“AMD fanboys have taken on the characteristics of Apple computer lovers, and are hell bent on destroying the plucky little microprocessor vendor with smothering love, if you can call it love. They’re trashing the company. For the love of AMD, let’s all stake our claim to independence and run the colonizing freakazoids off the Web before they impose more of their imperious ways on the rest of the PC market. Happy fourth.” Read the editorial at TomsHardware.
TomsHardware: Stop Smothering AMD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’d curious as to what his real reason for writing this article is, but overall it makes no sense and sounds like he’s ranting. Apart from mentioning earnings it’s not backed up with any real facts, and just goes on and on about some “AMD fanboys” that don’t finacially support the company? I don’t get it, this is the worst article I’ve ever seen from THG.
What happened to the second post that was here a minute ago by Teo Loli?
I’ve noticed in the past year or so that Tom’s went from a straight-only-the-facts-tell-it-like-it-is website, to something i would expect from a teenager, particularly with the comments made within lots of articles that are very negative and sarcastic to just plain ignorant.
my .02
nivenh
> What happened to the second post that was here a minute ago by Teo Loli?
That was nothing but a troll impersonating my brother. Nothing to worry about. The comment got deleted.
That’s how some people are fighting for their ideas these days when someone (me) does not agree with them on some issues. By trying to troll.
Kids. You are.
Tom has a couple of disgruntled former associates (possibly employees) that he did something to antagonize. Strange, but the two I know about both are big AMD advocates.
Anyways, if you want names (they don’t care), Chris Tom who runs http://amdzone.com and Van Smith at http://vanshardware.com.
I’ll be you one or both have some sort of reply to his article at some point.
I’m not sure what happened to it, but someone had a screen shot of Tom’s front page when he posted an article claiming the P4 to be the performance king (I think it was about the time northwood was released, and the reviews were definitely mixed at the time). Anyways, on the same page as that article was a HUGE intel advertisement banner.
As Martin Luther King once said, “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
Omid is protective of his love interest. He is disappointed that AMD is struggling with getting the 512K Barton shipped, getting the Mhz up on LittleHammer and BigHammer, and trying to figure out what the hell to do with that convoluted HyperTransport pipeline to AGP8X (hint to AMD: if HyperTransport is the Hammer, everything is not a nail). Omid wants his lover to come in first place. And having those rough, cruel AMD Fanboys beating up his beloved is just too much for him to handle.
Hey, we’ve just got to face the facts. Many companies other than Intel are having a tough time with their .13 micron process. One can only speculate what sort of internal hell AMD is going through right now, having had to outsource Barton to UMC.
LittleHammer and BigHammer are the boldest, biggest steps AMD has ever taken. It is not the same thing as buying Nexgen, making a few tweaks, and riding it for a few years. This baby is happening the old fashioned way. And birth ain’t no candy boy process.
As for wanting AMD to have that smooth, cool, collected uber-killer culture that Intel does, well, perhaps Omid needs to reflect that only the top dog feels like the top dog.
Omid has been known to go off into the deep end now and then. He doesn’t call his column “Second Hand Smoke” on accident, you know. It’s some damn fine lines that Omid cranks out at night 😉
Let me end with a little mantra that we can all say for the success of the Hammers:
“A son of two mothers,
he attains to kingship in his
discovery of knowledge,
he moves on the summit,
he dwells in his high foundation”.
– Rig Veda 1: 10: 2
#m
I think I’m going to respond to this article with the same level of maturity that it was written.
As my then 16 year old sister-in-law would say, “whatever” or “talk to the hand”.
Sheeesh.
landar
I don’t consider myself to be pro-AMD nor pro-Intel. I just usually look at the benchmarks whenever I need a new computer and get whatever’s fastest at the time
Sometimes I go AMD, sometimes I go Intel. I have been very happy with both so far.
does anyone listen to toms hardware reviews/tips any more? amazing.. its becomed so damn biased and stupid lately, its funny.. i’ll stick to anandtech or hardocp i think – tom is just.. well.. blah.
ok, i have to admit, being known to toms hardware review site, which has been biased and filled with alot of bs the last year or so, i didnt read the article before i submitted the first answer.. after reading it though, i have to say, this is the most stupid article i have ever read. and this is supposed to be from a serious hardware review page? oh cmon.. this is laughable.. i wonder if tom was drunk at the time he posted this on his site?… atleast that would be a “little” excuse.
