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Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!


Are they making it, or just re-branding it?

How are they going to make any money when the poo poo is like $1/GB?

I could see the AMD brand of RAM being successful, especially with people who build AMD systems. But anyone who's not stupid knows memory is just memory.

If you're going to spend an extra $30 for some AMD ULTRA HYPER RADEON RAM so your Llano box is faster, why not just put it towards an i5 or something?

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Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom
Memory is a commodity part with extremely low margins, it won't help their bottom line. They will probably do something like bundle it with their CPUs to make them look like a better value to those that don't know better.

Beef
Jul 26, 2004
They are rebranding, simply adding marketing bullshit to Kingstone RAM.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Beef posted:

They are rebranding, simply adding marketing bullshit to Kingstone RAM.

I was about to ask how they were making their own RAM without fabs or (to my knowledge) having a RAM design team. But your post beat me to it by explaining.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Beef posted:

They are rebranding, simply adding marketing bullshit to Kingstone RAM.

It's not marketing bullshit.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Yes but paying extra for AMD-branded memory versus getting some G.Skill RAM, on the other hand, is not worth it. It's worth it for AMD since they just license their brand and get the cash money they desperately need for no effort, but I can only see it being worthwhile for consumers if you get pretty killer Newegg combo deals.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Alereon posted:

Yes but paying extra for AMD-branded memory versus getting some G.Skill RAM, on the other hand, is not worth it. It's worth it for AMD since they just license their brand and get the cash money they desperately need for no effort, but I can only see it being worthwhile for consumers if you get pretty killer Newegg combo deals.

Just like there's no benefit to buying that over the plain-jane RAM rated for the same speed.

Did they announce prices? I don't think they would price it any higher than gamer RAM with taped on red heatsinks anyway.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Bob Morales posted:

Just like there's no benefit to buying that over the plain-jane RAM rated for the same speed.
They don't make plain-jane RAM at above 1333Mhz, and even if they did the gamer RAM would still be cheaper. OEMs like G.Skill track the wholesale DRAM prices better than the bulk module makers do so they're usually a few dollars less expensive. The really stupid thing about the AMD-branded memory is that they're targeting lower latency, which hasn't made the slightest bit of difference for quite some time.

mik
Oct 15, 2003
oh

Yeah cause the margins on memory are so huge. Good work AMD.

Devian666
Aug 19, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe
Most failed companies diversify into other areas when they aren't profitable at their core businesses. They should be focusing on making ati profitable first. Then look at getting more profit out of the CPU business. At least they have admitted they are really competing with intel anymore.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Again, AMD isn't diversifying or launching any new products, they're just licensing their brand name to companies already making memory. They get cash money for literally zero work.

Devian666
Aug 19, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

Alereon posted:

Again, AMD isn't diversifying or launching any new products, they're just licensing their brand name to companies already making memory. They get cash money for literally zero work.

Seriously I hope this is what they mange to do. Gut feeling we may be discussing in a year how they managed to lose money.

Tragic Otter
Aug 3, 2000

Bob Morales posted:

It's not marketing bullshit.



That's just with Llano. Sandy Bridge doesn't see much benefit from faster RAM. So it is precisely marketing bullshit, albeit bullshit that does have a performance impact when you have a specific choice of components.

And really, who goes Llano without discrete graphics for gaming, then buys faster memory for the performance impact? Don't everyone raise your hands at once, now...

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

Faceless Clock posted:

That's just with Llano. Sandy Bridge doesn't see much benefit from faster RAM.

Part of the point here is that AMD makes and sells Llano and not Sandy Bridge. And adding faster RAM to Llano improves its value vs. Sandy Bridge solutions.

Agreed
Dec 30, 2003

The price of meat has just gone up, and your old lady has just gone down

AMD's performance scaling with faster, pricier RAM is sort of a mark against it, though, so I'm not sure why it's being brought forward except in the purest sense that it is indeed related to AMD and memory...

