profit off of them in the long run."
The truth is actually much worse than this. The real culprit are criminal organizations who are using cryptomining in order to launder their money. They don't care if they are losing money in the process because it costs them significantly less than typical money laundering schemes. Reply
anubis44 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link"The truth is actually much worse than this. The real culprit are criminal organizations who are using cryptomining in order to launder their money. They don't care if they are losing money in the process because it costs them significantly less than typical money laundering schemes."
You've hit the nail on the head. If you have millions and millions of ill-begotten dollars, and you can go out and buy a bunch of graphics cards and convert that millions and millions of illegal money into bitcoins or litecoins, which can't be traced to you, that's a very strong incentive to do just that. The best part is that, once you've finished mining the coins, you can still sell the cards used and get back some of your initial outlay, so you've laundered all your illegal money by buying the cards and mining with them, and then you get untraceable bit/litecoins, and then you make legitimate money back when you sell the cards. If that's not ingenious, I don't know what is. Only thing is that the value of the bit/litecoins is only based on what people perceive it to be. If people suddenly decided en mass, that bitcoins weren't worth anything, then they wouldn't be worth anything. I'm pretty sure governments around the world are going to start clamping down on these crytocoins for this very reason. Reply
Despoiler - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkNeither of you two actually understand how it works. Reply
Enkur - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkEnlighten us please Reply
Krysto - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkMost of what they said is ignorant FUD combined with fantasies they probably got from the crime novels they've been reading.
None of the current crypto-coins are anymore anonymous than saying visiting Anandtech is doing it "anonymously". The only way transactions are "anonymous" is if you use Tor, but then you can say that about visiting Anandtech under Tor or anything else, too. There's nothing inherently "anonymous" about cryptocoins. Reply
3DVagabond - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linklol! What? So they are going to laundry millions of dollars one video card at a time in order to make it back mining. Also, how are they getting this dirty money to the etailers? From Swiss bank accounts? You've got to be joking. Reply
sphigel - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI don't have a problem with people using cryptomining to hide money from the government. Considering that they probably earned that money in a market that was made lucrative by our governments own ridiculous drug policies.
Criminals aside, from an individual liberty standpoint I think any technology that allows us to make large money transactions without government involvement is a good thing. Reply
Sunburn74 - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkI disagree. The reason we all have clean water, safety in the form of police protection, excellent roads, excellent hospitals is because of taxes. Cryptomining allows people to hide their money and thus enjoy public benefits without their input. Reply
Sunburn74 - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkI realize criminals don't pay taxes but why leave the avenue open for them? In addition, non-criminal individuals who are cryptomining and turning a profit are also not paying taxes on it. Reply
The Von Matrices - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkThe issue has existed for much longer than cryptocurrency has existed. The U.S. secret service said it perfectly in the Senate hearings a few months ago. If someone wants to hide financial transactions, cash is still much better than cryptocurrency, and they have been dealing with cash based transactions for centuries. Reply
twtech - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkI bought two of the 290x when they first came out @ $550 each. I had a feeling there might be a shortage if I waited - as that has been the case with most flagship video card releases lately - but I didn't expect them to nearly double in price. Reply
beginner99 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linklo. I think this is the first tiem in history a GPU is significantly cheaper in my country than in US Reply
r3loaded - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkWhy's this only happening in North America? Maybe it's because they have really cheap electricity? Reply
chizow - Saturday, February 15, 2014 - linkYes, and we have all the grey/black market industries where the anonymous nature cryptocoin payments make it really appealing to use, like buying drugs, online gambling purses, escort service payments, money laundering, buying guns etc. When mixed in with the users/miners who use it only for legit reasons, it all becomes part of the laundering/anonymous nature of cryptocoin transactions. Reply
Krysto - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkWow, are you sure you spewed all the FUD you could muster about crypto-coins? Maybe there was some left. I don't think you said drugs and cryptocoins in the same sentence enough times. Reply
chizow - Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - linkSaid drugs and cryptocoin once in the same sentence, but thanks for keeping track. Yes cryptocoins have legitimate uses, but the fact remains, it is popular for greymarket transactions and money laundering due to it's anonymous, unregulated, and decentralized nature. Reply
MrSmartyAss - Friday, February 14, 2014 - link... while in the meantime Goldman $achs is cybercoin mining with their shiny new D-Wave Quantum computer. Reply
The Von Matrices - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkPrices on NVidia cards have not changed. The only people who hurt from this are the die hard AMD fans who will not consider NVidia alternatives. I don't have empathy towards anyone who is brand loyal. Reply
Jeffrey Bosboom - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkPut another way, "Prices on Nvidia cards have remained high." If AMD cards sold at MSRP, Nvidia might be compelled to lower its prices and/or introduce newer cards sooner, offering more value for money. Even if you don't care whether your card is red or green, without cryptocurrency-driven demand, gaming value for money would be better. Reply
philipma1957 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkso if you game. mine a few hours a day and get your money back. for the premium paid. I have 2x r 290's mining at 75c temp and hashing 1650kh. they earned . about 260 usd over the last 30 days. so they cost me 740 not 1000. add 60 for power and I spent 800 for the pair. they will earn out by apr 1st. just in time for the warmer weather. Reply
3DVagabond - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkYes, we are all paying more for this. Both nVidia and AMD cards are above what they would typically be if the market had evolved naturally. AMD is making out better as well. They are getting full price for their cards without rebates, bundles, wholesale discounts, etc... Reply
testbug00 - Friday, February 14, 2014 - linkCan we start talking about being smart and finding a deal (relatively speaking)?
