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AMD

AMD beats Intel in January sales 96

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bad-day-for-intel dept.
theGEEK wrote in to send us a link to a story where you can read that in January, AMD accounted for 43.9% of unit sales, to Intel's 40.3%. For the first time, Intel is #2. Update: 02/26 12:44 by H :It should be noted that this is only *retail*, and does not include corporate. Still, I bet things are happy at AMD today.
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AMD beats Intel in January sales More

AMD beats Intel in January sales

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  • It might have something to do with AMD's continued success insures we have a choice in x86 PC's in the future.

    Everyone likes a choice. I personally sort of like Intel with all the help it has offered the Open Source movement lately. However, I also dread the prospect of going to a Best Buy and finding only Intel based PC's available to choose from.

    Choice = good.
    No choice = communism.

    Get the picture.
  • Acronyms are fun!
  • This announcement is bliss. All these years, Intel's monopoly position put them in the position where they could make PC processors obsolete just when they were about to become affordable.

    Consumers, having no PC alternatives cheaper than $1,200, consistently saw the value of their investment vaporize at the exponential rate implied by Moore's law. They were getting screwed on the order of the savings & loan debacle of the 80s.

    Most consumers are finally realizing there is no economic justification for all the additional power that the upper-end chips supposedly provide. AMD's expanded presence will help those buyers steer clear of Intel's forced obsolescence scam.

  • you know, you make a good point.
    I hate teh fact that intel overprices there CPU's and keeps writing that CPU specific crap in there. If your making a CPU give it braun and muscle... LONG LIVE ALPHA !!!
    but your right, intel does support the linux community,and others. but there CPU's are just too expensive
  • Posted by Nickfh:

    For one, competition is good, and AMD and Cyrix are largely the reason you can get a decent wintel box so cheaply now.

    Secondly, AMD, by virtue or nescesity, is more supportive of standards, like OpenPIC, where as Intel can use its position to foist proprietary "standards" like APIC.

  • Hypotheticals about Apple are irrelevant. They don't want BeOS or mac clones. Period.

    So? Who is forcing anyone to buy Apple? Certainly not your boss. Or family members or friends. If they don't want BeOS or mac clones, that their decision and they will face the conciquences(if there is any).

    I'm still waiting for that PPC Chrp PC even if it only runs linux. I guess linux is also locked up in x86/intel world and will be
    even more entrenched with the new intel optimizations. gcc for PPC isn't going to be as optimised

    Only runs Linux? That sound a little closed. If there is an interest in Linux for PPC then someone will make it happen. And it will.
    Or I could be wrong and Linux will be X86 only. Who knows? =P
    --
    Now we're nothing.
  • something like "if if recall corectly" ?!?!?!?!
    there's a lot of TLA i don't know...
    BTW TLA means "three letters abreviation", but there's more like "IMHO" or "IMNSHO" etc etc etc

    PS: BTW means "by the way"
    PS2: PS means post scriptum
    PS3: be afraid of recursive TLA like GNU ;-)))
    --
  • Well, performance is a more murky area (try the recent Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] reviews of the PIII versus AMD. As for price: Intel PIII 450mhz is about 430 UK Pounds, and and AMD K6-2 3D-Now! 400mhz is about 120 UK pounds. I'm sure these prices equate roughly to the US ones - the major point is that AMD are much much cheaper.
    --Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
  • It only counts retail sales, not corporate sales, which AMD lags WAY behind in. But still, great for them!

  • why should we care? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i don't understand why a lot of you see AMD as the "good guys". i haven't heard of them doing anything for the alternate OS community, and i bet their suits are just as mean as intel's suits =)

    who cares which one is #1, a big company is still a big company, even if its not intel or microsoft.
  • Article says AMD has beaten Intel overall in the retail market. In the sub $1000 market, AMD has OVER 50% and Intel has like 25%
  • >Are they still owned by IBM? What's their market share now?

    They never were owned by IBM. The chips say IBM/Cyrix because they are fabricated by IBM, since Cyrix has no fab of it's own. They've been leasing IBM fabs for some time, but the companies are distinct and, to my knowledge, IBM has had nothing to do with the design of the processors...only the production (not that fabrication is a small feet).