Spiderdrake
May 12, 2001



Isn't that in the GPU end though, not the normal CPU driven benchmarks? That's nothing new then, just new in you have a choice what RAM its using.

fat bossy gerbil
Jul 1, 2007

What does this mean for the existing stocks of Phenom II chips? I've got an Athlon II X2 240 right now and I'd like to make that an X4 640 because my motherboard is still good for a new CPU. Will they be gone soon or do I have some time?

BlackMK4
Aug 23, 2006

wat.
Megamarm

Faceless Clock posted:

That's just with Llano. Sandy Bridge doesn't see much benefit from faster RAM. So it is precisely marketing bullshit, albeit bullshit that does have a performance impact when you have a specific choice of components.

And really, who goes Llano without discrete graphics for gaming, then buys faster memory for the performance impact? Don't everyone raise your hands at once, now...

Laptops.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Faceless Clock posted:

That's just with Llano. Sandy Bridge doesn't see much benefit from faster RAM.

AMD is the one who's....oh nevermind.

Abe Froman
Jul 2, 2003

The Sausage King of Chicago

Bob Morales posted:

It's not marketing bullshit.



Does this apply equally to the A6 in a laptop or is it just for the A8 in a desktop?

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Abe Froman posted:

Does this apply equally to the A6 in a laptop or is it just for the A8 in a desktop?

I think the E350 is limited to 1066MHz or 1366MHz because of the frontside bus.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

Abe Froman posted:

Does this apply equally to the A6 in a laptop or is it just for the A8 in a desktop?
The A6-3400M is limited to DDR3-1333, the A6-3410MX is limited to DDR3-1600. If you have a 3410MX it would be worth using DDR3-1600 over 1333.

Devian666
Aug 19, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe

The French Army! posted:

What does this mean for the existing stocks of Phenom II chips? I've got an Athlon II X2 240 right now and I'd like to make that an X4 640 because my motherboard is still good for a new CPU. Will they be gone soon or do I have some time?

You will still have a bit of time. I've got a motherboard that I might upgrade the cpu on price dependent. Though I might put an X6 in it as the cpu utilisation is on the high side.

Ryokurin
Jul 14, 2001

Wanna Die?

Devian666 posted:

Most failed companies diversify into other areas when they aren't profitable at their core businesses. They should be focusing on making ati profitable first. Then look at getting more profit out of the CPU business. At least they have admitted they are really competing with intel anymore.

Look at the 3rd quarter results. Their biggest area for growth has been mobile where they can't keep up with demand for Llano. Revenue increased 35% over the previous quarter. ATI is profitable, but logically it depends on if they are the fastest that quarter or not and that market is not going to grow and may possible shrink as more people are exposed to integrated graphics. Going towards mobile is the right choice right now.

Popete
Oct 6, 2009

This will make sure you don't suggest to the KDz
That he should grow greens instead of crushing on MCs

Grimey Drawer
So after just reading about AMD giving up on competing with Intel for the desktop PC processor marketing and switching over to more mobile embedded systems. Today in my embedded systems class we had an ARM representative come in to talk about the company and how they operate, really interesting stuff. I got the chance to ask him about his thoughts about AMD moving into the mobile market which is completely dominated by ARM. I asked if AMD might license ARM or partner with them (interestingly Intel is actually semi partners with ARM as a company they recently bought was previously partners with ARM) he seemed to think that AMD might partner with ARM, and produce their own chips, but use the ARM architecture.

Tragic Otter
Aug 3, 2000

BlackMK4 posted:

Laptops.

These benchmarks are not for laptops.

But even if we go out on a limb and assume the impact is the same, having to buy new RAM to extract the most out of your brand new laptop is not exactly appealing.

Edit: And as pointed out a lot of laptops don't even support faster RAM, so...

Tragic Otter fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Dec 1, 2011

Tragic Otter
Aug 3, 2000

Factory Factory posted:

Part of the point here is that AMD makes and sells Llano and not Sandy Bridge. And adding faster RAM to Llano improves its value vs. Sandy Bridge solutions.