Newegg is basically leeching money out of people, meanwhile, a quick jump onto www.pcpartpicker.com, looking ta GPUs, visiting multiple sites and checking which are in stock can get you cards for under $750 last time I checked. Reply
MrSpadge - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkI wonder what the heck we need all those *coin hashes for. What if the coin-farms exceed the number of needed hashes? Is there any safeguard built in not to excessively waste energy in such cases? Or what if we don't have enough hashing power.. can you not trade *coins then?
To me this seems to be more of an "end in itself" rather than anything we should use our general-purpose number crunchers for. I'd rather have them do actual science, like folding proteins etc. Reply
Krysto - Sunday, February 16, 2014 - linkIf we can find an algorithm that can both fold protein and be safe enough for crypto-mining, perhaps. But we don't have one right now. Reply
dr.mahmoodloveyou - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkWhen I bought my retail Sapphire R9 290 for 399 from Amazon my brothers were critical ,as the reviews were mostly negative due to the noise and heat ,but at that time my logic was that if I want to refine this card I can simply do so with NZXT Kraken G30 + a cheap closed loop water cooling and I would still pay less than a GTX 780 (which was selling for roughly 520 $ at that time) ,when modified cards started to roll out I felt abit bitter ,as those were of a much better heat/noise levels .
Now I feel reallly happy for my decision ,as the cheapeast non retail 290 sells for over 600 atm!!! Reply
apoe - Monday, February 17, 2014 - linkImagine if all that 24/7 mining power was used on something useful rather than junk data with no intrinsic value. Reply
kwrzesien - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - linknVidia prices are going up now (2/19)! The EVGA GTX 770 Superclocked ACX 2 GB has gone from $345 to $375, with Amazon Prime now a 2 week delay. $379 on Newegg with shipping.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Reply
RNOblivion - Wednesday, February 19, 2014 - linkHad to shell out $750 for a second 290X a couple weeks ago, after purchasing the first on launch week for $550. Four days after that, they hit $900. Most of my PhD research is centered around computational electrodynamics, which are fantastically suited for OpenCL. I'm under a major deadline and had no option other than to order the card. I'm glad something as frivolous as a cryptocurrency has the capacity to impede science, and of course gaming -_- Reply


text:
Barcelona Architecture: AMD on the Counterattackby Anand Lal Shimpi on 3/1/2007 12:05 AM EST
- Posted in
- CPUs
83 Comments
Back to Article
Amiteriver - Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - linkSounds groooovy
Now lets just hope they have something good to plug it into. Reply
trisweb2 - Friday, March 16, 2007 - linkI just want to say how refreshing it is to read an article written by Anand. He is a master of the English language; he perfectly communicates and explains every technical detail and I come away with a better understanding of whatever he's talking about.
Thank you, Anand, for being a good writer! Reply
MrWizard6600 - Thursday, March 22, 2007 - linkI Agree, Outstanding.
No other site I know of gives nearly as many in depth details, and while ill admit my knowlage of some of the terms is sketchy, I got through that one with a good understanding.
Sounds like AMD has something to fight Core 2 against.
