On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 4:30 AM, microcai <micro...@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 2012/5/29 Michael Mol <mike...@gmail.com> [snip] >> I'm mostly looking forward to Bulldozer support and RDRAND. >> > > LOL I thought no one buys it The average decent-quality AMD-supporting motherboard that supports the level of contemporary features I want costs 100-130 USD, and I generally go for a CPU in the range of $150-$180. So that's a total ticket price of about $250-$310 USD. I've been using AMD machines in my home for five or six years, now; generally, when one box gets upgraded, parts of it (especially the CPU) get put into a different box to upgrade that. That hasn't been possible on Intel. An Intel-supporting motherboard with the level of contemporary features I want becomes my first hurdle. Just for the base set of features I'd want (6 current-speed SATA ports, max "supported" RAM of 32GB, LGA1155), I'm looking at $230 and up. For a processor? $200-$320. And I'd want an i7, not an i5, so we're talking upper range. Yes, the early Bulldozers don't measure up to the Phenom II, but amdfam10 is going away, and Bulldozer will get past that mark. Rather similar how Intel's early NetBurst cores didn't manage to beat Pentium IIIs, but later ones did. (Yeah, NetBurst eventually bit the dust, and for good reason. I have to think, though, that a lot of what Intel learned with NetBurst went into preparing them for Sandy Bridge's incredible overclocking range.) So, yeah, while I'd love a performance-grade Intel desktop box, it's going to be hard to justify the price ticket. Even if I don't manage to get an IvyBridge desktop box, I do want to get my hands on an IvyBridge i3 motherboard; that RDRAND instruction is going to be sweet in a network gateway machine, and the power consumption deliciously low. -- :wq