Yea, so it's exactly marketing bullshit. A tie-in between products, to make the processor look more appealing. We're splitting hairs here but that seems like a marketing move to me, otherwise what is the point of putting the AMD logo on it?

Not that it ultimately matters because, like I said, the number of folks who know how to upgrade their RAM, but would also buy a Llano APU and game on it using only the integrated graphics is...zero.

That's what the benchmark was showing. It was on a Llano system using only integrated graphics. Once you throw in a discrete graphics card all of that performance benefit from RAM probably goes out the window.

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
No one is talking about buying new AMD-branded RAM to upgrade your system, all the articles talk about it being bundled with existing AMD products. So, for example, you'll see a combo available of a Llano processor, motherboard, and AMD-branded DDR3 at $20 discount from Newegg.

BlackMK4
Aug 23, 2006

wat.
Megamarm

Faceless Clock posted:

These benchmarks are not for laptops.

But even if we go out on a limb and assume the impact is the same, having to buy new RAM to extract the most out of your brand new laptop is not exactly appealing.

Edit: And as pointed out a lot of laptops don't even support faster RAM, so...
A fair amount do, example being (Intel side) the Lenovo X220 which officially only supports up to 1333, however:

quote:

The performance numbers from upgrading the memory was insane. We saw performance gains from 6% to 86% depending on the benchmarks with the largest performance gains coming from graphics intensive games. Who would have thought that the area that gained the most was the frame rate in games? If you want to get better performance out of the Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU on your Sandy Bridge laptop this is more than likely the best way to go about it. You can literally feel and see the difference in everything that you do on the system, so this is an ideal upgrade for those that want 8GB of memory and better performance.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1599/10/
Kinda blows the ' Sandy Bridge doesn't see much benefit from faster RAM.' thing too.

BlackMK4 fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Dec 1, 2011

Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice

BlackMK4 posted:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1599/10/
Kinda blows the ' Sandy Bridge doesn't see much benefit from faster RAM.' thing too.
Sandy Bridge doesn't benefit from faster RAM, they just did those tests incorrectly. Their test system had an incorrect base memory configuration so it was running substantially slower than normal, so of course a higher-clocked matched pair of modules beat it. Anandtech has some pretty thorough tests here that show that the only applications that are memory bandwidth limited are data compression and video compression, and only to a small extent.

Talaii
Sep 5, 2003

You crack me up, lil buddy!

Alereon posted:

Sandy Bridge doesn't benefit from faster RAM, they just did those tests incorrectly. Their test system had an incorrect base memory configuration so it was running substantially slower than normal, so of course a higher-clocked matched pair of modules beat it. Anandtech has some pretty thorough tests here that show that the only applications that are memory bandwidth limited are data compression and video compression, and only to a small extent.

To be fair to legitreviews, anandtech tested performance with a discrete GPU. I think it's a reasonable assumption that memory bandwidth will be more heavily taxed when running the integrated GPU as well as the CPU cores.

Zhentar
Sep 28, 2003

Brilliant Master Genius

Popete posted:

I asked if AMD might license ARM or partner with them (interestingly Intel is actually semi partners with ARM as a company they recently bought was previously partners with ARM) he seemed to think that AMD might partner with ARM, and produce their own chips, but use the ARM architecture.

What would AMD gain by moving to ARM? What about their technology, design experience, or other strengths gives them a significant edge over existing ARM competition? Nothing. They're doing well in the x86 mobile market because their integrated GPU (and its drivers) kicks the poo poo out of the competition. But the ARM GPU competition is not nearly as weak as Intel, and unlike the low-end x86 market, the existing ARM SoCs out there have more than sufficient GPU performance for the vast majority of users.

Maxwell Adams
Oct 21, 2000

T E E F S

Faceless Clock posted:

These benchmarks are not for laptops.

But even if we go out on a limb and assume the impact is the same, having to buy new RAM to extract the most out of your brand new laptop is not exactly appealing.