    >Is it true that the Cyrix worked by parsing the x86 instructions on the front-end, then sending them through a RISC section?

    Probably so. A number of x86 chips work internally on a RISC core, with a rather complicated translator on each side. It's rather ugly to implement, but building a modern, heavily pipe-lined processor around the x86 spec is so nasty, that many engineers have decided to implement a translation internally. I believe that my old AMD K5 was designed this way.

    Also, I believe most x86 chips these days use microcode rather than straight logic to implement the more complicated functions. This can be thought of as breaking up a single, complex x86 instruction into multiple, simpler steps internally so that the ALU doesn't need to be quite so complex (and hence can run at higher clock). I've seen schematics of the K7 and it's ALU's "direct path" (strait logic) vs. it's "vector path" (microcode).

    As for Cyrix...in my eyes, the only thing that keeps them relevent is the MediaGX line. I haven't really run into any fans of the MII, and most of my friends have bad tastes in their mouths from the old 686's.

    --Lenny
  • Intel pays OEMs some huge amount for that 3 second "Pling Ding-ding-dang-dong" swirly bit they include in their adverts. Many OEMs probably wouldn't be able to afford TV advertising for their PCs if it wasn't for this.

    Then, having gained all this customer awareness for their machines, OEMs turn around and sell AMD-based machines instead.

    Is it me, or is that just plain *beautiful*?
  • http://news.com/News/Item/0,4,32962,00.html?st.ne. lh..ni
  • I'm still supporting Intel for this reason: AMD's floating point unit (FPU) in their K6-2 and K6-III CPU's still suck like a vacuum cleaner. :-(

    Remember, the K6 series CPU's process one FPU instruction per clock cycle, unlike the Intel CPU's, which can process multiple FPU instructions per clock cycle. That's the reason why in most modern games (Quake II, Incoming, Unreal, etc.) the Celeron 333 to 400 MHz CPU's are more than fast enough to run these games well. AMD needs to correct this problem with the K7 CPU--if the K7 can process multiple FPU instructions per clock cycle, THEN AMD has eliminated the last bottleneck that has hampered acceptance of their CPU's for high-end applications.
  • I totally agree. It's not about major corporations vs. minor corporations. There aren't a whole hell of a lot of small companies producing chips for the x86, or any other computer for that matter. It's kind of an irrelevant point.

    It's about competition. If one major company can push another major company of the top seat, this implies competition is alive and kicking. Especially if the older company has held the top spot for years, and has started selling based on name recognition rather than product. Competition brings down prices, and there isn't enough competition in certain sectors of the PC market.
  • As far as I've noticed AMD has been closing the gap fairly rapidly in regards to performance and popularity. The only reason intel released the celeron chips on slot 1 boards was to try to lock AMD out of the low end chip market. I wouldn't be surprised if their fear of AMD popularity was the reason behind the mediocre increase in performance from the PIII chips. Like maybe P3 was kind of a rush job.
  • Gateway and Compaq are big OEM's. Compaq is first on the list and Gateway is third. All of them Now sell AMD Processors in systems. Check your facts before you open your hole!!

    AMD's coming can you feel it!!!
  • And I supposed you have the intel processor that is going to compete with the k7. I also doubt that intel could put a 1ghz chip out right now, because if they could i'm sure they would have all sorts of crappy adds saying how the internet is going to be so much faster with thier new pentium 3.14159. As for cranking out a 1ghz chip right now i think either motorola/ibm with the powerpc or compaq with the alpha are the only ones capable of doing it if they were really pressed to.

  • For most applications, the difference is a relative issue. I probally could not see the difference since I play a select few games, surf the 'net and run word processing and Role-playing applications. I'm told that for higher powered applications, the difference is minor and that the cost of the P3 is not worth the slight performance improvement.
  • ... is a bad example of capitalism and imperialism!

    Go bananas now, will you ..
  • heheh i hear yeah, My OC'ed celeron, is at 464Mhz, 103Bus, ABIT BH-6 MB, hehe i have lan partys all the time, and i see what the amd's can do.. And the 400 can keep up, But the cpu turnaround on a AMD sucks, they had to remove that code to fit, 3dnow, while intel added more without removeing.. But all i can say is pIII here i come, i like the fpu on it, for what i need a good fpu for, hehe.. Lan party site is here [anvdesign.net] have fun!
  • I own stock in AMD, and the K7 will much better than anything Intel will have to offer for quite a while.

