Off to Lake Tahoe for the AMD Launch!
Posted by Stephen on
November 13, 2007
Since AMD has never invited me to attend before, I’m guessing that whatever they have up their sleeves is going to be big enough to give “ChipZilla” and nVidia a run for their money. It probably cost them at least $3000 to fly me in, rent me a limo, feed me, and put me up in a five star Hotel, not that I’m complaining. However, I’m really hoping to be dazzled.
At World Cyber Games, they made some mention about taking a serious look at “Performance Per Watt”, which sounded like sort of a cop out to me. They also showed off some powerful new tools for enthusiasts and beginners alike to allow them to tune their PC’s to perfection as well as a sneak peek at their Quad Core CPU. They’re going to need a bit more than that to impress people and I know a lot of AMD fans are hoping that this is the news they’ve been waiting for. I hope I get some free CPU’s and Video Cards to take home 
Speaking of Free Stuff…
On another note, it is another week of CRAZY GIVEAWAYS over at Futurelooks. This week, Ultra Products is stepping up to giveaway an Ultra Grid ATX Case, X3 600 Watt Modular Power Supply, and a USB Buddy Hub. Go win some stuff!
I better get to bed or I’ll miss my flight. Stupid 6:30 AM flight! I’ll catch up with you guys if I can snag some WiFi during my stopover in Phoenix.
It’s going to be interesting to see how the Phenom CPUs and Radeon HD 3850/3870 cards score.
So far from all the benchmark results that were leaked earlier this month it looks like AMD’s new offerings will have to be much cheaper if they want to compete with Intel and NVIDIA.
Have fun
Pricing is definitely a huge concern. Why buy a part that performs worse for the same amount of money? I guess we’ll see what they have to say about it during live benchmarking tomorrow. Tonight, I drink their booze and eat their food
Have fun Stephen
-Mike
Yeah, have fun you bastard
I’ll be here working my ass off before the Writer’s strike makes me unemployed
Haaaaave fuun stevie man and keep up the good work!!!!
Any news from Lake Tahoe? I think making this event was a horrible move…
Oops… Guess I should do a post
I don’t think it was a total waste of time. If you think about it from the big marketing picture, it was smart because it gave AMD a chance to punch the point home about the platform, and not one single product performing under par. The value proposition comes from a full solution with all AMD parts that costs considerably less than a comparable INTEL platform. The other parts of the value equation comes from ease of use from a unified platform customization software that gives experts to beginners varying levels of comfort level controls to get as much performance out of the platform as possible. Many mainstream users don’t want to dick around with settings. They want to push a button and go so AMD has recognized that.
Based on my limited benchmarks (had to leave early due to a poorly scheuled flight), I can definitely see where the weak points are. However, as a plaform, it performs very strongly (factoring in price too) and I think that moving forward, we will see more integrated solutions being pushed by AMD under the SPIDER moniker. Software was also a key factor here as the demos we saw with HD encoding being accelerated by the GPU were well received. This opens up a brand new market for GPU’s that assist home users that do mainly video and photos, that may otherwise shun the need for a powerful GPU.
Although, in the end, I didn’t really think it was totally necessary to fly us all out and party with us, It did give me a chance to put my fingers on the pulse of the people in the company. Everyone there had high hopes that moving forward, AMD would be in good shape. That’s something you don’t really get when a company drops a package of parts on your doorstep.