But, me, as a AMD fanboy, don’t like AMD for anything else but for giving the best value for money :-). Well, Intel spends more on marketing and advertising, so obviously their prices are more expensive.
And I love this quote, “Apple’s fan base includes nice looking graphic designers who are not guys, and they have the odd writer and movie star on their user list. Apple is the anti-PC PC. But, what does AMD have to gain from being an outsider? ”
AMD may be good in marketing, or may not be good at it, but it’s product lines are much more confusing than that of Intels. For example, first the Athlon, the the Athlon 4 and then the Athlon XP. Athlon 4 is however Athlon XP for mobile users. It is quite confusing, and AMD could be better off getting the image agency Intel hired.
That article was probably one of the worst I have ever read. I want my 5 minutes back! No, but seriously, I don’t even understand what he was talking about. He was just ranting about some “AMD Fanboy” garbage, he didn’t even back it up with quotes or facts or anything. I think Tom needs to stick to reading the scores from 3DMark and showing people how to get an inexpensive Water-Cooling kit and leave the hardware politics alone, it makes him look stupid.
I’m not sure what happened to it, but someone had a screen shot of Tom’s front page when he posted an article claiming the P4 to be the performance king (I think it was about the time northwood was released, and the reviews were definitely mixed at the time). Anyways, on the same page as that article was a HUGE intel advertisement banner.
P4 is the performance king right now, ever since Northwood came out. AMD is lately slow on releasing new chips, and Thoroughbred was dissapointing. Not that it is bad in performance, but it is only available for the highest end, 2200+ and not the lowest end, 1700+. As for the ads, on osOpinion, there was an article about Intel going to die off to AMD and Apple, and Microsoft was going with it, and there was this floating Intel Pentium 4 Mobile logos (Flash… gotta hate them), so I don’t think Intel would have paid them to post that article (which is echoed by other benchmark sites).
does anyone listen to toms hardware reviews/tips any more? amazing.. its becomed so damn biased and stupid lately, its funny.. i’ll stick to anandtech or hardocp i think – tom is just.. well.. blah.
As my then 16 year old sister-in-law would say, “whatever” or “talk to the hand”.
Whatever (I’m sixteen too)
Their editorials are somewhat childish, maybe biased, but their benchmarks aren’t. In fact, I don’t see anything wrong with their benchmarks. Anandtech is somewhat slow is giving out benchmarks for the latest stuff compared to THG.
But maybe you are just a AMD Fanboy that can’t accept reality (kidding :-).
Somehting I’ve done a few times for friends is to replace Socket-7 IBM-Cyrix, IDT-Winchip and Pentium Pro CPUs with AMD K6-2 parts bought, used, off eBay for a few UK Pounds a go ( usually 350 or 400mhz ones )
They usually doubt the value of getting a 50mhz speed increase until after they try it.. then see the enthusiasm. I think thats why AMD tends to garner more user-loyalty, they make performance cheaper and more accessible, and always have done. Back in pentium-2 days the gap in performance between K6/2 and Cyrix processors was enormous.. and the Cyrix even cost the same. Then they launched the Slotted Athlon against the Pentium 3 – and did it again.
AMD might not now lead the performance charts.. but if their users are happy with them, why knock it? If it wasn’t for AMD,computing would cost a lot more and probably run a lot slower than currently.
Trudge now, Hammer later.
This article is poorly written, but is correct. People are expecting too much from AMD at the moment. They are probably expecting too much from Hammer also. AMD needs to trudge through and try to get by on their current products ignoring the Fanboys.
When Hammer is released, I think that it will kick some ass. The Fanboys will be free to do whatever at that time. Until then, these Fanboys should shut the hell up. No more rumors. No excessive hype. No trashing the Athlon.
After Hammer, AMD should focus on proliferation, and long-term staying power of Hammer. Push it through the markets without confusion. Make it a viable long-term option. Run decent ads. Do all of the stuff that the Fanboys don’t give a shit about, and everything that Intel cares about.
