AMD ThinkPad??

[A31]

Was there ever an IBM (not Lenovo) ThinkPad sold with an AMD CPU? or were they all Intel?

[craigmontHunter]

IIRC, all IBM built thinkpads had intel processors.

[A31]

Thought so, I go looking for ThinkPads on eBay quite a bit and had never come across an AMD IBM ThinkPad. Obviously the ThinkPad Edge can be had with an AMD X2 CPU, but this is built by Lenovo..

[ajkula66]

Why would anyone want a ThinkPad with an AMD CPU?

The *real* ThinkPads - whether IBM or Lenovo - are supposed to be business-grade machines hence anything but Intel doesn't really fly well...

[A31]

In general, Are AMD CPus aimed more towards the budget market, ie, for people who cannot afford Intel?

[ZaZ]

I have three desktops and they're all AMD because in the desktop area AMD I think offers better value. If you want the best performance and don't mind paying the premium, then get an Intel desktop. Laptops however are a different breed. With laptops cool performance and battery life are much more important. Those two have historically have been AMDs downfall in the laptop arena. I think for most people the performance of AMD laptop CPUs is fine, but because Intel CPUs run cooler and offer more battery in addition to better performance, most people are willing to pay the premium for them, myself included. Until AMD fixes those two thing, they'll remain in the budget end of the laptop spectrum where laptops are concerned.

[j-dawg]

The X100 uses an AMD chip if I'm not mistaken.

There was definitely a time when Intel's CPUs were expensive, power-hungry, and hot-running, and AMD's Athlons were the clever, wallet-friendly alternative that got you nearly the same performance for much less money. This was around the height of the Pentium 4 clock cycle madness, when there was no way to extract more speed from the NetBurst architecture besides cranking up the clock speed and giving it more power. The old AMD 486 clones also had some clever engineering going on to save money and add power.

I've been out of the loop for a while, but since Intel went to the Core architecture AMD hasn't had much to offer most users, IMO. Cores and Core 2s have been cheaper, cooler, and quicker than the AMD alternatives.

[A31]

Yes I remember when the Athlon 64 was a better choice than a Pentium 4, however, Intel are now currently the better choice, and not really all that much more expensive.

[ajkula66]

A31 wrote:

Yes I remember when the Athlon 64 was a better choice than a Pentium 4,

Huh...the last time I checked there were still some A31p units in outer space using the much-maligned Pentium 4 (M) CPUs...

Anything else up there with an AMD?

j-dawg wrote:

The X100 uses an AMD chip if I'm not mistaken.

You're absolutely correct. That's why I said:

The *real* ThinkPads - whether IBM or Lenovo - are supposed to be business-grade machines hence anything but Intel doesn't really fly well...

[A31]

Huh...the last time I checked there were still some A31p units in outer space using the much-maligned Pentium 4 (M) CPUs...

Anything else up there with an AMD?

No but for desktops the Athlon 64 was better choice than the P4, well at least in my opinion. I never liked the Pentium 4. I'm not an AMD fanboy, I've only ever had one or two AMD PCs, and I'm using an i5 now, an Intel CPU, but I always preferred the Athlon 64 to the Pentium 4.

[j-dawg]

No but for desktops the Athlon 64 was better choice than the P4, well at least in my opinion. I never liked the Pentium 4. I'm not an AMD fanboy, I've only ever had one or two AMD PCs, and I'm using an i5 now, an Intel CPU, but I always preferred the Athlon 64 to the Pentium 4.

Even before AMD started with the x64 chips, they had a good history of making processors worth buying. The original Athlons pushed past 1GHz before Intel managed it with the PIIIs.

Later, I put together a few systems around Athlon XP chips because they were as good as the equivalent P4s for a much cheaper price and consumed much less power. At the top end, P4 chips were more powerful, but for midrange and budget computers, the Athlons were where it was at. They overclocked quite well, too.

[ThinkRob]

IIRC, all IBM built thinkpads had intel processors.

*Almost* all. There were a couple that shipped with IBM 486s (modified Cyrix 386 cores), and a very few that had PowerPC chips.

Now both of those used IBM chips, so I guess the rule could be expanded to "All ThinkPads had Intel or IBM CPUs"...