I do have one criticism:
I would have loved to have heard what Intels equivilent to all of AMDs technologies would be, mind you this criticism corrects it self toward the end of the artical. Reply
stance - Monday, March 05, 2007 - linkRemember AMD's old president and CEO Jerry Sanders with comments
like "We will see what we see" and "More bang for your buck" I
cannot wait to see duel socket motherboards with two four core
Barcelona's working their magic. reminds me of Carol shelby
when he brought the Cobra out for road test. exciting is not
the word, jaw droping performance? Don't take Richard's Statements
lightly Reply
lordsnow - Sunday, March 04, 2007 - linkDoes anyone have any idea how compatible the "Barcelona" CPU will be with current motherboards? When it comes out, does it need a new n-phase voltage regulator, for example?
the reason I'm asking is, I want to upgrade and with the current state of affairs was going to go for a C2D CPU. But with these Barcelona CPU's due out I may stick with AMD - get a AM2 motherboard and cheap AM2 CPU and upgrade to the Barcelona CPU at a later date. But I have to be sure that whatever motherboard I buy now will be 100% Barcelona compatible.
Can anyone inform us about what the situation is in this regard? Reply
coldpower27 - Sunday, March 04, 2007 - linkBarcelona being the server variant will be compatible with the Socket F infrastructure, while Agena will be a Socket AM2+ processor compatible with exisiting Socket AM2 infrastructure.
lordsnow - Sunday, March 04, 2007 - linkAny ideas as to what kind of features a user will be missing by dropping a AM2+ "Agena" CPU into a AM2 socket? The enhanced Power Saving features, perhaps?
chucky2 - Sunday, March 04, 2007 - linkI asked above and non-AnandTech folks like you and I said it would...but no one from AnandTech themselves jumped right in to give an affirmative.
I asked for links from AMD's own website confirming that Agena and Kuma would work in current AM2 motherboards, and no one posted back.
Right now the AM2+ CPU's will work in current AM2 boards rumor is just that, a rumor...when AMD themselves confirm it, or a site such as AnandTech confirms it with AMD and reports on it, then I'll believe it.
Until then, it's <i>probable</i> that AM2+ will work in current AM2 motherboards...if you're willing to take the risk I say go for it, else, wait until we have an official answer one way or the other.
Chuck Reply
Calin - Saturday, March 03, 2007 - link"Intel regained the undisputed performance crown it hadn't seen ever since the debut of AMD's Athlon 64."
Intel in fact lost the "undisputed performance king" title during the early lifetime of the K7 architecture. The Pentium !!! was faster at some tasks and slower at others (games) than the K7. Before that, the Pentium II was better than the K6-2 (the K6-3 had better IPC than Pentium3, but was slower in MHz) Reply
coldpower27 - Sunday, March 04, 2007 - linkIntel had the undisputed performance crown again with the Athlon XP 3200+ vs the Pentium 4 3.0C/3.2C and higher processors. Reply
agaelebe - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkWow! A lot of dicussion in here.
And, by the way, very interesting article.
I'm a software engineer from Brazil and I'm planning to change my PC this year.
I've bem using AMD processors since the K6.
Today I've a XP Mobile 2500+(@2.2ghz), 1gb ram, 200gb and an AGP 6600GT
My PC is not very slow, but I'm thinking in going dual core to speed things up(office applications, web development and some games).
I can run some of the newest games, but not in high graphics.
I expect that my PC can run C&C 3 (Already run the demo in 1024 medium, but have some craches although it's not running it slow)
So, today I'm thinking in 3 options:
1) Stay with this computer and wait until AMD launchs it's new architecture (I pretend to go with an average price Kuma)
2) Go with Intel Core 2 Duo (e6300 or e6400). They're not expensive and for games I can easily make an overclock and gain more performance.
3) Buy a good AM2 board and a cheap Atlhon X2 (3600) and wait new AMD processors and then change only the processor.
Here in Brazil the taxes are to high, so I'm planning in buying a PC with these specs:
- CORE 2 Duo e6300/6400 or X2 3600/3800
- mid-tier motherboard (
- 2 x 1gb DDR 800 4-4-4-12
- 2 x 250 gb
- X1950pro 256 or 512
- 500watts power
So the prices are below:
e6300 box US$ 300 (same price for a X2 4200+ box)
x23800 box US$ 220
motherboard: US$ 220
ram: US$ 400
video: US$ 450
case: US$ 150
HDs : US$ 250
Power: us$ 180
So I plan to spent about 2000 dollars (Sadly, I can buy this same PC in US for the half of the price).
My new PC should spent not to much power so I can leave it turned onall day long(max 150watts on iddle without monitor), otherwise I'll keep my old computer turned on just for downloding stuff)
So, If someone has an opinion, I'd like to "hear" it. You can give another options to, or make some comments about the specs I'm choosing now.
I had Pentium 75 and after that only AMD CPUs... Should know I surrender to the Core 2 Duo or believe that AMD can really beat it until the end of 2008?
