
AMD Ryzen AMA - rbanffy
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-ama,5018.html#xtor=RSS-100
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nottorp
This one's funny:

"I don't know how old you are, but I'll date myself. Back in the old days of
PC gaming, it didn't really matter what kind of CPU you had because everything
out there was graphics card bottlenecked."

He means he's too young to have caught the era where games on PCs didn't have
3d acceleration? Or even 3d for that matter...

~~~
pjc50
I remember when PCs didn't have _sound_ by default and you had to buy a
Soundblaster or Adlib card. As well as having to buy 2MB extra RAM to play
DOOM, which was CPU-driven 2.5D.

Edit: this seems to have gone full "Four Yorkshiremen", possibly remembering
the last time AMD was really competitive.

~~~
rbanffy
On an Apple II, the built-in speaker could only do two states. You had to PWM
your way into sounds while drawing on the screen and trying to keep audio
sample rate while reading the analog joystick that took longer to read the
more up/right it was.

~~~
pjc50
Perhaps surprisingly the early PC had exactly the same architecture: two-state
speaker, RC-timer based joysticks. A few games and eventually lots of
demosceners managed to get decent sound out of the PWM speaker. Although I
remember when demos and games really would have preferred you spend several
hundred £ on a Gravis Ultrasound.

~~~
rbanffy
I remember needing to wait for a VBLANK before writing to the 6845's VRAM.
Oh... And the write-only EGA registers, that made it impossible to know in
what mode you were...

What a revolting machine the PC was...

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noir_lord
I'm genuinely excited that AMD seems to have righted the ship on this one,
I've extremely fond memories of the Duron/Athlon days when AMD was eating
Intel's lunch which made the market more competitive and dropped prices.

The Ryzen 5 is looking like a strong contender for my next home build.

~~~
NaliSauce
Ryzen looks really promising, but I'll wait for naples since I want the
additional PCIe lanes (and cores).

All in all I am really happy with AMDs comeback - finally some competition.

~~~
yborg
Much of AMD's 'comeback' is courtesy of Intel resting on its laurels and
collecting rent. It will be interesting to see how Intel responds.

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myrandomcomment
Can anyone recommend a system builder? Looking for a system in a smallish form
factor to set next to the 4K TV in the man cave. It will be used mostly for
steam games on the TV. It being quite is a key. No I do not want to build it
myself. Having built systems for myself since my 1st 486 to my last 6-core
Phenom I am over it.

~~~
kartD
I'm also on the look out: I'm thinking about AVADirect (www.avadirect.com),
they let you make fully custom ones. Depending on what you're looking for,
some options might be maingear, alienware, falcon northwest, xotic, velocity
micro and origin.

Hoping someone who's ordered from any of them can chime in and share a bit
more

~~~
myrandomcomment
Thank you for the information. I will have a look!

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i336_
> _redgarl: (...) [I]s there a new focus for AMD in the upcoming future?_

> _DON WOLIGROSKI: (...) [O]ur finger is definitely on the pulse of storage
> tech. Of course I can 't comment on unannounced products, so if we did have
> something in the works I couldn't talk about it._

That is really cute.

