AMD and Intel have shifted focus away from processor clock speed toward such issues such as power and heat. But the gigahertz are still climbing in one market segment: the ultra high-end, where gaming enthusiasts want the fastest silicon available. It is not a large market, but it is a loyal one. Both AMD, with its Athlon 64 FX-55 and 4000+, and Intel, which is refreshing its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors, are looking to stay true to clock speed and serve the small segment.
Mercury Research president Dean McCarron, is incorrect on all accounts.<br> "Extreme Gamers" are not the only market segment that requires the fastest possible clockspeeds on CPUs or GPUs. There are dozens of other maintream sectors that upgrade to these behemoth machines on a regular basis. Defense analysis, Geographical Information Systems, 3D map modeling, Terra-mapping, just to name a few. To say that the market field for high end CPUs and GPUs consists of only 20,000 users is completely false. If that were the case, my company alone is 2% of the entire market, which I seriously doubt. There is a reason AMD is pushing the FX and 64s cores faster and faster, it's because they know they are the lions share of the high end market. If they're able to push Intel out of that market completely, they'll win the CPU war overall. Intel will become akin to ATI, where they sell mainly to the lowend desktops, while their main competator gobbles up the market because they own the high end market. They'll realize too late that the high end eventually becomes the low end. By that time, it'll be too late and they'll be on the second rung of the CPU war, with AMD chips as the mainstream GPU. As a sidenote, any "Extreme Gamer" knows that CPU core speed is only a secondary factor to getting the most juice out of your machine. It's all about the graphics processor. So long as GPUs continue to excell, the "Extreme Gamers" will be happy. The other high end sectors won't however, we need those CPU clock speeds to continue to advance.
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AMD, Intel Stick with Speed for Gamers
Posted by: Jay Lyman October 18, 2004 01:19 PMAMD and Intel have shifted focus away from processor clock speed toward such issues such as power and heat. But the gigahertz are still climbing in one market segment: the ultra high-end, where gaming enthusiasts want the fastest silicon available. It is not a large market, but it is a loyal one. Both AMD, with its Athlon 64 FX-55 and 4000+, and Intel, which is refreshing its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors, are looking to stay true to clock speed and serve the small segment.
"Extreme Gamers" are not the only market segment that requires the fastest possible clockspeeds on CPUs or GPUs. There are dozens of other maintream sectors that upgrade to these behemoth machines on a regular basis. Defense analysis, Geographical Information Systems, 3D map modeling, Terra-mapping, just to name a few.
To say that the market field for high end CPUs and GPUs consists of only 20,000 users is completely false. If that were the case, my company alone is 2% of the entire market, which I seriously doubt.
There is a reason AMD is pushing the FX and 64s cores faster and faster, it's because they know they are the lions share of the high end market. If they're able to push Intel out of that market completely, they'll win the CPU war overall.
Intel will become akin to ATI, where they sell mainly to the lowend desktops, while their main competator gobbles up the market because they own the high end market. They'll realize too late that the high end eventually becomes the low end. By that time, it'll be too late and they'll be on the second rung of the CPU war, with AMD chips as the mainstream GPU.
As a sidenote, any "Extreme Gamer" knows that CPU core speed is only a secondary factor to getting the most juice out of your machine. It's all about the graphics processor. So long as GPUs continue to excell, the "Extreme Gamers" will be happy. The other high end sectors won't however, we need those CPU clock speeds to continue to advance.
Use RISC instead of CISC...