And thanks for the cooperation and patience. Reply
Zebo - Saturday, March 03, 2007 - linkAthlon 64 AM2's arnt exactly slow so if you're an AMD fan just get one..like a 3800+ or 3600+ and overclock it. It will be at least 4x faster than what you have now and accept K8L Agena core later. It will be cheaper than C2D by about $50 USD and You'll also pay cheap for a GeForce 6100 Motherboard which is only $50 USD. Overall expect the the AM2 system to be about $100 USD cheaper.
Keep in mind that C2D is 20% faster clock for clock in most apps so it's not exactly a quantum leap here getting a C2D.. Gap gets a lot larger when overclocking since C2D's overclcok higher like 3.2Ghz is common on air vs. only 2.8Ghz for AM2, so, at the end of the day a C2D setup is able to be about 40% faster over most benchmarks. That is getting significant and why enthusiasts are buying C2D's. Reply
agaelebe - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkAnd,as always, sorry with the errors and not so good writing... Reply
Kiijibari - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkHi,
never heard of of that before, does anybody know what it is ?
So far I see 2 pad areas at the DIE photo, therefore I assume that it would be also 2 interfaces, e.g. x8 PCIe like Sun uses ?
Kiijibari Reply
mino - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkIt should be some management/coodrination stuff (can-t remember the name of that bus).
Every northbridge and CPU has that. Reply
davecason - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkAnand,
Great article! I know it took a lot of time and I wanted you to know I really appreciate your effort. It is the kind of article that keeps me coming back to your site.
-Dave Reply
yyrkoon - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - link
On average, about 1/3 of all instructions in a program end up being loads, thus if you can improve load performance you can generally impact overall application performance pretty significantly.
Page 5, paragraph 4 'pretty significantly'. Well is it, or is it not it ?
Aside from my gripe concerning writing style, good article :) Reply
trisweb2 - Friday, March 16, 2007 - linkUsually we criticize writing style based on a whole experience... obviously Anand is one of the best technical review writers on the Internet; if you bother to read his articles more fully perhaps you'd realize that. The colloquial writing sometimes brings it to a more personal level that a reader can better relate to and understand -- it works especially well in this case, where it's a future design, we really don't know how it's going to perform. That he can guess and say "pretty significantly" tells me he understands the uncertainty of the situation, and the language communicates that fact perfectly well. It would be more confusing if he said it would impact performance "significantly" as you want him to, as that would imply that he was more certain than he might actually have been.
Masters are allowed to bend the rules, and Anand is one, so lay off. Reply
yyrkoon - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - link*Is it, or is it not*
/me hangs head in shame Reply
baronzemo78 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkAny rough guess as to how Barcelona will compete with Core2 in gaming? Many articles have shown how Core2 gets you a slight FPS boost in games that aren't graphics card limited. I'm curious how Barcelona will fit in with the overall picture of DX10 cards like G80 and R600. Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkGames have quite a lot of LOAD instructions, like most programs, as well as plenty of branches (esp. in the AI routines). Most likely the boost that Core 2 gets is due in a large part to the better instruction reordering and branch prediction, although the cache and prefetchers probably help as well. Given AMD was better than NetBurst due to memory latency, through in better OOE (Out of Order Execution) logic and keep the improved latency and they should do pretty well.
Naturally, everything at this point is purely speculation, but in the next few months we should start to get a better idea of what's in store and how it will perform. One problem that still remains is that even if AMD can be competitive clock-for-clock, Intel looks primed to be able to go up to at least 3.6 GHz dual core and 3.46 GHz quad core if necessary. AMD has traditionally not reached clock speeds nearly as high as Intel, possibly due in part to having more metal layers (speculation again - process tech and other features naturally play a role), so if they release 2.9GHz Barcelona at $1000 you can pretty much guarantee Intel will launch 3.2 and/or 3.46 GHz Kentsfield (and/or FSB1333 3.33 GHz).
On the bright side, at least things should stay interesting in the CPU world. :D Reply
yyrkoon - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkYes, interresting indeed, but from experience, AMD has always been too vocal in what they plan on doing, especially during the times they are in a 'rut'.
What this usually means to me, is that AMD is trying to blow smoke up our backsides, we'll see though.