Edit: And as pointed out a lot of laptops don't even support faster RAM, so...

Also, AMD isn't selling any laptop ram, just desktop ram.

ravis
Jun 21, 2002
I think its pretty clear that as long as the gpu uses the system ram like most (all?) integrated gpus do any upgrade to the ram speed should improve gpu performance as that will usually be a bottleneck no matter if its sandy bridge or whatever.
So the only question that remains is will someone who buys a desktop computer without a discrete gpu care about gpu performance enough to upgrade ram to faster speeds? I think most people won't. Laptops would be different imho as having no discrete gpu is much more common especially in low cost or thin/small laptops and having a little bit of extra performance would be interesting.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Zhentar posted:

What would AMD gain by moving to ARM? What about their technology, design experience, or other strengths gives them a significant edge over existing ARM competition? Nothing. They're doing well in the x86 mobile market because their integrated GPU (and its drivers) kicks the poo poo out of the competition. But the ARM GPU competition is not nearly as weak as Intel, and unlike the low-end x86 market, the existing ARM SoCs out there have more than sufficient GPU performance for the vast majority of users.

They arent going to move to ARM. They might want to make a nVidia Tegra competitor, and they have more experience in CPU / GPU integration then nVidia does.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Dec 2, 2011

pienipple
Mar 20, 2009

That's wrong!

ravis posted:

So the only question that remains is will someone who buys a desktop computer without a discrete gpu care about gpu performance enough to upgrade ram to faster speeds?

Might be good for an HTPC setup as it eliminates a major source of heat in the small case. That's not a very large market though.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

pienipple posted:

Might be good for an HTPC setup as it eliminates a major source of heat in the small case. That's not a very large market though.

Especially with competitors like Sigma whose SoCs are cheaper/somewhat less complex options for powering set-top media boxes. TI's DaVinci chips are also very powerful for their price; they even sport integrated DDR2/3 controllers, PCI Express, SATA, USB and Ethernet. All on one BGA for ~$80 at quantity, IIRC. Why would you even bother dealing with x86 at that price? Licensing a BIOS, trying to minimize power consumption, etc...painful.

pixaal
Jan 8, 2004

All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.


movax posted:

Especially with competitors like Sigma whose SoCs are cheaper/somewhat less complex options for powering set-top media boxes. TI's DaVinci chips are also very powerful for their price; they even sport integrated DDR2/3 controllers, PCI Express, SATA, USB and Ethernet. All on one BGA for ~$80 at quantity, IIRC. Why would you even bother dealing with x86 at that price? Licensing a BIOS, trying to minimize power consumption, etc...painful.

The main reason I can think of is a little project, your a massive nerd and want to do it yourself. It's like the time the router at my house was a piece of poo poo in highschool, I put an old Pentium 2 I got from the dump, slapped 6 NICs in it ran linux and made a router and RAID with some IDE HDDs with a cheap PCI RAID card. Did I need this monstrosity? No, not really, and I'm sure it cost more then a quality router. My parents always bought the cheapest one at best buy, and a $30 router (or whatever the gently caress they cost back then) wasn't going to let me run torrents 24/7. Though I did end up moving my client to the "router" it was a nice black box.

So people that like to do it themselves will build their own. I've actually wanted to build my own media box for awhile now, mostly because more control, and its something to spend time doing. But if anyone other then you is going to be using it its probably better to get a pre-made box because the end user is going to understand the UI a ton better then whatever you cobble together.

roadhead
Dec 25, 2001

The 1100T I bought as a consolation prize for myself installed smoothly - but I can no longer get any sort of program to read its temperature outside of in the BIOS it-self.

HWMonitor, AMD Overdrive, SpeedFan all say 0c - preposterous!

Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P with the F8N BIOS revision of course.

Oh well I needed to upgrade in order to build my brother's wedding gift you see...

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Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Use CoreTemp for monitoring AMD CPU temperatures.

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