Re: Advice on system purchase
On 10/29/2012 02:15 PM, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 28. Oktober 2012 schrieb Stan Hoeppner:
>> On 10/28/2012 4:38 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>>> On Sb, 27 oct 12, 22:27:30, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>>>> Coming from a 2800+ which is a ~60 watt CPU, and given the fact
>>>> you'll never make use of more than 2 of those 8 cores, I recommend
>>>> a dual core AthlonII X2 @ 3.4GHz. I have the 3GHz model and the
>>>> 2nd core is pretty much always idle, with primary core being idle
>>>> most of the time as well, as is everyone's.
>>>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103953
>>>
>>> Any opinion on a Core i3 (Ivy Bridge)?
>>
>> I use and promote AMD exclusively. If everyone buys Intel then AMD
>> exits the x86 processor business. If/when that happens, Intel has no
>> competition and can and will do two detrimental things to the market:
>>
>> 1. Raise prices with impunity
>> 2. Innovate at a lower pace, or stop innovating altogether
>>
>> If enough people buy AMD then Intel has a strong competitor. This
>> keeps the marketplace healthy and keeps Chipzilla from becoming a
>> total monopoly WRT x86.
>
> Granted. Thats the political reason.
>
> Still I see nothing in AMD space that can compete with recent Sandybridge
> / Ivybridge processors in terms of computing power versus power
> consumption ratio.
>
> But I am happy to learn more.
>
> I think that ARM will become interesting enough to have some competition
> going on.
>
> And I think AMD might have something nice to offer as competition to Intel
> Atom CPUs.
>
> For powerful laptops and power saving desktops I think Intel
> Sandybridge/Ivybridge is best bet currently - except for the political
> dimension.
>
At the same time, I have reservations about supporting AMD -- or more to
the point their subsidiary, NVidia -- when purchasing hardware. It seems
to me that Intel has been a better friend to FOSS than its competition.
I run my systems without proprietary software or firmware. Intel has
made that a lot easier for me. I like to reward them for that -- not
that any of those companies would ever notice whether or not I was a
customer. NVidia certainly didn't give a d*** about me when I was trying
to get support for three workstations running their most expensive
pro-sumer graphics cards. (And that was on Windows, as well as on
GNU/Linux.)
;-)
the worrier
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