Keep in mind, my main desktop system, and my backup server for that matter, both are AMD systems. The phrase "cost effective" applies here. Reply
kilkennycat - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkYesterday, Intel announced that they were converting a fourth fab to 45nm. A great deal of confidence in that process. And a few days ago they announced desktop shipments of Penryn-based CPUs pulled forward into 2007. Looks as if AMDs 'window of opportunity' is likely to be very small. IBM has not yet announced a successful implementation of a RAM on their 45nm process. Intel had their RAM design on 45nm up and running late 2005. Reply
archcommus - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkTrue but the move to 45 nm might not make a huge difference in real world performance, just like the move to 65 nm didn't for AMD. Their next full blown architecture will still be a ways off. Reply
Roy2001 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkDislike AMD's move to 65nm process, move to 45nm has shown that Penryn would eats less power and runs faster thanks to its high K material and metal gate. Reply
smitty3268 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkEvery process shows that in theory before chips are actually being made on it. We'll see what actually happens when Penryn is released, not before. Reply
chucky2 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkHas AMD given any indication of how probable dropping an Agena or Kuma CPU into an existing AM2 motherboard will go?
Especially AMD's own newly released 690G or the upcoming nVidia MCP68?
Chuck Reply
mamisano - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkIt has been stated in the past that AM2+ based products will run in AM2 based boards. The limitation, if I understand it correctly, will be the lack of support of the new power features.
Someone correct me if I am wrong :) Reply
chucky2 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkThen it should be no problem for AMD to confirm through AnandTech that this is the case.
Surely if Barcelona is this close to shipping (only a few months away), AMD must know if Agena and/or Kuma will work in current AM2 motherboards, especially their own 690 series their just about to release.
All I'm asking for is a definite either way, it shouldn't be that hard for AMD to do at this point.
Chuck Reply
mino - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkAMD stated PUBLICLY to anyone who listened that AM2+ stuff will plug into AM2, just BIOS update needed.
Why should they react to any consumer who ask on some forum the same question every second week ?
Most important is they said it WILL(not "may") work with AM2-spec boards to big Tier 1 OEM's.
They can not make it incompatible therefore. They would be out of bussines in no time. Reply
chucky2 - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkCan you post the link that originates at AMD's own website then that says specifically that AM2+ CPU's are guaranteed to work - understandably maybe not supporting every new feature - in current AM2 boards?
Not a news post from DailyTech, The Inquirer, Toms, whatever...one that's on AMD's site itself.
And No, AMD could make AM2+ completely incompatible with current AM2 boards and they probably wouldn't see much drop if at all from the large OEM's. The large OEM's would just ensure that when the AM2+ CPU's came in, AM2+ motherboards would likewise come in.
Believe me, I want to see the link...because I'm desperately awaiting 690G or MCP68, whichever comes first (which is probably MCP68 at the pace AMD is moving on 690G).
Chuck Reply
yacoub - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - link
In order to keep die sizes manageable, AMD constructed its quad-core Barcelona out of four cores each with a 128KB L1 and 512KB L2,
You say 128kb L1 per core but the diagram image just beneath that text shows a 64bit L1 cache. Please confirm which it is.
Awesome article, btw. Seems like quite a significant group of changes to the CPU. Looking forward to seeing how it stacks up against the best Quad Core2 Intel can offer. =) Reply
yacoub - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkalso, please forgive my hasty typing - I wrote "128kb" and "64bit" - I meant "128KB" and "64KB" Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkL1 is 128K total - 64K data and 64K instruction. Reply
Beenthere - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkAMD doesn't do knee-jerk reactions like Intel because AMD has superior products. AMD continues to take market share from Intel in every segment and Barcelona will continue that trend. Barcelona looks to be every bit as superior to Intel's hacked/patched/glued together chips as Opteron was when introduced. Intel's chips depend on huge cache size for their performance and that crutch won't work after the intro of Barcelona.
For those without a clue, AMD didn't start design of Barcelona last week or last year. It's been in the development pipeline for many years and thr performance will demonstrate exactly why AMD's long term platform stability is the right choice for most enterprise buyers. Intel is gonna feel the pain again. Reply
Roy2001 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkFacts please, no BS. Reply
zsdersw - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkIdiocy incarnate. Reply
Regs - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkAMD, like Intel, start numerious projects. Just not all of them get to this finish line. Actually a lot of them don't even reach the end of the planning phase before being scratched.
As for Intel and their large caches...well I'd say it's amazing how half their die (if not more) is used for cache and still had enough space for all the core logic that's kicking the crap out of the K8 now.
Common sense! Reply
erwos - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkLooks like some good improvements coming down the pipe. The cache size issue makes me nervous, though - 512kb per core is starting to look a little antiquated, and there's no information about the bandwidth to the L3 cache (which, presumably, is slower than L2). Reply
SmokeRngs - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkIn the past, AMD did not need the large cache sizes that Intel did for their processors. This was very obvious in regards to the Netburst architecture. However, while Core2 is much better than Netburst there are still disadvantages for Intel.