    Well, I may be a little biased... but I purchased the stock after being blown away by the k6-2.

    - Jeff

  • Also, AMD just released a new chip. PIII isn't on the market yet.

    Actually, the P3 is out now, and it's release was a complete non-event. It's only substantive improvement over P2 is clock speed. (A whopping 10%!)

    That AMD has done so well amidst the P3 pre-release hype is a success in itself. Now that intel has dropped the ball with the P3, AMD has a clear path for strong K6-3 sales, until they deliver intel a resounding boot-to-the-head with the K7.

  • Last time I checked, Cyrix was never owned by IBM. IBM is their primary foundry (ie the people who actually make their chips). Which is why you saw people referring to the chips as IBM/Cyrix 6x86 (and M2). Cyrix is now owned by National Semiconductor.

    Both AMD and Cyrix (and IDT, for that matter) are not "native" x86 chips anymore. Both quit being so at the K5/5x86 level. Instead, both are natively a RISCish chip, with a microcode layer that translates the x86 instructions to the underlying RISC architecture. It's considerably more cumbersome (from a chip designer's standpoint) than doing the translation in software (ala DEC's FX!32), but an order of magnitude faster.

    Don't know about their market share, though they only target the low-end now. Cyrix has abandoned the $1000+ PC market, and is strictly interested in the "integrated" CPU, ala their MediaGX stuff. This seems a reasonable way to go, since for NCs and similar stuff, if you can integrate alot of the normal chipset and other accessories onto the main CPU, it's alot cheaper. Problem is, it crowds out die space that could otherwise be used to improve performance. Oh well, don't get 'nothing for free!

  • Even if Apple does release the G3 motherboard specs to Be, I think Be would find another excuse to not develop BeOS for the PowerPC. Don't get me wrong, I love the PPC (I have 2 Macs at home and one at work), but it makes sense for Be to focus on the X86 market....for now. The PPC market is too small for them to make a dent in the whole OS market share. X86 is enourmous. They can start building a bigger user base in the X86 sector to secure a 10%-20% total OS market share before moving to other platforms like PPC. If you want a high end BeOS system, it makes better sense to get a high end K6-2 or K6-3.

    Hopefully, in a couple of years, they can once again diverge onto the PPC(and other) platforms. Saying that you refuse to buy a Mac is not the answer. If a company wanted to, they could make their own PPC CHiRP motherboard and bundle BeOS with it. There is no reason a PPC motherboard has to be more expensive than a Intel mobo.
    --
    Now we're nothing.
  • ..immigration to Burma?
  • Any of you own stock in AMD? If not, this doesn't affect you. The way I see it, most buyers have probably been waiting to see what the PIII is gonna do. So Intel's sales slowed down while people wait to see whether or not they should go with PIII or PII. Also, AMD just released a new chip. PIII isn't on the market yet. I doubt we'll see this trend continue except for the occasional instance like this one.

    Big freakin deal. AMD will always trail behind Intel. I'm all for more speed for less money, and all that, but AMD's performance isn't where I want it (Integer vs. Floating Point) and Intel's is. Too bad the PPC is so inaccessable outside of Apple. I think their floating point is better than Intel's. But I refuse to buy a Mac, unless Apple releases G3 and G4 motherboard specs to Be.

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  • (besides, he smites believers too, just look at Job)

    Well, that just makes me want to jump right in and be a believer! Hallelujah!

    If anything keeps me awake at night, its people with guns and little fish symbols on their cars.

  • Again, I must remind the non-US readers of /. that in the US we have been brought up to understand the word, "Communisim" as a synonym for "bad" or "bad for you/us".


    And by this logic, the correct definition of "hacker" is...


    I think I'll take cover now O:).

  • "That AMD has done so well amidst the P3 pre-release hype is a success in itself. Now that intel has dropped the ball with the P3, AMD has a
    clear path for strong K6-3 sales, until they deliver intel a resounding boot-to-the-head with the K7."

