AMD passes Intel in market cap

Re:AMD passes Intel in market cap by NotZachari on Monday August 01, 2022 @03:09PM (#32310731)

While I'll admit that Intel's made several missteps recently and AMD has closed in, the reality is that they pad their numbers using pipeline and microarchitecture tricks to get higher raw stats that don't translate to real-world performance. Intel's tends to be a bit more expensive for the same "tier" with lower listed performance numbers but better performance. That's because AMD has consistently done shit like using shorter pipelines and rampant pipeline flushing. They have used sacrificing cycles to get the raw benchmark numbers to justify someone "saving money for more power". Intel's made a lot of mistakes recently, but I trust their chips to perform at the price point they're sold at. A quality AMD processor or GPU performance-wise is equal in price to their counterparts in Intel and Nvidia.

I'm not anti-AMD at all. I want competition in the marketplace, but their historical approach to this where they cut costs and use tricks to generate raw numbers makes it really hard to support them. "Consoles and gaming computers featuring them are selling like hotcakes!" Yeah because companies are looking to sell units at the highest profit margin.

I think the elite tier of this competition is a solid one, and I'm constantly watching to see what each company's pushing out. That being said, I think it's widely known that Intel's products in their low to mid-tier offerings are superior.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:AMD passes Intel in market cap by dralley on Monday August 01, 2022 @03:44PM (#32311135)

I'm not a hardware engineer so I have to ask, how is using "shorter pipelines" supposed to be illegitimate? Just because Intel may do better at the workloads you have in mind, that doesn't mean that AMD's approach doesn't do better in other (legitimate) workloads.

Pentium 4 and Bulldozer both had (very) long pipelines and look how they turned out. Long pipelines certainly doesn't fundamentally equal better real-world performance, short pipelines != better benchmarks. It depends on the combination of architectural decisions considered together, right?

You're going to have to expand on this concept a bit to convince people that these design decisions are a deliberate attempt to cheat the benchmarks, throwing out lingo doesn't quite suffice.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:AMD passes Intel in market cap by NotZachari on Tuesday August 02, 2022 @08:50PM (#32326329)

It's not that I think that shorter pipelines are a bad thing when implemented properly, but historically, AMD used that as a way to match or beat Intel on raw benchmark numbers. A shorter pipeline and pipeline flushing when ops hang or whatever means you get more operations per cycle on paper. If there's an issue, they'd just say "fuck it" and flush the pipeline and run it back, and because it's shorter, the pipeline is full and progressing fairly quick. That leads to higher benchmark scores for inferior hardware or stats that the average casual gamer or enthusiast sees. That leads to sales.

As I said, Intel's not perfect and I don't hate AMD. I want the best possible products. I just feel like market share isn't a great indicator of quality here. Threadripper and top tier AMD products are on the same level as Intel's products, but I personally tend to trust Intel's performance at the price point far more in real world situations. It was the worst kept secret in tech for years that AMD was gaming raw numbers at lower price points to sell units.

Gonna be real. This is all just my take on it, and I could be wrong or biased. I know they're not the same as they were 10 years ago and produce legitimate contenders at the top level. I just don't trust their low to mid-tier products.

[ Parent | on HN ]