I'll explain a little background as far as I understand it. In the K7 and Netburst days, Intel had to have the cache to make up for their long pipeline. Branch mispredictions are going to happen and the penalty on the long pipeline of the Netburst processors hurt their IPC badly. The shorter pipeline on the K7 did not have the same performance penalty due to the shorter pipeline. With K8, the on die memory controller also negated the need for large L2 caches due to the reduced latency when accessing main memory. This has been one of the major performance aspects for the K8 architecture.
The Core2 architecture obviously does not have the on die memory controller so the need for larger caches is still present and Intel sees improvement due to the larger caches. Barcelona still has the on die memory controller and the previous efficiency is still there and still negates the need for large caches. This is just the difference between architectures. While having a larger cache on the K8 did improve performance some in some usage scenarios, it wasn't on the same scale as the improvements Intel received with a larger cache.
AMD can't compete with Intel in regards to cache size. However, other architecture differences make up for the lack of large amounts of cache. Barcelona having a smaller cache does not seem to be a big problem. If it was a big problem, AMD probably would have gone with a larger cache to get the extra performance. Bigger does not always mean better or at least enough better to warrant the extra.
Smaller cache will mean fewer transistors which should mean better yields, lower power consumption and cheaper to produce. Reply
JustKidding - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkSo what you are saying is that it's not the size of your cache that matters as much as how well you use it. Reply
VooDooAddict - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - link
Smaller cache will mean fewer transistors which should mean better yields, lower power consumption and cheaper to produce.
With Cache size differences usually having small impact on performance for Athlon64s, the slight trade off for better yields and margins seems the better choice for AMD here. Reply
Regs - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkWhere was this article 8 months ago? ;)
I agree with Anands closing article that AMD now needs it's own "snowball effect" for the next couple of years. 4-5 years with a sitting target against a giant like Intel prooved to be costly in terms of competivness.
We all saw it coming when Intel developed the first Pentium M. It looks like AMD got the message as well and started the Barcelona project. Maybe AMD learned their lesson. Reply
iwodo - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkSo bascially all intel 's C2D improvement are made into Barcelona. And apart from Virtualization improvement there are nothing new from AMD that Intel doesn't have?
On performance note Barcelona doesn't seem to offer better clock scaling. I.e even if it is 30% faster then its current K8 it will only have slight advantage against C2D clock per clock. Not to mention it is up against Penryn. Although Penryn is nothing much then a few minor tweaks and more cache. It does allow intel to scale higher in clock speed.
And given AMD slow roll out rate, and AMD limited production capacity Barcelona never seem like much of a threat.
The article does not mention anything about FP improvement. Are AMD keeping them secret for now or is that all we are going to see? Reply
Spoelie - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkThe FP improvement is the SSE improvement, and according to the theory it's more powerful than what core2 duo is offering.
There are improvements mentioned that are not in core2 (+ other way around, like instruction fusing), and improvements that are inspired on the same principle but implemented differently. The architectures themselves differ widely (see earlier article that compares K8 with Core2 - reservation station etc.) so different implementations of principally the same optimizations on a different architecture will have vastly different effects. Even after these improvements, the capabilities (how much can you decode, etc) of each read nothing alike. And if it were all the same, AMD has the platform advantage, so it would still end up faster by virtue of nothing else but that. Some guesstimates made by varying sites would put Barcelona ahead in FP code and at the same level or slightly behind in INT code. But those are just guesstimates.
What I'm trying to say here is that barcelona is still very different from core2, and that we just don't know yet in which direction the pendulum will swing ;) Reply
Shintai - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkNo....precisely in theory is where Barcelona lacks. Core 2 Duo could in theory do 6 64bit or 3 128bit SSE instructions per cycle. Barcelona can do 4 64bit or 2 128bit. AMD provided this information aswell. Reply
Griswold - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkWishful thinking. Reply
Spoelie - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkHmmm, in the earlier article, there was explicit emphasis on the fact that 2 of the 3 units are symmetric in core2, but I'm not too sure what it means. It does imply however that those 3 units of core2 can only be used fully in certain combinations, and are not 3 independent units. On 128-bit performance, what was said is this: "so the Core architecture has essentially at least 2 times the processing power here [compared to K8]". Not 3 times, but "at least" 2 times, so again the 3 times will probably only be in certain situations.