I read the article and took it at face value. (You be the judge as to what “face value” actually is…)
I’d have to say that I’m a pro-AMD-er, since I’ve always fought to not go Intel with any CPU since the day I felt forced to move onto the WinTel platform so many, many years ago.
That said, I’d have to disagree with Tom’s opinion as to what is “AMD Fans Greatest Challenge.”
AMD Fans’ Greatest Challenge is to try and move some of that excess heat thrown off by those (groovy) chunks of Silicon…
I think he’s missed the boat a bit. Why have the last two chips I’ve bought been AMD? Not so I could be 1337, I assure you. I bought them because they were cheap when compared to a similar performing Intel chip. When I bought my notebook about six months ago, the Celeron notebook cost a hundred bucks more than the Duron (both 1 GHz with same basic features, FWIW). Being a poor college student, a hundred bucks buys a lot of beer. The next desktop I put together will be AMD, unless Intel drops the price and ramps up production on Itanium (or I bit the bullet and buy a Sun). Most of my friends who own AMD’s are in much the same situation.
Omid seems to have forgotten that he works on a special interest site and is most likely going to only get responses from people whom have that particular interest. Or hes doing this on purpose to stir up trouble.
When your main demographic is people interested in high end hardware, and best parts/etc of course a majority are going to be AMD “fanboys” who buy their computer parts online mostly, and shop for best price:performance. Seems like hes just trying to piss off his audience.
Anyway, Im not an AMD fan, but I enjoy the competition they give intel, and like the price difference vs p4s.
Anyone here who has ever tried to return a faulty intel product can explain why I am swearing off wintel hardware, it seems nearly illegal to make a customer jump through hoops like that.
You can’t stop fanboys… Not on the Internet.
I had to laugh about the comment about the 3dfx lovers and rabid AMD supporters… I have both a Voodoo 3 and an Athlon. Anyway… I really got nothing from that article. It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. Why would AMD ditch their loyal supporters? I think AMD is doing pretty good, especially since a huge part of their sales are to home builders. Sure, they would be better if they got more OEM deals. Is it logical to blame the fans of AMD for that though? I for one, am kinda tired of the CPU MHz race. Theres too many other system bottlenecks in the archetecture. Not much software is out there that really needs it. Maybe WinXp needs a couple gigahertz…whatever
I worked at AMD a long long time ago (386 days), believe me it is was a very boring place to work, so excrutiatly boring I left, but thats probably a good thing. I worked at Intel a fews yrs back also, you could tell the difference, night & day, the culture is very aggressive, sharp, intense, no wonder they are on top most of the time. AMD is all about surviving, Intel is all about winning.
AMD has the challenge of getting the Hammer out of course, we all know that, the HyperTransport is a challenging technology that also has to be sold to the server & other high performance markets. If HT can be made affordable, it will be a powerfull force in systems in general (to replace the PCI bus), I can’t say anything about 3gio since I haven’t seen the real scoop on it. It is incredible if you think about it that AMD with one Uber fab in Dresden can more or less match Intel with over a dozen fabs & vastly more R & D $.
I do generally choose AMD also because of the value, not the speed. I would never buy the fastest on my own money since the last 20% cost so much more & it doesn’t last long. I can let the other suckers out there pay top $ to surf faster than I can. But if I am using company $, different story, then I would probably go for Intel Xeons but if AMD can best that with real benchmarks I can use then I would take that.
Which leads to my main pt, all the HW review sites I’ve seen suck, they are all intended for the same audience of 14yr old gaming addicts. Never once have I seen anything on Toms, Anand, AMDZone that help me choose between A or I. The jobs I would run could take 30hrs to complete, yet they have no need for super TNT Radion Super duper whatever video cards etc these sites rant on about. The real trick that will help AMD Hammer is the 64 bit address space, most of the ASIC tools I use will need that real soon, & it will hurt Intel plenty if they ignore it. Itanium is not the answer, its the 2nd time Intel tried to leave x86 behind, but the mutt dog just keeps coming home.
If anyone can pt me to a useful HW review site for grown ups, I would be most obliged.
