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[Meteorhead]

Hi!

I know that AMD employees won't reflect their opinions, but I'm interested in the feedback of others: what is the reason that there are no AMD based gaming laptops?

I am the owner of an ASUS G73Jw (Core-i5 + Mobility HD5870), but I clearly remember, that it wasn't that easy to find solely an AMD GPU notebook, that matched my every need, not to mention pure AMD based, which was practically impossible. And the biggest problem is, that it still is!! Luckily it won't be for another year before I buy a new laptop (waiting for HSA and GCN based IGPs with GCN dGPUs), but if I had to buy one now, I would be in serious trouble. There is practically NO AMD GPUs worthwile in any of the machines.

In thin notebooks, Mac Book Pro has older HD6000 GPUs, and so does HP Envy. Razer X-Blade has Intel CPU, and most notebooks now have Kepler GPUs.

In larger notebooks, AMD is practically non-existent. Why is that? Even in smaller form factor Alienware, where it would be crucial to have just one processor with decent graphics, not even the 11" gaming notebook has Trinity. ONLY INTEL, and ALWAYS ONLY INTEL. Does AMD don't advertise these opportunities?

None of the games are CPU-limited nowdays, an AMD CPU would take on all the games just as well as an Intel CPU, but there would be lot better graphics inside when running on low power, When HSA comes in, and both the dGPU and the IGP will be GCN, Hybrid Cross-Fire will be a lot better too.

I very much hope to see the biggest brands (Alienware, ASUS, HP, Razer) to have Kaveri + Sea Islands notebooks in the very high-end.

[yurtesen]

In my opinion you should ask this from HP, Dell, Asus etc. (also tell us what they say) But I guess you would simply get answers like customers want Intel or they get too hot etc. It is not at all surprising since all those early cheap AMD models which were getting hot used tiny heatsinks and AMD gets the blame heh...

Also, Intel has very aggressive (I would say 'evil') marketing and business strategies.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3839/intel-settles-with-the-ftc/3

(I find it funny that Intel at some point payed dell 4.3 billion (figures go up to 6 billion) for buying Intel products, and AMD got 1.25 billion after the settlment). It was so that everytime Dell mentioned AMD, Intel payed more

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Antitrust-US-AMD-Dell,9007.html

http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/27/news/companies/dell_settlement_intel.fortune/index.htm

At some point I think they have started rumours that when you remove heatsink AMD processors burn (and actually ancient models did burn way back, but when did you see a heatsink fall down all by itself last time? )

I expect Sony leaked they will use AMD processors on the next Playstation 4 just to get rebates from Intel

Oh yes, many of the bulldozer benchmarks were rigged by using underclocked memory on AMD processors and overclocked memory on Intel processors and now sme sites are trying to sell that faster memory does not help much to AMD processors  while they should concentrate on how much faster memory skews Intel results.

Also it is sad that at least some people think that alll what Intel did is not important as long as they get performance for their money.

Anyway... this is my opinion... so I wont argue if somebody disagrees...

[Meteorhead]

We all know the reason, why we don't buy Intel (or NV for that matter), but...

Let's follow through the possibilities of an ordinary customer and his thoughts:

Let's say I'm a customer, on the border of two groups: (casual) gamers, developers. The prior I believe is the biggest source of money for AMD, and the latter is something worth to pay attention to (although they are not that many). Let's say I got very used to having all my work in one place, in the same place where my games are and need only one tech gadget to carry around. So I'm thinking of something portable for work and leisure (which concerns the IT part, and not the rest).

Let's say I were to invest a relatively larger amount into something which I would use for both making money and taking my mind off the grind of the day. So I'm looking for the high-end (not ultra high-end) gaming notebooks. (Yes, if as an OpenCL programmer I don't want to pay for the completely unneccesary surplus for buying "proffessional" equipment like HP EliteBook, I'm labeled as a gamer. These workstation notebooks cost +15-20% compared to gaming notebooks, they have less kraft, only thing going for them are docking stations.)