The next paragraph said this:
"With 64-bit FP, Core can do 4 Double Precision FP calculations per cycle, while the *Athlon64* can do 3."
So K8 was not at such a big disadvantage when it came to 64-bit SSE, if Barcelona doubles everything SSE, it should come ahead in this area.
So to me it looks like for 128-bit, core2 will be faster in some situations, on par in others, and for 64-bit, Barcelona would be ahead.
If this is wrong, I do not know where some of the articles I read over time came from, implying Barcelona would be better overall in SSE. Reply
Shintai - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkCore 2 got 3 individual SSE ports:
AMD says 4 double:
And 64 or 128bit doesnt matter. I dont know how you think that way.
Barcelona got 2 SSE ports. They are able to do 2 128bit or 4 64bit. Most 128bit actually contains 2 64bit or 4 32bit.
Core 2 got 3 SSE ports. They are able to do 3 128bit or 6 64bit. Reply
flyck - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkcore duo has 3 SSE units but they are not symmetric, meaning that not every unit can execute all commands. Core duo can do at best 4DP flops/ cycle. the same as barcelona. Reply
BitByBit - Tuesday, March 06, 2007 - linkOne apparently overlooked detail of Barcelona's architecture is its instruction fetch ability: Barcelona is able to send 32 bytes (128 bits) to its decoders per cycle, where Core can send only 16 bytes to be decoded, increasing the likelihood of 'split fetch' cases in the latter. This means that, even if Core does have more raw FP power in terms of its execution units, Barcelona can expect greater utilisation of its FPUs/SSE, and the impact of this will be even more pronounced when running 64 bit code, due to the increased size of 64 bit instruction blocks. If Barcelona does, as expected, outperform Core in IPC in 32 bit mode, the performance gap may well increase in 64 bit mode. Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkDid you miss page 3? The SSE128 stuff largely deals with FP and cache improvements. Standard FP is still used, but most programs are optimizing for SSE2/3 as that can run circles around x87 FP performance. Reply
Spoelie - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkIs there no information on the bandwidth between the new caches? Or are they left the same? I'm only asking because last I read, Intel had a huge advantage in that department, with double or so the bandwidth between the caches. Isn't that important in FP-code, especially if you have to feed 4 cores (so the bw at the level 3 cache..) Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkPage 3: the cache bandwidth as I understand it should be doubled (128-bit vs. 64-bit), and several other areas have wider data paths as well. I think Intel has a 256-bit cache bus, so they still have more cache bandwidth, but as a whole it's difficult to say which will end up faster right now. The integrated memory controller has a lot of influence on a lot of areas, after all. Reply
Spoelie - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkK7 to K8 transition did the doubling of the 64bit interface to the 128bit one.. Core indeed has a 256bit interface (as far as I remember, even the P3 had a 256bit interface to L2). So according to page 3 the interface would be doubled again this time around?
I'm only asking because I remember this quote from Johan De Gelas' article a while back.
"The Core architecture's L1 cache delivers about twice as much bandwidth (Measured by ScienceMark), while it's L2-cache is about 2.5 times faster than the Athlon 64/Opteron one."
And that must have *some* impact on performance. I think the bandwidth of the L3 cache will also be key, but haven't seen any official information about it. Reply
BitByBit - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkK8 had a 64-bit read and a 64-bit write path to its L2 cache, giving a total of 128 bits. Barcelona has a 128-bit read and 128-bit write path to its L2, giving a total of 256 bits - the same as Core.
One thing that surprised me on the subject of cache was the associativity of the L1, which I had expected to see increased to 4-way. This would have allowed AMD to extend its lead in L1 hitrate and regain the ground lost in this area since the introduction of Core. Maybe we'll see an improvement to L1 associativity in future iterations of Barcelona. Reply
haplo602 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkGreat article, was a very interesting read.
Looks like I'll invest in an upgrade sometime beginning of 2008 when these new CPUs make their 2nd revision :-) Reply
Gigahertz19 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkArgh this article is such a cock tease. I read most of it but now I want some prelim benchies or some kind of numbers. Guess we'll have to wait till Mid-2007?
I can't stand the anticipation, my girlfriend pulls this same shit every now and then, she'll get me going then quit and laugh....I always tell her I'll pull the same thing on her and see how she likes it but I can never gather up enough will power :) Reply
MrJim - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkHello Anand, great article as always. I suppose your much at home nowadays building your house etc. But when are we going to read more of your blogs or the relaunch of anandtech? I think the plan was to have many of the staff to have their own blogs?
