Feb 05 2011
Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer
Despite Intel’s botched Sandy Bridge release, I’m still excited about them. I know the SATA problems are well documented at this point, but there’s no question that those new CPUs are great. Intel’s public reputation will be restored to a degree after those faulty motherboards are recalled in full and new ones are released.
It does have me wondering what AMD thinks of Intel’s recent problem. I’m sure they’re taking notes so that they don’t encounter similar quality issues when their new Bulldozer chipsets come out. It would have been great timing if AMD had that chipset ready to go right as Intel has announced the SATA problem and then the recall. I would imagine AMD could have gotten a few people who were on the fence about the Sandy Bridge chips to buy their Bulldozer.
I don’t claim to be a fanboy of either Intel or AMD. Truth be told, I would like to see AMD doing a better job of keeping up. During the megahertz wars, AMD caught up, but quickly lost ground when it came to what’s been referred to the core wars, where the number of cores is now one of the big differences.
AMD’s upcoming Bulldozer chipsets have garnered a fair amount of buzz on some of the tech forums, but until I’ve seen them get tested, I’m going to remain extremely skeptical of some of those claims which state it’s 50% faster than the existing chips (presumably prior to Sandy Bridge’s release). 50%’s a big jump. I’m just not sure AMD will be able to deliver on that kind of hype.
If I had the money, I’d go with the Sandy Bridge system after the motherboard SATA problem gets ironed out and new mobos are shipped in a few weeks.
But if I had my chance at a dream system, I wouldn’t go with either. If someone at Intel has a spare i7 970 or i7 980x lying around, I would love to get my hands on one of those. 🙂 They’re not Sandy Bridge processors, but they’ll still blow the doors off anything AMD has available right now and for the near future.
It’s unfortunate, but at least they’re being honest about it. Some other companies, like nVidia and VIA had a tendency to cover up their chipset problems in the past.
It seems to me that AMD is focusing more on the integration of the CPU and GPU together than making the fastest processors. They could get some extra speed out of that, though… maybe. 😀
I won’t be buying a new processor for a while, the original Core 2s I have are still fast enough for me.
I wonder how much of a speed increase is truly attainable with the CPU+GPU stuff. That’s not an area I’ve looked at very much.
I have an 8800GT in my PC and can’t stand to use it because of the insanely loud fan. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t do any serious gaming anymore.