Jozef Halada, on "trailing in performance"
If AMD executes on this roadmap (Hiroshige's estimate), AMD will be trailing in performance only for about 6 months.
Trailing in performance? So what? What is important to most of us is not the last 10 or 20% of performance at peak, it's the overall platform deployment cost. AMD leads here big time. Why go with Yonah, for instance, when you can now (or at least, shortly) buy a Turion X2 that has dual core, 64-bit, and first-class virtualization. I mean, what more could you want? If the performance is a little less than you desire, buy more memory or a faster hard disk drive. The key is, you're getting a stable platform that offers everything you want over the next 3 to 5 years.
Let's say you decided to investigate Intel's virtualization instead -- what do you get? VT level 1, not ready for prime time (http://www.vmware.com/support/kb/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=FB1zBU7i&p_lva=&p_faqid=1901&p_created=1131115124&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTM2JnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9aW50ZWwgdnQmcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT03JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwxPX5hbnl_JnBfcHJvZF9sdmwyPX5hbnl_JnBfc29ydF9ieT1kZmx0JnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li= )
, and perhaps cancelled in your platform to boot: reghardware.co.uk
What if you decide to standardize on AMD's upcoming socket F server systesm or AM2 desktop/workstation systems? You also get everything you want for a stable, long-lived platform. And you get the assurance that you can upgrade that platform to quad core within 2 years. What more could you want? AMD has no shortcomings. 10% or 20% performance here or there -- who cares? |
