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Why no AMD iMacs?
- Thread starter Bkxmnr
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Tallest Skil
macrumors P6
There's Apple and there's Microsoft,
Just like there's Intel and there's AMD.
Yeah i'm an Intel fanboy. AMD just doesn't have the money to compete with Intel's RnD atm.
Just like there's Intel and there's AMD.
Yeah i'm an Intel fanboy. AMD just doesn't have the money to compete with Intel's RnD atm.
Hellhammer
Moderator emeritus
Intel is the Ferrari of processors, AMD is Lada. AMD may have better clockspeed for same price but it have been tested that Intel's 1.8GHz processor is simular to AMD's 2.4GHz. Intels are much better, AMD is just cheap crap.
ditzy
macrumors 68000
You know, since I 'converted' to apple I've said that I would not go back. This would be about the only thing that would make me go back.
And why no AMD iMacs why would you want one?
Cromulent
macrumors 604
God knows why. The PowerPC processors were very good back in the day.
They are used in the Xbox 360 for instance and are still in heavy use for small devices. Their big brothers the IBM Power line of CPUs are still used in heavy duty servers and other big computing systems.
PowerPC chips are in all three home consoles. The 360 has a tri-core, the Wii has a modern G3 (PowerPC 970s still have their use) and the PS3 is using a Cell.
I think Intel is a better choice than AMD's. When Intel get into 45nm, AMD still in 65nm. Also, some tests in magazine show that if two CPU in same clock rate, performance of Intel's CPU is much better than AMD' CPU.
firestarter
macrumors 603
It's pretty funny reading some of these comments about AMD.
5 years ago Intel was stuck in a marketing-driven quest of ever higher clock speeds. They did this by subdividing each instruction into ever-smaller slices, so that they could get away with doing less work for each clock tick, and hence push the clock speeds higher.
AMD were the company that managed to break this marketing gimmick, and they did this with the Athalon range that did more work for every clock cycle (so they were the ones that proved "It's not all about the clock speed"). AMD were also very quick to go onto smaller process sizes, and AMD developed the (now copied by Intel) 64 bit extensions to the processor.
The Athalon series were great, they were better than the Intel equivalent and AMD were eating Intel's lunch (or drinking their milkshake, if you prefer!)
In the end Intel woke up and were forced to eat humble pie by junking their 'netburst' architecture and going back to a more efficient architecture based on their old Pentium III.
Intel has done great in the last few years, regaining the lead and producing better CPUs than AMD. Intel isn't perfect though, and the guys at AMD aren't fools. At the end of the day Intel is a bigger company with much greater resources and they were able to buy back the lead they lost.
Apple went with Intel because Intel shared engineering costs for the first xx86 Macs and offered a great price. Apple also needed the trustworthy/'blue chip' image of Intel to help sell the migration.
5 years ago Intel was stuck in a marketing-driven quest of ever higher clock speeds. They did this by subdividing each instruction into ever-smaller slices, so that they could get away with doing less work for each clock tick, and hence push the clock speeds higher.
AMD were the company that managed to break this marketing gimmick, and they did this with the Athalon range that did more work for every clock cycle (so they were the ones that proved "It's not all about the clock speed"). AMD were also very quick to go onto smaller process sizes, and AMD developed the (now copied by Intel) 64 bit extensions to the processor.
The Athalon series were great, they were better than the Intel equivalent and AMD were eating Intel's lunch (or drinking their milkshake, if you prefer!)
In the end Intel woke up and were forced to eat humble pie by junking their 'netburst' architecture and going back to a more efficient architecture based on their old Pentium III.
Intel has done great in the last few years, regaining the lead and producing better CPUs than AMD. Intel isn't perfect though, and the guys at AMD aren't fools. At the end of the day Intel is a bigger company with much greater resources and they were able to buy back the lead they lost.
Apple went with Intel because Intel shared engineering costs for the first xx86 Macs and offered a great price. Apple also needed the trustworthy/'blue chip' image of Intel to help sell the migration.
andiwm2003
macrumors 601
Power PC processors were great 5 or 6 years ago. But then they were not developed any further and Apple had huge problems. Remember the 3GHz promise of Steve Jobs? Or the 6 month wait time for the 2.5GHz G5? Or the endless wait for a dual core G5? Or the need for a water cooled Powermac? Or the mobile G5 that never came (Powerbook G5 next tuesday)?
Then Apple switched to a company that has a predictable roadmap and that can deliver chips in quantities on time. And that in the critical mobile chip market. So Apple chose reliability first. On top of that Intel is better in the moment. But even if AMD had a 10% or 20% faster chip Apple would still stay with Intel because it's more reliable in terms of roadmap and delivery of high quantities. The speed differences between Intel and AMD don't matter that much anymore.
Then Apple switched to a company that has a predictable roadmap and that can deliver chips in quantities on time. And that in the critical mobile chip market. So Apple chose reliability first. On top of that Intel is better in the moment. But even if AMD had a 10% or 20% faster chip Apple would still stay with Intel because it's more reliable in terms of roadmap and delivery of high quantities. The speed differences between Intel and AMD don't matter that much anymore.
AMD used to be better than Intel. Then Intel got off their @sses and ditched the antiquated Pentium junk for the Core series. Since then, AMD has been seriously lagging in performance.
AMD's 4-core CPU yield is so low, they have to offer a 3-core CPU to get rid of the faulty CPUs!
AMD's 4-core CPU yield is so low, they have to offer a 3-core CPU to get rid of the faulty CPUs!