Why care about a balanced PC configuration?
There has been an incredible amount of discussion in the high-tech community talking about “balanced platforms” or “optimized systems”. The conversation or press coverage has interestingly enough been more about which component is more relevant versus the need for a balanced platform. Statements or misquotes like “the CPU is dead”, the “GPU is not needed anymore”, or “no one needs 4 CPU cores” have been thrown around loosely in the past few weeks.
In my opinion, this is the wrong conversation to be having.
The right conversation is how the industry can optimize, deliver, and educate on the right balance of CPU, GPU and chipset to effectively and efficiently address the workloads or applications about which the customer cares most. In this and future blogs, I will frame and highlight a few of the challenges and offer some solutions to help address the issue.
It all starts with what consumers want to do or are actually doing with their PCs. Let’s look at some research from AMD and other sources, which I like to joke is sometimes like “grasping at the obvious”, because when you stand back, it looks so evident.
- Digital media goes mainstream. Consumer client usage model growth is moving toward the heavy consumption, editing and sharing of digital media (1). That’s a broad statement, but the fact that this is now “mainstream” is incredible. The digital media wave started with music, moved to digital photos and now it is video. The popularity really makes sense given that digital media is also cutting horizontally across communities like MySpace and Facebook. My friend’s and family’s “spaces” are proudly adorned with their pictures, videos, and music which are entertaining (although some of their home-grown content can be a bit “scary” at times).
- PC gaming goes mainstream. Sure, I have heard the conjecture that PC gaming is dead. The facts paint a very different picture. An employee of one of our biggest technology partners has informally told me that up to 83% of all Windows users play PC games. Recent research from NPD says that 72% of the entire U.S. population played games in 2007 and 90% of those who played online in 2007 reported using a PC to do so. NPD also described the PC as “the driving force in online gaming.” One fun fact that really exemplifies the casual gaming phenomenon is the popular title “The Sims.” This game franchise has sold over 100M copies, so by their calculations, this means that one out of seven homes in Europe and one out of three homes in America are likely have this PC game title. (2). It’s not time to call my co-workers who get up at 6A.M. every Saturday and tell them to stop playing COV/COH together.
- Multitasking matters. Mainstream consumers understand the whole concept of doing many things at the same time and how it applies to their PC purchases (1). Enthusiasts I have talked with have embraced what we like to call megatasking or extreme multitasking, defined as running multiple, multi-threaded apps simultaneously.
- Other stuff is peripheral. Consumers are still doing things like doing word processing, but they believe every PC can do this well (1). Of course.
I believe that effectively and efficiently delivering on these usage models requires the right balance of CPU, GPU and chipset. Some of the use cases above require a heavy duty CPU, some require a heavy duty GPU, some require a heavy duty chipset and some require all three. The industry needs to figure it out. While AMD can’t solve it independently, we plan to shine a big light on the issue, work with others and do our own part in the industry to help solve the problem.
In my next blog, I will be double-clicking on a few key usage models and generalize on the required balances of CPU and GPU. In the meantime, let me know what you think.
(1) Proprietary AMD Research 2005, 2007.
(2) Electronic Arts Press Release: http://info.ea.com/news/pr/pr1052.pdf
Pat Moorhead is Vice President of Advanced Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
POSTED IN: VISION
TAGS: balanced platform, Gaming, HD video, photo, productivity
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COMMENTS: 9
I think there is no doubt that the ATI acquisition has helped AMD in terms of chipsets. Certainly 690G was an excellent chipset as is the current 7xx series for Spider. But you now have a real mobile chipset for Puma and should have a real server chipset for Montreal in 2009. AMD has never had true mobile support and server support has been slim (mostly based on AMD’s own 8000 series chipset).
I was wondering though if you could answer a technical question. K8 has always been one design with the only variable being the amount of L2 cache. I know that Griffin is still based on K8 while server and desktop move on to K10. However, will AMD split the architecture even further by using a different die for the G3MX based products? I’ve been puzzled about this because I can’t see anyway to do direct and MX memory with one controller and having both seems like a lot of space on the die. On the other hand, changing the die just for a small volume of high end server chips also seems out of character.
