Isn't anyone else crazy enough....

[Killswitch]

to run an AMD Phenom around here? I lost the battle against the urge to upgrade (again) and I ordered a 9950 125W BE last night.
Just wondering, am I the only person in these forums who's crazy enough to brave having one?
Almost everyone's sig I've read here on HWC lists an Intel cpu...... save for a few Athlon 64 X2 owners.
Does everyone think AMD cpus are really THAT bad? Hardly anyone even talks about them!
It's no secret that Intel is holding the bag right now, but the way I look at it is this.......
AMD cpus are alright and offer some decent gaming performance.
They aren't going to be able to develop new stuff and compete very well (which keeps prices down) if no one buys them.
Why does everyone follow the same boat?

[Kayen]

Agreed, if not for being peer pressured i would have bought AMD, i just looove to support the underdog, however i didn't (shameshame to me going nvidia/intel)
I've seen alot of former amd fanboys switch to intel recently too...
If this keeps up we won't be seeing much competition at all, even though there's barely any at the moment...

[MacJunky]

Actually, I was recently considering going with AMD when I replace my mobo, CPU, RAM and PSU in the next couple to a few months.(They are being passed down to my sister) I do not know exactly why but I suspect that it is the underdog aspect like Kayen mentioned that would be attracting me. Not to mention the fact that I can then remove the blue LED stuff from my case. :P
Though, it is really hard to actually decide to do that with Intel's current offerings.

I suppose I should browse around for some suitable parts on NCIX and check some reviews again.. However an E8400 and EP45-DS3R are looking pretty good I must say.

*Edit
Killswitch, if you are still awake and have some free time during perhaps the next 5-7 hours or even tomorrow feel free to contact me via AIM or MSN if you wanna chat about AMD hardware. I do want to give serious consideration to getting some even though not everybody here would agree with me.

[Eagle Eye]

Originally Posted by Killswitch

to run an AMD Phenom around here? I lost the battle against the urge to upgrade (again) and I ordered a 9950 125W BE last night.
Just wondering, am I the only person in these forums who's crazy enough to brave having one?
Almost everyone's sig I've read here on HWC lists an Intel cpu...... save for a few Athlon 64 X2 owners.
Does everyone think AMD cpus are really THAT bad? Hardly anyone even talks about them!
It's no secret that Intel is holding the bag right now, but the way I look at it is this.......
AMD cpus are alright and offer some decent gaming performance.
They aren't going to be able to develop new stuff and compete very well (which keeps prices down) if no one buys them.
Why does everyone follow the same boat?

It hasn't half as crazy as what I did, just look at my sig...I mean given I can play pretty much every game I have maxed out at 1920x1200 on ultra high settings, but that aside you should see how bottlenecked this GPU is. To be honest I don't regret it as you probably won't either buying that Phenom 9950. So enlight of the thread title you're not the only one thats a little crazy .

I agree with you completely competition is a good thing its what drove down the high prices of the GTX 280 to a pretty reasonable $400 after rebates.

Everyone follows the intel boat now because it just makes sense ultimately it comes down to performance for your money. I would love to get a Phenom and an AM2 board, but spending 300-400 knowing full well I can grab an Intel board and CPU for about the same price and have it walk all over the AMD setup enough said.

Maybe things will change a little for AMD once the AthlonX2 6500+ is released, thats the $100 cpu I will be getting.

EE

[Dr_BenD_over]

I've got a server sitting by me here at work running a 9500. I can't really bench it though to see how it compares to my Q6600, it's got Windows Server 2003 on it, and try getting drivers for a 2600XT for that.

[sswilson]

Unfortunately the AM2 platform has mostly been one disaster after another which has seen many AMD fanboys (myself included) jump ship.

It all started with the attempt to force migration from S939 to the AM2 platform with no real performance gains. Dropping S939 processor production was (IMO) as popular as Coke's attempt at switching to "New Coke" without the ability to switch back to recover from the backlash.

Add to that very poor performance when compared to Intel chips, hardware bugs in their chips discovered after release which resulted in yet another performance hit, major issues with backwards/forwards compatability with AM2+ boards, and Intel's agressive pricing you've got what is pretty well a no win situation for AMD.

It's not all doom and gloom though.... switching to a new platform will allow AMD to start fresh, and will hopefully allow them to start competing against Intel's new platform.

[1Tanker]

Originally Posted by Killswitch

to run an AMD Phenom around here? I lost the battle against the urge to upgrade (again) and I ordered a 9950 125W BE last night.
Just wondering, am I the only person in these forums who's crazy enough to brave having one?
Almost everyone's sig I've read here on HWC lists an Intel cpu...... save for a few Athlon 64 X2 owners.
Does everyone think AMD cpus are really THAT bad? Hardly anyone even talks about them!
It's no secret that Intel is holding the bag right now, but the way I look at it is this.......
AMD cpus are alright and offer some decent gaming performance.
They aren't going to be able to develop new stuff and compete very well (which keeps prices down) if no one buys them.
Why does everyone follow the same boat?

If faced with this decision.. building new... i wouldn't give the Phenom a second thought. If i had an AM2 board, i would get one. I went with E6600 when Phenom wasn't out... and X2 couldn't compete with C2D. Then i had the choice of my E8400/GA P35-DS3L... and it still offered more potential than AMD..as i love O/Cing. I guess i'm not crazy enough, yet... but if they released a knockout architecture... that overclocks awesomely... i'd certainly consider a switch.. when the time/money is right.

[miggs78]

Hey KillSwitch overclock that thing, get us some benchmark numbers please.. otherwise Ima kill your switch .. :D

I'd love to see how these processors do, I was a die hard fan of AMD, and since Intel has been out with their Core 2's, I've left AMD in the dust, also been suggesting Intel over AMD to many builders, but when I do that, ir hurts my heart from the inside.. lol

[Scratch]

Originally Posted by miggs78

Hey KillSwitch overclock that thing, get us some benchmark numbers please.. otherwise Ima kill your switch .. :D

I'd love to see how these processors do, I was a die hard fan of AMD, and since Intel has been out with their Core 2's, I've left AMD in the dust, also been suggesting Intel over AMD to many builders, but when I do that, ir hurts my heart from the inside.. lol

well along with sswilson's accurate assessment the other issue with the Phenom is that it doesn't OC worth crap as it is basically set to it's highest frequency already.
I also used to buy AMD and ATI however I go where the performance lay. If at some point in the future they build a decent platform I may go back, until then Intel wins
BTW I sold my old AMD 939 4300 system to a friends son and he's still using it going on 5 years later

[Killswitch]

The main thing that drove me to the decision was seeing how my buddies 260 core 216 performed in my system compared to his which has a Q6600 at 3.2GHz, a 750i mobo, and mushkin DDR2-800.
His setup was getting at least 10fps more in Crysis Warhead with the only main difference being 2 AMD K8 cores VS 4 Intel Kentsfield cores. So based on that, I wanted a 4870 but knew my cpu would hold it back. So I'm hoping a Phenom at 3.2GHz ( <- I hope I can get it that high! lol ) will fix that problem.

Anyhow, I'm gonna do some benchies with:
1 - X2 and 3870
2 - X2 and 4870
3 - Phenom and 3870
4 - Phenom and 4870

I'll probably do everything with the cpus at 3.2GHz for a more acurate comparison.