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AMD Slashing Prices Still Not Enough?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jul 24, 2006 06:27 AM
from the price-wars-mean-happy-consumers dept.
AMD Hardware
PeterN writes to tell us that after hearing the announcement that AMD was slashing prices on their processors by 47%, TG Daily looked a bit deeper and found that it still might not be enough. From the article: "For AMD's planned price drop for its dual-core processors to enable the company to regain its aggressive price/performance competitive position against Intel as it has promised, the company would have to reduce its existing Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX prices by between 38% and 56% for its various models, with cuts averaging about 51%. This estimate is based on a comprehensive price/performance review of Intel's soon-to-be-released Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo processors, along with its existing Pentium D dual-core line, pitted against AMD's FX-62, FX-60, and Athlon 64 X2 processors in Tom's Hardware Guide tests."
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  • gamers beware. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Library Spoff (582122) on Monday July 24 2006, @06:33AM (#15768462) Journal
    If you're thinking of buying an AMD64 X2 for gaming and intend to put the chip in a motherboard with the Nvidia N4 chipset beware...
    Myself and several others have had problems with both Battlefield 2 and Source games (CS:S, day of defeat etc)

    Very annoying.

    Now i'll get lot's of replies from folks with this setup telling me otherwise....

    • Re:gamers beware. (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegamerformelyknown (868463) on Monday July 24 2006, @06:44AM (#15768479) Homepage
      I play CS:S with no problems at all, and I have a Nf4 and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. However, I did have problems playing CS 1.6 online, the game would go too fast, then lag to "catch up". To fix this, I simply had to install the AMD drivers and all my problems were solved :) So have you installed the CPU drivers?

      • Re:gamers beware. (Score:4, Informative)

        by ozbird (127571) on Monday July 24 2006, @07:33AM (#15768652)
        This sounds like the fix:
        AMD Dual-Core Optimizer [amd.com] - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core or multiple processor systems.
        Disabling Cool 'n' Quiet and/or power management may also work.
        (I've got an Athlon64 3500+; without CNQ it runs cooler and quieter than the Athlon XP it replaced, so I leave it turned off.)
      • Yeah i've installed *all* the drivers - even tried different partitions with Xp & beta drivers etc etc...
        do you have an nvidia Graphics card as well? i've an Asus board/64 X2 3800+/Nvidia 7600 card.

        there are other people on the anandtech/steam/BF2 forums with the same problem.

    • If you're thinking of buying an AMD64 X2 for gaming and intend to put the chip in a motherboard with the Nvidia N4 chipset beware... Myself and several others have had problems with both Battlefield 2 and Source games (CS:S, day of defeat etc)

      Seconded. I can't comment about the N4 chipset, but there certainly are issues with ming and the X2 line (I know that the X2s weren't 'meant' for gaming, but they do pretty well). The issues tend to fall into two categories: those that can't handle a 64-bit processo

    • The first has been mentioned, the most recent Dual Core Processor Driver from AMD's web site [amd.com].

      The second (if that does not work) is to explicitly bind your game to a single core. Start the game and right away hit control-alt-delete. Select the game in the "processes" tab, right-click and select "set affinity" and check only 1 processor.

      I too have an x2, nVidia video card and nVidia chipset. I had problems with Everquest2 until I installed the first, and regular Everquest until I did the second (every tim

  • But its better with most... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Roy van Rijn (919696) on Monday July 24 2006, @06:37AM (#15768468) Homepage
    Am I reading the article wrong..? It seems to me AMD is doing a pretty fine job, most lines are black, and only a few processors have a better Intel equivelent.

    Anyway, I was looking at a 4800 X2, and it seems its still the best option to buy atm, cheaper then the Intel (?).

    Still I think AMD has a group of active followers and Intel-haters, they won't stop buying those chips soon. And only in the very high end systems Intel is much cheaper, but thats not what most people will buy.
    • Hardcore AMD fan right here. Been using their chips for years. Intel's new stock does interest me, and I do plan on paying out some hard earned cash to them for a device that has an 'Intel Inside', but when it comes down to building a machine myself, for myself or someone else, it's going to be run by an AMD engine, unless Intel can really, really wow me.

      AMD always seems to edge out superior performance, and last just a little bit longer than it's Intel bretheren. Plus, the 64-bit support was there when I
      • From what I understand the AMD processors are still the only cores which have been totally designed from scratch for the 64bit computing, the Core 2 duo and extreme processors are still a Pentium M updated and tweaked for performance with EM64-T extensions added. To me having a processor designed from scratch with a sole purpose is what entices me into buying a new processor. I am now using my Turion X2 based desktops and love them.

        • Re:But its better with most... (Score:4, Informative)

          by MrFlibbs (945469) on Monday July 24 2006, @07:25AM (#15768618)
          Your statement about AMD processors being "designed from scratch for the 64bit computing" is neither accurate nor meaningful. Internally, both AMD and Intel CPUs have used 64bit busses for a long time. (In fact, Intel just went to a 128-bit wide bus to the SIMD units to speed up SSE/2/3 instructions.) I have no idea at what point in their CPU design AMD decided to implement 64-bit registers and instructions, but I'm sure the CPU in which they debuted was based on an existing 32-bit design. Widening registers & ALUs and adding new instructions is non-trivial but pretty straightforward.

