Why AMD Is Still In The Race 272
Steve Kerrison writes "Despite a woeful inability to provide some of its most loyal customers with stock, and a range of CPUs that, currently, loses out to Intel's Core 2 processors in both price and performance (and who would I be not to mention the diminishing AMD fanboy numbers?), AMD's still got enough tricks up its sleeve to retaliate against Intel in due course. HEXUS.net has an opinion piece on why AMD isn't up the creek. From the article: AMD has been showing off its 65nm wafers for a few months now, which means the Rev G core is on its way. Even if the DDR2 memory controller which arrived with the Rev F only had a small performance benefit, Rev G has a few more improvements than just the die shrink. The latter will enable higher clock speeds and a lower price, plus allow AMD to compete on an equal playing field to Intel, which has been manufacturing 65nm processors since the Pentium XE 955 at the end of 2005."
Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Chipsets.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the finger pointing starts, and we're stuck in the middle. I'm upgrading for the first time in 3 years, hopefully I can wait all this mess out. It'll be an AMD chip though. If I had to pick, I'd go with whatever platform Nvidia supports in the future. Their commitment to driver quality deserves to be rewarded and won my loyalty - and interestingly enough, I have never purchased another ATI product after their little opengl driver fiasco.
Why doesn't AMD have a chipset, anyway?
One Generation (Score:5, Insightful)
ebb and tide. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Need to up the ante (Score:3, Insightful)
All you can (somewhat) rely on in this business are the things that are already close to rollout. For instance, I'm pretty sure that AMD will get their quad-core released in 2007, Intel maybe sooner. Anything beyond that is speculation.
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
Long enough, and demand vanishes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but buyers can only wait so long, and if enough buyers are forced to go elsewhere then the demand will vanish too.
Having something in demand is desirable but in the long term you have to eventually meet demand for a majority of customers or perish.
I don't think AMD is anywhere near perishing of course, but the supply of these chips seems tight enough that it's not a healthy level of demand at the moment.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Athlon 64 is bullet proof in the server market.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't bought an Intel CPU since the Pentium75 back in 1995, have since bought K6-2, K6-3, Duron, AthlonXP and Athlon64, and will continue to buy AMD going forward (providing they don't suddenly become the dominant player) - OK, so I might loose out on a few FPS in some games, but then my GPU is probably the limiting factor in the majority of games I play - and I want to help ensure that competition continues.....
If I were a large PC seller (Dell, HP etc) I would be thinking the same thing....being able to trade off two companies against each other gets me a better price. If Intel were the only CPU provider you probably wouldn't be able to buy a PC for less than $1500.
65 nm is key (Score:3, Insightful)
Just the decrease in size alone will give AMD's processors a boost, and might well propell them past Intel again; at least from what I've seen, the FX (90 nm) already consumes less than the Core 2 Duo (65 nm) in power save mode, whereas the advantage that the Core 2 Duo has in performance mode is nothing that a die shrink wouldn't overcome.
And that's at the high end. At the low end, I see Intel still selling 32-bit CPUs, where AMD's offerings are 64-bit enabled. I recently helped somebody pick a laptop, and I noticed the biggest differences between Intel-based and AMD-based systems in the applicable price range were slightly better game performance for Intel and 64-bit support for AMD. I recommended AMD, because (1) the laptop wasn't for gaming anyway, and (2) I expect AMD64 (especially the extra registers that come with it) to eventually offer better performance; and at least you can run 64-bit software on it. These benefits aren't so obvious now, but I expect they will be.
Re:ebb and tide. (Score:2, Insightful)
Good point. I'd also like to add that the Opteron is the first time AMD has forged ahead in both price and performance in my memory. The fact that the current generation has slipped in performance does not erase AMD's newfound ability to compete as more than an x86 knockoff company.
Opteron didn't kill Intel and Core Duo won't kill AMD. Intel will have to be much better and AMD screw up much worse to go back to the old days.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a little confused by your logic. It seems to me that always buying the products of the second largest supplier in a market does not really guarantee competition or at least not the benefits that should come from competition.
Surely you should be buying the products that give you the best value, no matter which supplier that may be. If we assume for the puposes of discussion (and not claiming any facts) that the current Intel range offers the best value (which may well be independent of market position) then by refusing to switch from AMD to Intel, you are artificially inflating the value of AMD products. This should in effect result in the type of market that would be more akin to a monopoly or cartel, rather than real competition.