This high-end category consists of ASUS and MSI notebooks mainly (and let's say Samsung worth mentioning). If anyone can point me to an ASUS G## or an MSI G### with any AMD component whatsoever, be my guest. Intel and Kepler only.

Let's say I'm thinking about sacrificing raw power in favor of portability, and look for something smaller. Unfortunately I'll have to pay more, although this is a fair exchange. I'm not asking OEMs to dissipate 150Watts in a 2.2 kg notebook, but for a 25W CPU, and a 50W GPU. Let's see... MacBookPro, Razer, HP Envy. Problems stated in previous post. No GCN here.

Alienware's 11" form factor gaming notebook simply cries out for Trinity (or Kaveri later), but judging by how things have been going, it's just not going to happen.

Below the 15-14" form factor (apart from M11x) there is definately not enough power for even casual gaming (IMHO), so let's say I am willing to sacrifice all the power for portability and go to work with solely an x86 smartphone or tab with Win8 (or Ubuntu, but Win8 has convinced me a lot). Smartphones clearly have the power now to run a decent IDE, and I could even test applications, if they scale well to fit into 2GB RAM of a better smartphone. So let's look for an AMD powered tablet or smartphone. Uhm... yep, nothing. All we hear about are Intel x86 tablets and smartphones. If I were to make this buy now, it would be an Intel smartphone coming in a few months' time. I am not even given the promise that in 4-5-6 months time there will be something from AMD worth to wait for. (If I were to develop on a smartphone and would like to see speed-up compared to serial code, I would definately go for the strongest OpenCL capable IGP, and in this segment, Intel and NV are the only choice.)

I have other long stories like this (concerning software support mainly), but I don't want to get there in this topic. The question I want to ask: is this really what AMD has to offer? I know it depends on the OEMs to build HW based on AMD products, but all I see is that Intel has absolutely needless CPU-overkill, markets are shifting to media and casual games, and all I see are Intel CPUs, so AMD is clearly doing something wrong. If AMD could say that "okay, we don't have smartphones or high-end notebooks, but we are almighty in the mid segment, so we can sit back" than I would understand that, but even this isn't true. Quarterly AMD always presents increase in market share, but I just don't see the effect. I definately see more Llanos than Turions back in a while, but simply nothing suits my needs.

Are my needs really that irrational, or do others see the humongous gap as well in the AMD product line? Even us who pay attention to the behavior of companies we buy from (either food, clothes or tech gadgets), it seems we're not given a chance.

I don't know nothing about PR, but something seems to be missing. OpenCL accelerated WinRAR, Gaming Evolved program... these things are great, successful, and should be continued. Maybe VideoLAN and Avast should also be given some attention as a next choice, or something. This part seems to work. But the HW products are absolutely missing.

(Just a sidenote: 2 years ago NV would've given it's right ball if they could've buy the license for x86, so they could make proper IGP for a semi-decent CPU. AMD have had this for the past 3-4 years. On the flag we see "The future is Fusion", and indeed this vision was right from the start. A very long time ago, the acqusition af ATi was an exceptionally good choice, so where has all this advantage gone?)

Edit: Today at Computex, AMD showed off Brazos 2.0 in a tablet-netbook hybrid. 17W sounds enough for dev, let's hope we see actual products built on it. Taking a step down (smartphone) and a few up (high-end notebook) the question still remains.

[yurtesen]

Let me know when you find out where I can buy that tablet

[Meteorhead]

Seems like I posted one week early. -_-

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/27459-msis-gx60-notebook-pairs-up-trinity-with-hd-7970m

This MSI notebook will kill the competition with it's price (and features). Next gen MSI G series with Kaveri and HD8000 will be a MUST BUY!

[yurtesen]

I think it is not the most important thing to make the best product or cheapest one. Look how apple is doing, they dont have best, fastest or  cheapest, but they sell like bread and butter. It all depends on how you can make people to think your product is easier to use, more durable, more reliable and also better looking with a huge marketing campaign. Say "We chose the best screen size, best form factor" etc.

