Going to try AMD

I just ordered some AMD 64 bit hardware.  I have been hearing to much good about AMD64 and to much bad Intel recently to not take notice.  I decided I would try one and see what what happens.  I have already gotten ahold of WindowsXP for x86 and Windows 2003 Server for x64.  I think I was partially wrong in my previous analysis of Intel vs. AMD.  AMD seems to be driving the AMD64 technology into the volume space.  Intel doesn't seem to be interested in doing that, which I think could potentially be a mistake on their part.  If only AMD had a few more billion dollars in sales for this quarter...........................

Wally

7 Comments

  • Intel actually reverse engineered the AMD64 instruction set to add compatibility to their chipset. I thought that was an amusing turn of events.



    I run a dual AMD 64bit Opteron as my workstation. Unfortunately I also chose to go with fairly recent hardware in terms of video, sound, and storage. Specifically I have an Adaptec SATA RAID card that doesn't have 64 bit drivers available for it (that I can find). So I haven't been able to give WinXP 64 bit a whirl yet.



    However, 64 bit SuSE rocked. I was impressed with the sheer transparency of 32 bit vs 64 bit but I was most impressed with the decreased compile times. I can't wait until more driver support is available 64 bit Windows XP.

  • And you would be even more impressed if you actually tried IA-64 with 64-bit code. X86-64 is just extending the old x86 architecture, with all its problems - it gets you good backwards compatibility but I don't think it's worth it. Kinda like building Win98, Win98SE, WinME before finally moving over to the much better NT kernel.

  • Jerry,



    Its alwasy easier when you start from scratch. The problem is getting the customer to move along with you. That is the problem that IA64 has. It has not been accepted by the customer and doesn't exist in the volume space. I don't see any IA64 desktops at CompUSA on in a whitebox. That is the market that drives the cpu world.



    Wally

  • Actually the fact that you don't see any IA-64 boxes being sold shows that it's not easier to start from scratch :) It makes for better products but it's a much more difficult sell...

  • So the fact that it's "not easier", does that make it "better"? I don't believe so.



    IA64 will never make it into the volume space because it is too expensive to manufacture and the infrastructure doesn't exist to support mass commercialization.



    Being "better" does not always make you the winner, that's the effect of the free-market economy. Generally, consumers decide who wins and who loses. And very few consumers will take the expensive plunge of IA64 only to have their productivity killed by lack of useful applications.

  • Hate to sound un-geeky, but why bother? I mean, what advantage does a 64-bit architecture give to an ASP.NET developer who's just using his computer to develop Web apps, word process, and email?



    Again, maybe you're running CPU intensive scientific number crunchers, or something. Personally, I don't get it. :-)

  • Scott,



    Sorry, but to say that I just do webapps along with some word processing and email is to not read and understand my posts.



    Wally

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