Hope you will write more often in the future! Reply
slashbinslashbash - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkI agree, I would like to see more Anand blog entries. The blog currently doesn't seem to be working -- I can't pull up any of the older entries. I would like to go back and read through some of the old Macdates. Reply
R3MF - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkthanks.
a 2.4GHz Agena on an AM2+ mATX motherboard, sat in a tiny SUGO 03 case sounds like a very tempting proposition later on this year. Reply
Macuser89 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkIs it just me or is this article saying that AMD is copying a lot of intel's advancements. Great in depth article AT. Reply
Le Québécois - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkI may be wrong but I think that new CPU or GPU technologies are planned years ahead so for me it look more like they came down to the "same" conclusion on how to improve their CPU. Only Intel did it 1 year before AMD. Reply
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkThere are fundamentally only so many ways to improve processor performance, and Intel used most of them with Core 2. That AMD is using similar patterns (more buffers, better branch prediction, wider execution, etc.) isn't at all surprising. Just because the same basic principles are used, however, doesn't mean that at the transistor level there aren't significant differences and challenges to overcome. Reply
archcommus - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkAnother great article that displays all the reasons why I read AT - lengthy, technical reviews written by educated authors that are interesting to read and to top it off, with no typing errors! I'm sure you guys use voice software to write these mammoths.
I was waiting for details on Barcelona for so long and this is finally it. I have no doubt that AMD will be up to par with Intel again, but the question is, will this significantly SURPASS Core 2 offerings at the time? I hope so but it's not a definite thing yet.
The best thing is, I'm a ways into my computer engineering degree now so I can actually understand a lot of these very techincal articles! Reply
Le Québécois - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkYou said:
...Barcelona's mid-2007 launch on servers and Q3 '07 launch for desktops...
But isn't it the same thing?
I mean mid-2007 is the 1st of july and Q3 also begins with july. Could you be more specific? Maybe the month we can expect them?
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkQ3 means anywhere between July and late September, while mid-2007 means June or July time frame. As the official launch date approaches, we'll refine things where possible. Reply
Le Québécois - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkThank you for your quick reply, as usual. Reply
mjrpes3 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkAny word on when the desktop variant of Barcelona (Agena) will find its way into consumer's hands? Reply
puffpio - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkWhen you refer to DDR3 you call it DDDR3
unless...there is a DDDR3 I don't know about? Reply
johnsonx - Saturday, March 03, 2007 - linkActually that's the new Double-Dog-Dare RAM-3.
JarredWalton - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkCrazy D's... they're like rabbits! Reply
AkumaX - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkGreat read. I love Anand's articles. We'll see what the future holds, for both AMD and Intel Reply
MAME - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkI wonder how much market share AMD will lose until this chip become readily available. Reply
tuteja1986 - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkNone... AMD will loose no marketshare. They are in bloody price war... Intel hasn't really regained any lost territory. But Intel have the advantage of performance is trying to find a breakthrough in AMD market share to retake back the lost territory. AMD is still selling everything they make but at huge looses caused by the price war.
Griswold - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkHuge loses? Do you mistake the loss of Q406 due to the ATI purchase as a loss due to selling under production costs? Reply
Phynaz - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkSeen that AMD cach flow recently? Reply
TwistyKat - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - link...you have people like me who won't buy anything from Intel. If we didn't have AMD to make Intel competitive we would never have the range of choices we have today. We'd all be running monster Itanics with massive electricity bills.
Intel has the resources to effectively put AMD out of business over time if it so chooses, and today I suspect they are focused on something close to that.
fitten - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - link
Intel has the resources to effectively put AMD out of business over time if it so chooses, and today I suspect they are focused on something close to that.
Won't happen. In order to avoid anti-trust lawsuits, Intel will give AMD money to keep them afloat before they'll allow AMD to fail. Reply
GoatMonkey - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkIf AMD were to be purchased by a larger corporation, like IBM, it would leave Intel free to beat AMD down with all of their resources. Of course, at that point AMD would have the resources of IBM behind it and could potentially fight back better. Reply
TwistyKat - Friday, March 02, 2007 - linkI remember a comment an IBM exec made in an online interview a few years back when it indirectly implied that AMD would not be around in five years. It was unclear exactly what he meant by that. Reply
zsdersw - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkFortunately for all of us, most people aren't like you. Reply
bamacre - Thursday, March 01, 2007 - linkYup, AMD is selling at prices so low, they must be losing money. Dell isn't paying shlt for amd cpu's, as you can tell from their pricing. Reply

subset: commoncrawl