Basically you could be shooting yourself in the foot, and you're definitely acting irrationally from an economics stand point (although maybe not from a marketing point of view).
Re:Give Them Time to React (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Self-adjusting? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad Intel has start pushing ahead again. Competition keeps the fire lit under their butts and is good for the consumer.
Who's a Fanboy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if only things would also work like that on the operating system market....
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Show me the Money (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's take Dell for example - one of AMD's big wins of the last year, and the one everyone is saying looks stupid now Intel is back. As a business customer, you can either buy the Dimension E521 for £499 + VAT (with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+), or the E520 for £50 more (with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300). They're both dual-core, and the performance difference is essentially irrelevant to a business customer. But if you're buying 100 of them, you'd save £5,000 by going for the E521. That's a fairly easy decision for a financial director to make.
It's not always about the power, but rather the sock to the wallet, and when finances factor into decisions, a cheaper previous generation proc for a competitor will always win out over the current generation of the leading vendor. I would tend to agree with this assessment. Business decisions are most often made based on cost, not performance, and in IT, it seems more the case that long term consequences are not the predominant factor considered prior to making final decisions. it's always about the money...
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps when AMD are a little bit more established (i.e. lets see what their response to Core2 is) then I will feel more comfortable buying Intel....equally, if AMD's product was so uncompetitive vs Intel then I probably wouldn't buy it anyway.
The CPU market is probably unusual compared to other product categories that I buy, because there are only really 2 players (for the home pc market).....When I buy a HDTV screen in the near future I will buy whatever product is deemed the best on a price/performance basis - there are so many CE brands that I am not worried if a few of them don't survive - there will still be enough left to ensure healthy competition.
I take your point about economics vs marketing - Guess I've been working in marketing for too long
Re:ebb and tide. (Score:2, Insightful)
"NEWS FLASH - True competition in the market place forces competitors to actually innovate! Capitalism works! Consumers seeing the benefit! Story at 11!"
This is exactly what we've been asking for all along guys. A company came along that's managed to nearly topple Intel, and Intel has actually responded by realizing just marketing AMD in to the ground won't work. So instead, they went back and actually made a good product. Pardon me, but isn't this what we as consumers like to see? Isn't this why Microsoft's monopoly is so damn frustrating?
When a company is forced by a true competitor to hurl money at R&D instead of marketing and strong arming to keep their position, EVERYONE benefits. It's made Intel much better than they were becoming, and I really wish MS were put in a position where they had a real fight on their hands in the desktop space. If MS threw all their marketing dollars in to actual R&D, we might get a much better Windows than what Vista is going to be. Intel's situation is proof of that.
So bring on the competition. This is what capitalism looks like when it works, and it's a damned beautiful sight.
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
There's actually a difference between being a monopoly in terms of market share and being able to use monopoly pricing. Let's say a company has 100% market share, but knows that raising its price by 1% would cause competitors to enter. In this case, it cannot employ monopoly pricing because of the mere threat of competition. So the consumer gets the same efficient pricing as if there were competition.
This is a fairly unusual scenario, granted (usually there are fixed costs that prevent competitors from entering even if they could slightly undercut the monopoly for a while). But it's also unusual to find a pure monopoly that can employ monopoly pricing with no risk of competition. The above reasoning generally holds at least to some degree.
In the particular case of CPU manufacturing, barriers to entry are significant, so losing AMD might be really bad for consumers. I just wanted to point out that this isn't always the case.
Capitalize on what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
So what if intel have finally produced a chip that beats AMD in speed/price/watts, next year AMD will produce a chip that beats intel (or not).
You should look at the specs (and supplier reliability) before buying whatever suits your needs. Dont just sign up to one brand forever for fear of appearing to have made a poor decision in the past. Otherwise you'll be the one buying the Sony MP3 player.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't Laugh, Intel helped create the shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are the causes
1. By hyping Core 2 so early, it eroded confidence in Netburst, now no one wants a P4. (so the choice is Core 2 or Athlon x2)
2. Intel cannot produce enough Conroe's. So those who cannot get Core 2 look at Athlons.
3. AMD had to cut prices in half to match Core 2 (because Intel actually priced Core 2 a little too cheap*) it created more demand than AMD could handle until 65nm and all the Chartered product comes into the channel.
4. Intel started kissing up to Apple instead of Dell, forcing Dell into the AMD camp.
Yes, maybe AMD should have turned Dell away, but the real truth is that there is a shortage of everything but the netburst chips! Because Intel made/makes so many P4's the market will be this way for a few more months.
