Ars: AMD Fusion won't kill the GPU, but what if it kills the CPU?

[ImaNihilist]

Intel following in AMD's footsteps? Intel has been leading the IGP push for the last decade. Nvidia got in the game and forced them to push forward a little harder. Sandy is the evolution of Intel's own IGP platform. AMD went like 6 years without selling a platform. It wasn't until they bought ATI that they even tried. They bought ATI who has managed to work together with AMD to make some very mediocre, short-run products. Seriously, is there a single OEM using the AMD platform?

And that's why Fusion doesn't even make any sense. Who [OEMs] is going to buy it? On what platform? What kind of products can OEMs even create? If AMD was Intel and their platform was the standard, they could pull it off. They could create dozens of different SKUs and drop them in. Intel can get a single platform into market and keep it there for four years at at time.

Fusion is AMD following in Intel's footsteps, ignoring the fact that they don't have a platform or the clout to pull this off. They can't get the pricing. They won't even be able to offer this at a highly profitable margin, because they can't do the volume.

Here is my review without even using it:
Balls: 10/10
Effort: 8/10
Execution: 2/10
Timing: 1/10

AMD is killing itself. AMD is still building products while Intel is building solutions.

[nukefault]

They bought ATI who has managed to work together with AMD to make some very mediocre, short-run products. Seriously, is there a single OEM using the AMD platform?

Aside from Gateway, Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, and HP you mean? Well, there are probably others but I'm too lazy to dig up a list. Check out AMD's platform partners. By my count they're missing Dell (always the Intel diehards) and some of the small companies.

And AMD's platforms are mediocre and short-run? HD3200 had a solid year of well-reviewed life in the budget sector, HD4200 has built on the success of HD3200 and combined it with decent CPUs (which is really what AMD lacked in the mobile sector since nVidia IGPs were quite a bit more expensive than AMD and not a whole lot better until the 9400M) like the M300 (only drawback is 35W ACP but mine has never had heat issues even during long SC2 sessions). Now the HD4200 refresh (HD4250/75) is doing the same with the 25W P320 and related processors and finally has most of the major OEMs signed up and producing kit.

Ontario will probably be a hit for outperforming Atom at similar price points (and probably performing much like a P320/HD4250 in a far lower ACP/TDP). Llano will be a tougher sell but it will also have a pretty short market life; looks like 6-9 months.

You still haven't addressed my points about the technical superiority of on-die graphics. They can certainly be disabled if nobody wants them but like you said, discrete mobile graphics tend to be an overpriced, overheated sadgasm that kills mobility. On-die increases performance and decreases heat and power. How can you possibly be against that?

Why is it a gimmick when AMD does it and just fine when Intel does it? Because AMD doesn't have Intel's brand presence? That makes no sense. How is selling a CPU with on-die graphics any harder than selling a CPU with mainboard graphics? Especially when the on-die graphics get a free performance upgrade at better power and heat levels.

[nukefault]

The current AMD platform: criticize it if you will, but it definitely exists and it definitely has the majority of major OEMs signed up for it. Note that the system in my sig is part of the Dragon *platform* as well. http://www.amd.com/us/products/noteb...-platform.aspx

Oh yeah, they're missing Asus too as far as I know. But Sony has an extensive AMD line so I'd say that's a tie. Sony is overpriced, but they aren't exactly known for selling laptops based on mediocre, short-lived platforms. Remember their silence on AMD during the crappy Turion days? Something convinced them to warm up to AMD since then, and with a pretty wide range of models using pretty much all of AMD's mainstream platform options.

And there's rampant speculation that even Apple will sign up for Ontario in the next iPad and possibly Mac Mini/Macbook. iMac is basically a desktop with no high-end graphics option so that'll probably carry Sandy instead.

[ImaNihilist]

AMD sells a seemingly random assortment of chips to most OEMs. A mix of what seem to be constantly rotating chipsets and CPUs, whatever is cheapest at the moment.

Intel ends up singing long term deals with OEMs for chipsets, and in some cases actual motherboards (often through partners like Foxconn). It's one of the reasons that AMD is pretty much absent from IT. I can still easily get a new Intel 945G motherboard, even though it's 4-years old. Hell, I can probably buy it boxed, retail, directly from Intel.

My point is that in order for something like on-die graphics to work, you have to sell the complete solution; and you have to sell it at a scale that makes it profitable. If, all of a sudden, every notebook has a Sandy-equipped motherboard then it's easy for OEMs to order a wide range of chips and drop them into different SKUs. Thus, due to the volume, they are cheap enough to be economical for the consumer.

If, on the other hand, every time an OEM wants to create an AMD Fusion product they have to order all new components, often from a different manufacturer, the result is a non-price competitive product.

Even if Fusion is a good performer it won't be able to be truly price competitive in the way AMD products need to be (i.e. priced lower than an Intel product). And OEMs won't adopt it because they don't have a sustainable platform to build from.

Sandy is the evolution of Intel's IGP. For the last 4 years they've been selling complete solutions. When OEMs wanted to create something with a little more punch, they threw a dirt cheap NVIDIA IGP against it. Now Intel is moving to a new platform.

AMD, on the other hand, has spent the last 4-years struggling to incorporate ATI into their portfolio. They have no platform, and while ATI was once the IGP leader, they have now fallen into 3rd place.

[nukefault]

Sure, AMD has pretty fast turnover, but they don't sell random chips. They sell the newest generation and the generation previous to it. That may be a problem for IT, but AMD parts are generally quite cheap and their hardware has a long lifespan. Sure, you may be able to buy a new 945G direct from Intel, but can you plug your Core2 processor into a Lynnfield mobo? How about plugging your Nehalem into a P45/55? And Sandy will require *2* new sockets.

On the AMD side, I can take the old X2 6000 someone gave me as thanks for helping them reformat their hard drive and plug it into a shiny new 880G mainboard for an ultra-cheap desktop with very decent multimedia capability. I can buy a new X4 945 and plug it into some old AM2+ mainboard, holy cheap upgrade Batman! It just works! I don't need to buy new parts from Intel when I can mix and match old and new parts as I wish. That's a much better solution.

Also, AMD can easily make up for their poorer economy of scale with more down to earth pricing. Even now they rule the sub-$100 market and have little performance competition below the $200 i5 760. Phenom X4 kills Clarkdale in everything except single-threaded performance; Clarkdale is a decent gaming/HTPC solution but that's about it. Problem being not that Clarkdale is bad but that it's priced a quarter higher than it should be.

AMD is fine as long as Intel's looking for inflated margins, and Bulldozer should be enough to make them competitive again, if only up through the midrange. And the on-die graphics will give AMD a much-needed performance boost. Without it they'd basically become the next Intel without embarrassingly poor graphics that hold back the industry... but none of Intel's market power to force their junk down everyone's throats.

Intel will already kill off AMD's entry level discrete cards and utterly destroy its mobo IGPs with Sandy. Fact is, regardless of IT acceptance (where margins are tighter and Intel's got a massive upper hand anyway), AMD *needs* Fusion to compete.