Scientia, I’m always amazed at the level of sophistication of the folks who come to AMD.com, and the complexity of the issues they raise. I’d love to be able to answer your questions regarding Montreal, but I can’t do that just yet, mostly for competitive reasons. Look for more information on the Montreal architecture and platform as we get closer to the launch in 2009.
AMD has always seemed to carry the torch when it comes to difficult issues. I remember when Intel was claiming that Ghz was all that mattered and you guys set them and the industry straight with performance based benchmarks. You guys should do that same thing for PC video and games. Most people buy systems with IGP graphics and if they are Intel systems they are real awful, but yours and nvidia’s are much better. Thanks for improving the experience again!
The reason Intel won’t ackowledge that casual gaming and HiDef video playback isnt important is that they dont have the best silicon to do it with. Intel’s graphics and roadmap are a joke… one lie after the other. 915G was OK for Vista. Truth: class action lawsuit shows it different. G965 was supposed to be DX10 compliant at launch a year and a half later. Truth: it didnt ship with DX10 drivers until 18 months after shipment. Bait and switch? G35 was suppposed to have perf so high you wouldnt need a graphics card. G35 has more compatibility and performance than a Lada.
Regarding gaming, the Windows PC continues to be the largest gaming platform out there with an increasingly broad audience of “gamers.” At Microsoft’s annual Gamefest conference (http://www.xnagamefest.com/presentations.htm), they stated that there are over 200M+ gamers on Windows PCs today and that over 70% of Windows gamers are dual-gamers, meaning they play games on both a PC and Microsoft Xbox console. In terms of casual games, Microsoft also said that they have over 13 million users per month on MSN Games (http://games.msn.com) and an increasing number of Windows Live Messenger users playing in-messenger games, which allows you to play with (or against) your friends in real-time. So I agree with Pat, PC gaming is far from being dead…instead the PC continues to be a platform for innovation in new areas.
While I agree with you guys (and of course the numbers) that the PC industry is a healthy one, there’s a good article at ExtremeTech (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2286801,00.asp) that touches on the issues that are still creating a drag on the industry. The top issue noted there is how poor the base level experience is due to the unbalanced lowest-common-denominator hardware approach and a lack of emphasis on visual capabilities and end user experience. I know AMD’s doing the right things in this area.
I think it is going to be difficult to really sell the idea of a balanced configuration. I think what you should do is put it in terms of dollars and cents in a much more direct fashion.
Take a good Spider platform system and show how much a comparable Intel platform system would cost. It is a certainty that you are going to have to add a discrete graphics card to the Intel platform with (Intel motherboard and Intel integrated graphics) to make it as fast as the AMD system. This will cost more and should easily show up as value difference.
Excellent blog Pat.
Hope you guys can recover some more market share with these new offerings, but to be sincere with you, I consider myself an enthusiast guy who would rather wait for a 45nm Deneb processor coupled with an 790FX mobo for maximum performance.
I wonder when do you guys have plans to release the 890FX chipset? Maybe, this could be the chipset of choice for die-hard enthusiast.
As mentioned, base level experience is what kills the system builders out there when a lot of consumers look at the price before looking at specs. When you look at a system and realize that to upgrade that system to a level to actually play a game, in Vista, you find out that it is more expensive to go the Intel way. This is why the entire Spider platform now and going forward can’t let up the pressure. The autotuning feature (software) for the Spider platform is one of the most innovative ideas I have come across in 25 years. Keep working on that, because it is my belief that if you have your components working together in unison, you can do more than throwing a bunch of disparate components together and not getting peak efficiency out of all of them. AMD excels in this and I am sure Intel wishes they could do it. But like they say, Intel has processors and chipsets, nVidia has GPU’s, but only AMD/ATI can do all three and once the RV770′s come out, AMD will once again regain their top position with the gamers in the world.