* if Intel had priced Core 2 duo's 25% higher, it would have helped them clear out the netburst chips. It seems they were more interesed in stopping AMD than they were in making a profit.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
Athlon 64 is bullet proof? Core 2 has already trumped AMD's highest end Athlon 64 in benchmarks.
The GP was talking about reliability, your response addressed performance.
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, what really matters is that there are now two stable, reliable providers of X86 parts throughout pretty much all market segments that should be around for the forseeable future.
In the past, K6 days, AMD competed only in the desktop space, and survived only because their parts were very cheap and had good price/performance -- maybe not the best, but good price/perf with a very low price is a good deal. During the K7 days, AMD survived only because their parts were the performance leaders and still rather cheap. Throughout these times, things were sketchy for AMD as a single botched product or a truly aggressive price war with Intel could put them under. With K8, AMD started to compete in server and HPC markets, and more and more in mobile markets, and in server and high-end desktop started charging a good deal of money, sacrificing some price/perf for profits. In other words they started to enjoy some of the high margin sales that Intel had been using to bank their price wars.
For the past couple years, AMD has been handing Intel their ass. Only complete morons thought Intel would sit on the ass they'd just been handed. Even if P4 and Itanium aren't the best products ever, Intel is a very capable company with the best fab tech and highest capacity of anyone. So now they've got their response to K8 lined up, and it looks very good. Nothing abnormal, completely predictable.
The difference between now and the past is that if say in the K7 days Intel had come out with a clearly superior product at a good price, AMD would have taken a huge hit. It took AMD having a superior product at a lower price to get the marketshare they had at the time, and without that their growth would have stagnated immediately. Now AMD has the reputation and revenue to survive such a thing. Now they can have a chance to come out with their own response to Intel.
Now this is all irrelevent if what you want to do is buy a processor tomorrow, in which case the price/perf comparisons of today will be most important to you. But in the overall sense of where the industry is going, the news is that AMD is still definitely in the race, and thus we have a more healthy processor industry than we've had in the past.
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bull. Shit.
Your attempt to tell me what does or does not make me a hypocrite is not assisted by your lack of reading comprehension.
I said that I am willing to do so. He said that he was not willing to do so. I didn't say that "I exhaustively investigate every company before I do business with them."
This is an example of the logical fallacy known as the "straw man". You are attacking a position I have never claimed to hold.
If you want go back to school, learn how the English language works, and then come back and debate me, I will happily entertain your attempt. I pray only that it is less pathetic than this one.
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:1, Insightful)
People reflect the societies that manufacture them. This "customer" you speak of--which, I imagine, you are somehow magically separate from--emulates the behaviors of the organizations s/he belongs to, whether company, church, tribe or nation. If the norm is to screw your neighbor for that last penny--which IS what capitalism comes down to, after all--then it should not be surprising that they "don't give a shit" when it comes to price versus "value".
If you're so concerned with ethics, you wouldn't HAVE a computer to proselytize about this company or that; you'd be trying to save a rain forest somewhere, or stop the bulldozing of olive trees in Palestine.
But you're not. So go back to your wanking, High-n-Mighty. At least that is something we can all believe in......
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing in my comment implies that I believe that the president is elected via popular vote in this country.
This has really gotten bad lately, people are constantly responding to things I didn't fucking say and then when I complain about it I tend to get modded down for something. I think it's reasonable for me to be angry with people who don't care enough to read my comment before replying to it.
This is precisely the opposite of what happened. Florida was attempting to perform a recount - the very fucking definition, in this case, of "settle this internally and come back with your answer." The recount was in fact already underway before the SCOTUS said anything about it. Then, while they were attempting to figure out who won, the recount was terminated.
No, no it wasn't. The Jist of it is that the results said Bush won, and a single supreme court justice took unilateral action to halt the recount because they wanted Bush to win. But, you can go on believing any kind of bullshit you like, whether it's true or not. If you had bothered to actually read and watch analyses of what precisely happened down there in Florida, you would know that the recount was stopped for one reason, and one reason alone: they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that a recount would name Al Gore the president of the US.
And, mind you, within this process nearly no military absentee ballots were counted... As usual.
This isn't a democracy; it's not even really a republic. It's a kleptocracy, in which those who are most adept at theft rise to the top, because it's a system that exists only to perpetuate graft.