    K6-3 isn't a pre-release and also it's 3 freakin' percent! When the PIII is released AMD will go under again. Also don't forget who has more $$$ comming in from there chips even if AMD outsells intel by 3 percent intel still made more $$$, and the $$$ is what counts!
  • The workstations were originally huge and were used for high end stuff until recently but the fact that a kids game system can perform the same amount of calculations if not more then a 25,000 system is an embaresment. TOdya's workstions are only a few grand thanks to less engineering and more common snense and better technology. To day a workstation cost under 10,000.


    Neither a kid's game system nor a PC can do the work of a true workstation. Go to http://www.spec.org for performance figures for PCs, workstations, and servers. Go to, oh, http://www.sgi.com for information on what a really good rendering box can do, and how much it costs. Go to http://www.3dlabs.com for information on what a really good graphics card (the kind used in rendering boxes) can do. Vastly more powerful than a game box or a PC, and vastly more expensive, due to demand and the economies of small-run production.

  • If I Recall Correctly it means, well, "If I Recall Correctly"! =P
    --
    Now we're nothing.
  • OK, I'm going to make fun of this!

    Communism is a religion, by many believed to be founded by Karl Marx and Friedriech Engels. It is based on the Article of Faith that all units of homo sapien sapien are equal. Two things are worth to note: The first is that no implementor of Communism has gotten it quite right, all of them seem to get stuck on the second stage "the dictatorship of the proletariat". The other is that the Faith of Communism spreads, like bacteria, through division.

    Capitalism is a theory of resource management that builds on assigning a Value to every Resource so they can be properly distributed. This value is proportional to the pop count and inversely relational to resource contention. As every object necessary for the production of resources has a Capitalistic Value and no other forces than this Value is used to decide how to distribute, Capitalism gives a very simple model. It too has two characteristics worth of notice: The one being that while the system isn't complicated it becomes highly complex and thus tuning and optimization becomes hard. Proponents of Capitalism claim that it is so perfect that both tuning and optimization is unnecessary. The other is that all simple systems that try to solve complicated problems have a tendency to result in misfeatures such as unfairness.

    Democracy is a method of rule-management based on statistics. It has been implemented in many ways, the data collection criteria has varied widely between implementations. The first implementors used a very simple algorithm, later implementors opted for more complex schemes. Democracy's main drawback is that it isn't Perfect, the prime advantage is that it is Fair to the statistical material[1]. It is usually kept only because all alternative rule-management systems tend to be less favorable to the statistical material.

    Dictatorship is a rule-management system sometimes believed to be based on the belief that rules are best made by a single entity, the Dictator. In reality it is a rule-management system where the implementor ended up with too many resources under direct control, i.e. to coarse grained locking. Sometimes this state is necessary, such cases exist although seldom heard of and are, if successful, called Benevolent Dictatorships.

    Socialism is a resource management philosophy that mixes Communism and Capitalism and some in-house features. Theoretically it could give the higher base performance of Capitalism together with Communism's better fairness. It is very hard to get right because C&C doesn't MiX well. It also gives up any hope of Perfectibility to gain Implementability.

    BWZ Is a sometimes speaker of hot air. It is adviced that you don't mind him too much when he is hot air speaking...

    Notes:

    1. It is not fair to anything but the statistical material.

    Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?

  • I do (Score:1)

    by cale ( 18062 )
    No one said intel was going to sit idle, but what they have planned isn't going to hold a candle to the K7 (if AMD ever gets the K7 outta the factory and into my new motherboard) The K7 will really mix shit up, and I can't wait, maybe intel does have some kind of super processor waiting in the wings, but i doubt it. They have delayed merced enough, and now it seems it won't even perform all that great compared to what else is going to be around.
  • But I refuse to buy a Mac, unless Apple releases G3 and G4 motherboard specs to Be.

    I've always said Apple is like an ex girlfriend, sure they look good but there is bad relationship dynamics. Compared to Jobs, Gates is a benevolant dictator.
    ^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^ ~~^~
  • The author of the article must not be interested in a machine that has a monitor larger than 17". It would take me a matter of 5 minutes to find a computer that was over $2500. (SCSI Adaptor, HDD, CD, etc..)

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