AMD has made a huge song and dance about Fusion. For five years it has been banging on about the line-up, which it hopes is a competitor to Intel's Sandy Bridge line-up.
KitGuru thinks it hasn't shown its true colours.
The website went on an little exploring mission to see exactly what the score is with the Fusion range.
Intel’s 2nd generation Core family of processors, which came to market at the start of this month, didn't perform as well as expected. According to KitGuru this was because of "substantial inventory challenges" meaning that Intel only launched 4 processors (2300, 2400, 2500 and 2600) and the actual focus for reviews was on the 2500k and 2600k.
The site then went on to look at AMD's Fusion and asked three professionals in the IT industry if they knew when AMD Fusion is going to launch. Unfortunately none of them had a clue and when they were informed the launch had actually occurred they were "surprised."
KitGuru gathered that the 22nd January launch was "extraordinarily low profile".
For Intel, the Core i5 2500 is an evolution of an earlier product and sits in the middle of a long list of Core processors - and according to Kitguru is by no means ‘exceptional’.
"Intel only started to really speak about it a few months before launch, it won’t be the biggest seller for Intel in 2011, not by a very l-o-n-g way and it is certainly not being labelled as “Intel’s future”, it suggested.
In comparison, AMD Fusion has been pushed to the press and public since AMD bought ATI. Every email sent by an AMD employee, for several years, has been rubber stamped with “The Future is Fusion”.
The website added that there was no easy way to "quantify how far ahead Intel was, compared to AMD, in terms of marketing,". However, it said that it had analysed the publicly available data for 2500/E-240 and asked whether Intel’s marketing 26x was more powerful than AMD’s.
It found that Intel’s latest product launch scored almost 26 times the coverage of Fusion.
KitGuru added: "We believe that a strong AMD is vital to the market. With Intel cutting back on overclocking options on its new Core range, AMD should be ready to step up with new CPUs and re-capture enthusiast market share. AMD Fusion promised to create a new class of product, which spurred Intel into action with Larrabee. The GTX460 and 560 are only as good as they are, because Radeon keeps on pushing GeForce. Competition is GREAT for customers, but if AMD wants to join the Fortune 500 any time soon, then it needs to step up its game and convince us, Steve Jobs style, that the Future is Fusion."
p.s. In case you haven't noticed, they have been Fortune 500 for a number of years now.
All we saw is that lacklustre Brazos thing, which is comparable to a smidge in Sandy Bridge shoe. We know there is the Bulldozer part, with so many codenames that just the crazy can remember, but it's just a ghost. There is no working silicon around, no benchmark, nothing. AMD displayed the silicon of it, but a silicon wafer doesn't need to be working to be seen.
Don't get me wrong, I'm eager to see AMD take the performance crown again from Intel. That's what made intel dump the pentium 4 in favor to Core 2 family. But I'm very skeptical about this Bulldozer thing, it's too late, It'll probably come to market with Ivy Bridge.
Sandy Bridge is a evolution from an already great product, so if the performance increase is not so great, it's already very good. Besides, SB is already proven to pass 4GHz with standard air cooling. Intel probably isn't pushing it to make room for improvement in the unlikely case that AMD BD surpasses SB and to increase yields.
The other half is simply marketing and that's where AMD contantly falls short of the mark.
Sandy Bridge remediation will be very expensive (both to the bottom fiscal line and to Intel's reputation.)
That changes things a lot. Bulldozer could be out for consumers by them. Llano will be a couple of months off.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/17/hp-pavilion-dm1z-with-amd-fusion-review/
Want another? How about Anand?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx
All sparkling reviews - basically it makes Atom irrelevant.
That AMD could use more marketing I agree - but the real question is, do they need that more than they do R&D? There too Intel has vastly more resources. "Marketing" can't just by magic'd up in a jiffy, the money actually has to come from somewhere...
to alter this rank AMD has to bring something really new, promising and working. that Intel doesnt have and cant bring in market for atleast one year after the launch date of new AMD architecture..... As far marketing is concerned...are you full to go after advertisement and promotions? every now and then the whole world is checking the power of computer dont make the mistake to understimate others by thinking them less intelligent than you by talking about marketing... R n D only R n D will bring you at no1 rank....
dont write the story of 20 years back here....if you know everyone knows, if you dont others may know that....