Ah good ‘ol THG, the undisputed king of poorly-written hyperbole. I specifically like the comment about him that appeared on Ars Technica a few weeks back.
Even Tom’s, the site that pioneered the application of the stereotypical, dramatic “Rise and Fall” plotline to plain old hardware news has managed to keep the TBred’s performance in perspective. At the end of their review, Tom’s concludes, in a classic THG turn of the phrase: “Thus, the race has not yet come to an end – the means are ultimately the goal!” Umm, yeahhh…
Youch! How old is this Tom guy again?
First, need i remind u that the article was written by Omid and not Tom? Omid tends to put more “heart” into the articles he writes so to say.
Second, the article has some valid points, The future for AMD is tier one OEM’s not the “fanboys” as Omid called them
if AMD can’t get tier one OEM’s in the hammer bandwagon… well then their future will look gloomy, but as Omid said they won’t be dying off anytime soon, but if they want to knock off intel they will need tier one OEM’s and the current image of AMD won’t help them much in that case.
i don’t consider myself pro-intel or pro-amd, i just want the best performance for my buck, and that is amd at the time being, but if i wanted top performance at whatever price… well then intel would be the way to go. hopefully hammer will change that.
I am not clear why would Eugenia post this article in the first place. It made to sense to most readers.
I am curious how does she select articles for publication?
This specific article was suggested to me by a person who I have absolute trust. I do not normally read TomsHardware personally. It was a submission in other words. Even if I did not enter his name on the “submitted by” form on our backend.
Geez, I didn’t even know that AMD *had* fanboys! I usually like AMD because it gives good performance for the price, but I don’t mind Intel if I can get a good deal. It’s the Cyrix chips that I always worried about.
I know a Van Smith, wonder if it’s the same person…. anyway…
The article was quite disappointing, don’t know why I read the whole thing, I usually tend to not read editorials, as they are generally so full of bias, I can’t stand them (doesn’t matter who it’s biased for or against).
prostetutes only sell their body, at toms hardware the apperantly sell their freedom of speach..
I think Tom is tired of hearing AMD fans sending mail that looks something like “Why dont you put some real reviews up!, How much does Intel pay you for this garbage?”
Funny part is about a year ago when AMD was kicking Intels ass and Tom was posting the facts they loved his site and always sent me links to it. Now that AMD is getting it’s proverbial butt kicked im getting links to sites friends swere are credible but I’ve never even herd of.
We have a serious underdog complex in this sociaty blindly root for the little guy until they get big enough to be “sellout monopolistic companies”. Then we get pissed off and go for the next David ready to take on Goliath.
Not that I am any different, when someone brings up Microsoft.
I think AMD should follow successful Intel ideas. Like “Intel Inside”. Just promoting the brand, and aiming to make it an household name can do a lot. I suspect the reasons why most OEMs either don’t have AMD-based machines, or don’t push them as much as the Intel ones, is because, well, Intel sells more. You can’t deny that. After being a household name, people would be ready to buy a machine with a “AMD Inside” sticker (okay, maybe not with the Inside, how about “AMD Kicks Ass?”) and not Intel. Simply because most of Intel customers buy Intel because of brand recogniction (and OEMs know that).
<end ranting>
prostetutes only sell their body, at toms hardware the apperantly sell their freedom of speach..
So, by having a pro-Intel article or a anti-AMD-fanboys article, they have thrown away their freedom of speech? Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding your logic.
the Rambus nightmare, Tom wrote one of the best articles I’ve read about it. The war of the chipsets also (Intel vs Everyone). And now AMD is some sort of fanclub?
Nonsense. They are losing ground at Toms. AMD has given and still gives the best value for your money.
I have to say, the only AMD commercial I’ve ever seen flat out stunk. It was 30secs of wasted airtime.
these AMD vs Pentium 4 wars are really skirmishes in a much larger war. The real victor is the one who brings 64 bit computing to the desktop. Opteron vs Itanium? I think it’s pretty clear that AMD will win this one. But hey if you like upgrading your cpu to the fastest most expensive on the market every couple months then by all means go with Intel. I’d rather save the money for 4+ gigs of RAM