I usually don’t get mad or frustrated, not even when UPS or FedEx misplaces or damages a package and I have to wait for another week to get it properly delivered. But there’s one company that hasn’t been delivering on their promises as of late and that’s AMD, and frankly, I’m starting to loose my patience. And before you start to think I’m venting all of my geek angst or personal frustrations on poor AMD, here’s why.

I’ve been talking to AMD for who knows how long, actually nearly two years, about their new 64-bit architecture, have been invited to private demos, factory tours and what not, yet they seem not to be willing to send us any products to review. Whereas others, such as Intel, send us products often prior to the launch and makes sure we got enough lead time to be able to do a proper evaluation, AMD apparently only bothers sending samples if you keep asking them time after time, after time.

Although the two lovely PR ladies I usually am in contact with, Anne and Hollis, are friendly and willing to talk about AMD and AMD’s products at length, if push comes to shove, there are no samples, nor anything to back up the promises made. Sure Mr. Sassen, we’ll put you on the list, you’ll be eligible for an early evaluation of the Opteron platform, etc. etc. And to be honest, like most other journalists, I say ‘Great, thanks!’ and walk out of the meeting thinking I covered some ground this time and finally got them to commit to something. But you guessed it, a few weeks later, when the product launch is over and done with, all that I’m left with is a press release mailer, that’s how much love we get from AMD.



Two AMD Opteron Model 240 Processors, 1.4GHz of 64-bit goodness
So finally, after waiting an eon, they promised to send us two Opterons last week, which arrived today by DHL, which fortunately meant they didn’t get stuck on some island with Tom Hanks as that was with a different courier. But on second thought they just might have, as the Opterons we received are the 240 model, which is the slowest of the bunch, running at a mere 1.4GHz clockspeed. What is AMD thinking? Wasn’t the 2GHz Opteron, model 246, just launched a week ago, and when did the 240 debut? February, right! So what do we have here? Two Opterons that we can barely use for anything than a technology evaluation.

So again, we’re sitting here doubting whether AMD has got their marketing strategy properly laid out, as normally we get sent the latest of the latest, the cutting edge of technology, not because we absolutely need to have the latest, but because a manufacturer wants to make the best impression possible, not just with us journalists, but they hope to see that reflected in the forthcoming article too of course. You know what I’m going to do? I’m just going to plug this 1.4GHz Opteron into the brand new, top-of-the-line, cutting-edge Asus SK8N that we have here and put in some top-quality, high-performance, super-low-latency Corsair XMS DDR333 memory and see of I can push this godfather of Opteron CPU’s a little faster so we might get a glimpse of how it compares to Intel’s latest. In the meantime feel free to send me some suggestions what else to do with these CPU’s other than the usual keychain or paperweight suggestion of course, or anything involving explosives, guns or seeing how tough they are when faced with competition from a real hammer.

Sander Sassen,