News AMD launches 6W GX-210JA embedded APU

*system


and its measured in TDP (industry standard) - not SDP or whatever Intel wants to use this week......

 

they also say its a 6w part - which is TDP , whereas Intel only measyre average consumption (average for who though).


all double speak....

 

Intel's SDP thing pisses me off to no end, because people keep treating it like TDP and brag about how much better their intel tablet, netbook, or ultrabook is when ARM's Cortex A-15 is better in terms of performance-per-watt and price (compared to everything worse than i3). Its stuff like this why intel is monopolizing - people go for their best products whether they're needed or not, and people go for their worst products because it's marketed effectively to seem like the better choice. And then there's these same intel supporters (these forums seem to have a lot of them) who chew out companies like ARM and AMD saying stuff like "maybe if you made better products I'd buy your stuff" when their decisions are taking away the money those companies need in order to be competitive, only to get an extra 5FPS or whatever.

Suppose AMD's 6W TDP is true, with both the CPU and GPU under load, I can't imagine it'd be much better than an Atom, and Atom is pretty much the worst series on the market. AMD benefits most from clock cycles, so a 1GHz dual core just seems a little too limiting to be useful beyond Chromebook purposes.

 

I don't know what to think about SDP at this point. What matters to me is performance, not some esoteric power spec. Will it perform well while fanless and have good battery life? That's what matters, and we won't know the answer to those questions till the products are out.

 

For me personally, it depends on what the product is. On a desktop I care about what adequately does what I need at the lowest cost. When it comes to laptops, I care about a balance between performance and battery life. When it comes to netbooks or tablets, I care about price and battery life.

So, I only choose intel if I'm going for a non-gaming laptop - that's where, IMO, Intel is the best value. I'm likely never going to want intel for a netbook or tablet. Being a linux user who hasn't installed wine in about 4 years, I don't really have a need for x86.

 

@schmidtbag

While I can relate to your comments and agree with some of them I can't agree with much of your methodology. You talk about generic users but then use high level knowledge to criticise them. The generic user wants a 'cool' product that all the other 'cool' people have. That's it, end of. They may claim from time to time to care about performance, quality, battery life, etc... but the truth is they don't. If they did then they wouldn't still be buying the latest Apple products in their millions as they have never been the highest performance devices nor have they had the best battery life, but they were undoubtedly 'cool'.

The argument that people are locked to Intel products even though AMD may have a better solution for their requirements is also rather pointless. So what? There is also a case for personal preference and choice. I don't always have to choose the latest 'best' product because maybe I have trust in a brand and that just removes a level of stress from the issue. I like nVidia GPUs... always have. My first GPU was an nVidia one and so have all my upgrades (I think 4 different GPUs in about 12 years and currently still using a 9600GT, what can I say? I am poor). They seemed cooler than ATi when I started building PCs and they have never ever failed on me yet. So I trust them. Why would I want to learn all about AMD GPUs now which in theory would mean starting from scratch? Comparative GPUs from either manufacturer are not THAT far from each other regardless of the arguments that may claim otherwise.

Going back to the generic user, most of them don't understand how a computer or laptop is built or actually works so telling them about ARM processors just confuses them and you'll often just get asked 'Is it the same as my computer?'. To which they only want to hear one answer... 'Yes', even if that answer is not strictly true. These users do not want to know the details and they never will... they just want to feel safe with their purchase that they got a product that everyone else is talking about.

You are a knowledgeable person when it comes to technology, but these people are not and they have no interest to know either. Your arguments are only valid if you can explain to them why and how these other products may be better, but as they don't want to know about that they will never understand and so the whole argument becomes moot.

A car with square wheels is just as good as a car with round wheels if the owner has no intention of ever driving it.

 

@SchizoFrog
I overall agree with you and you're obviously right about nearly everything you said. Most of what I was saying was either ranting or what I personally prefer. For example, ARM is a pretty terrible platform for typical desktop or laptop users. It can do almost everything I need (with the exception of closed-source software), but Windows RT and Android make terrible PC OSes (RT needs more optimization and more programs, android works best on tablets).

I don't think that Intel is popular because it's cool, but rather because it's the most well-known name. People usually go for whatever they're most familiar with or have heard of most regardless of price and performance. This is why none of the last surviving US presidential candidates are any good - it's just a popularity contest, and sadly, people vote more on the political orientation they were raised to be apart of rather than vote on who actually supports their needs.

Anyways, aside from AMD being a fly in comparison to the mammoth that is Intel, AMD has a slew of disadvantages that makes them difficult to recover from:
* Their name - AMD is a boring abbreviation and is often replaced with the word "and" in google search. Intel is a clever acronym.
* Lack of media publicity - AMD doesn't have a catchy slogan and I don't think I've ever seen a TV commercial made by them.
* They often do things that are technically superior to intel but to the uninformed are worse decisions, such as favoring longer pipelines in order to achieve lower clock speeds (in the Athlon 64 days). Back then, people thought of frequency and performance as the same entity.

I've met people who have never heard of the company AMD, even if they had a computer with the AMD sticker on it. I have met people who would choose a Pentium 4 over a Phenom II x4, simply because the Pentium name was familiar. I have met people like the ones you mentioned, but to me, Intel is usually chosen due to people just knowing what the name rather than thinking they're cooler than AMD.

 

@Schmidtbag, Just to clear up a couple of points, I wasn't saying that Intel was/is cool. I was pointing out that the generic user just wants the cool product and doesn't care what is inside.

As for the P4 vs Phenom II issue, that is what I meant about people going with what they know. People like to blieve they make 'informed' choices but in actual fact they have no desire to be informed so they just go with the options they find familiar because it makes them feel safe, but going back to my analogy about the car, there is nothing wrong with their choice of a P4 over a Phenom II because they most likely will never ever be aware of the differences and performance benefits available to them. They just go online to hit up YouTube and Facebook and that is good enough. Once you tick that 'good enough' box everything else comes down to marketing and the 'cool' factor.

On another topic you mention about AMD, yes, they often do things first and are very innovative. Smaller companies have to do that and to take the risk of doing something different to gain an edge as they just can't compete on the same terms. But being innovative and the first to do something doesn't mean you are better at what you do. Business isn't a race, it's not even a marathon, it's more of a decathlon covering many different aspects to be successful and to survive. You don't need to be the best at all of the events, you don't even need to be the best at any of them to become the eventual and overall winner. AMD had a great little run in the days of the Athlon64 days but that is all it was, a little run and maybe we enthusiasts expect too much from them. Those days forced Intel to re-evaluate their road map and to chance their direction, which they did and brought us Core and eventually what we have today. If you thought of it as a boxing match you could think that Intel took a few punches in the early rounds to test and feel out AMD, but since round 3 they have been pounding on AMD ever since.