Even if MSI would have this laptop, they will just make a limited quantity and wont push to stores all around so it wont be sold. It also depends on how HP, Dell, MSI, Asus etc. are marketing the products. SImply if a company has 20 Intel based roducts and 3 AMD based products, the Intel has a possibility to sell 6-8 times more than AMD. Also, at least I am having hard time finding AMD products even on stores which are AMD partners. They simply do not put them to shelves...(well there are a pile of cheap HP laptops with AMD processors going around though).

Another problem is that for example now Samsung makes AMD trinity laptops, only available in the US and well similar model with Intel processor goes with SSDs and AMD processor with normal hard drive. People eventually do think it works slow compared to Intel because it uses AMD processors. Perhaps AMD must make guidelines for producers so they wont produce lower quality products.

AMD has to find a way 1- people will feel AMD is better choice, 2- make producers push higher amount and quality products. I think AMD has to change their marketing strategies drastically.

Anyway we will see what happens I guess...

[Meteorhead]

You are right, that marketing is not as good as it could be. However, I feel that this whole marketing thing is the work of the devil.

Apple's marketing is something like that of a deodorant. If you use their product, everyone will smile more, you will be promoted and will even be able to dunk a basketball. This is simply false. Apple devices in reality have outstanding workmanship, they are 100% guarantee they will work, they will be compatible, and their user interface is professional. OSX is the perfect combination of powerful linux and simple Windows. My grandmother can check her emails with the same OS, that I can hack kernel modules to turn my console upside down (stupid example). If Apple would advertise themselves saying "simple and professional", I gues nobody would buy it. It doesn't sound as good as having smiling blonde chicks around, but it sure is closer to reality.

Everybody knows "Intel inside", because it means that there is kick@ss hardware is inside. If you got Intel in your machine, it will grind metal for breakfast and real-time ray-trace Toy Story 5 in 4D, no need for BDXL anymore. Core-i7 is a must for gamers, and Core-i3 is for the lesser mortals who crave power. Yet again terribly false marketing. Core-i3 with SSD is as fast as a PC will ever get. For the 2% of people who video edit or do scientific computation, they need Core-i7. Noone else does. As you said, machines with HDD will seem slower, no matter what CPU it is.

So I for one would say that the commonly unkown AMD slogen "The smarter choice" only stands if AMD doesn't stand in line and start this marketing bullsheiks. I'm not good with marketing, but people definately don't know what the situation is on the market. AMD I think should rely more on the fact what they tried to point out in AFDS, that computing is at a revolutionary breakpoint, and AMD is two block ahead of competition in this race. It is not just about the graphics. I could imagine commercials with cool robots following a human body kinect-like, or mind-reading or voice-recognition whatever that truly rely on massive paralell computing power. This should be more emphasized, that mobile devices will house unprecedented features. (And then comes "The future is Fusion logo")

So what I don't like are commercials saying 1GB DDR3 VRAM!!!!! about a GPU, because that actually is below entry-level in a discrete graphics card. If we interpret numbers, it should be realistic (not necessarily unbiased, but definately not untrue). Plus if they show some consequence of a product, it should have some connection to reality.

[yurtesen]

Yes, but it is allowed to work with devil if you can pull it off within legal limits

The problem is not giving 5GB GDDR5 with GPU or 2.5k resolution of something. It is just confusing the common buyers (of course enthusiasts know things better). Normal mortals want to know if this is the best product for the money or not. Apple pages say things like 'most advanced mobile operating system' Is it even possible for anybody to claim that with 100% certainty? But what would you do if you wouldnt buy the most advanced stuff ? Why AMD does not say they have the most advanced APU processors in their advertisement materials. (it would be true at least!).

Apple does not say how many pixels are in their new displays, they just put a cool name like retina display and say this is the best you can get and thats it. Numbers only confuse buyers. I just think AMD did a good job firing their PR department guys

Anyway, life goes on