          Besides, even if one design adopted 64-bitness earlier in the process than the other, of what benefit is this? If this is advantageous, it should show up in improved performance on 64-bit benchmarks. Is this the case?

          • Internally the RISC ops have a "size" modifier that has been updated to have a 64-bit type. The actual organization of the ALU and other components is very similar between K7 and K8.

            To say K8 is a totally new processor, as you alluded to, is inaccurate.

            To say Core Duo 2 Two Deux is totally new is wrong too. It's similar to a wider PM with a huger cache [yes huger is a word!].

            Tom
          • Besides, even if one design adopted 64-bitness earlier in the process than the other, of what benefit is this? If this is advantageous, it should show up in improved performance on 64-bit benchmarks. Is this the case?

            As with all things of this type, it depends on the application and its data set. A straight port of a 32-bit app with a 32-bit data set to a 64-bit environment probably isn't going to gain you much. In fact, performance might even suffer, as 64-bit stuff tends to clog up the L2 cache more tha
        • I'm not even sure what your post is supposed to mean. The difference between x86 and x86-64 is roughly equivalent to the difference between the Pentium and the Pentium with MMX; there are some extra registers and some extra instructions designed to interact with these registers.

          Did you consider the Pentium !!! inferior because it was just a Pentium II with SSE added, rather than a CPU specifically designed for SSE?

    • The problem for AMD is that even after slashing the prices, the new Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe) CPUs still pretty much deliver better bang for the buck (although the Netburst P4 don't, but thank god they're finally about to go the way of the Dodo). AMD's advantage at the moment is mass availability, in that regard things are a bit murky for Conroe. My last few CPUs were all AMD, because for me, they represented the best balance in performance and price. However, I'm planning on building myself a new computer

  • Uhm... still no word on the AMD buying ATI? (Score:3, Informative)

    by maybeHere (804258) on Monday July 24 2006, @06:39AM (#15768471)
    I'm surprised there's nothing regarding that deal on Slashdot yet, as it appears to be as good as done.

  • 4%? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2006, @06:40AM (#15768472)
    ... the announcement that AMD was slashing prices on their processors by 47% ...

    the company would have to reduce its existing Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX prices by between 38% and 56% for its various models, with cuts averaging about 51%

    OK, so they're saying that AMD missed the mark by 4%? And that this is worthy of writing an entire article about (a very short article by the way. Your welcome for the additional ad revenue :( Sheesh, welcome to journalism in the internet age.

    • Yeah. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Poromenos1 (830658) on Monday July 24 2006, @06:44AM (#15768480) Homepage
      For example, the 4200+ model would have to be priced below $213, but is indicated to sell for $225.

      I'd buy one if it was $213, but $225 is just too damn expensive!
    • Sure AMD gets close to winning price/performance with this cut, and in some of the classes even succeeding. The problem however is that once they manage price/performance parity they still lose out badly in (power-use/performance)/price. So really, them cutting prices to remain in parity (on the low and mid end, they are way off on the high end) only makes the choice of a Conroe a no-brainer because you get the same price/performance with much less power use and heat.

  • What about Opterons? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pieterh (196118) <pieter@hintjens.imatix@com> on Monday July 24 2006, @06:43AM (#15768477) Homepage
    AMD have taken a large part of the market that Itanium was meant to take, the 64-bit multicore server market. It's a market that pays for commodity performance above all, and AMD seem to have become the dominant CPU supplier for high-end X86 systems like the HP ProLiant DL585. These are the kinds of server that run Wall Street.
    • AMD have taken a large part of the market that Itanium was meant to take, the 64-bit multicore server market. It's a market that pays for commodity performance above all, and AMD seem to have become the dominant CPU supplier for high-end X86 systems like the HP ProLiant DL585. These are the kinds of server that run Wall Street.

      Not really, because the no1 PC server manufacturer (Dell) doesnt ship AMD. So we're stuck buy Intel crap... And I'm sure many many other companies have a "all PCs are Dell" policy..
      • Uhm, Dell started shipping Opterons in May [theregister.co.uk], precisely because high-end users were demanding them, and buying their servers from HP.
        • 'Uhm, Dell started shipping Opterons in May, precisely because high-end users were demanding them, and buying their servers from HP.'

          That's what I call bad timing. Three months with AMD, that means Intel is pissed off, and now they have the second fastest chips only. And while Apple has record margins because of "extremely favorable component prices", Dell issues a profit warning. Just wondering if these are related.
        • They did? Please direct me to a Dell System with AMD processors in it? Any Dell division for any country. What? Can't find one?

          Well, might that be because they "have not" started shipping them yet?

          Read your own article please
          "After all, it's the customers and not investors that will be buying Dell's new four-chip Opteron server at year's end."

          There is plenty of time for Dell to scrap the entire idea.

  • Before and after (Score:5, Informative)

    by stupid_is (716292) on Monday July 24 2006, @06:45AM (#15768482) Homepage
    Before the cuts [amd.com]

    After the cuts [amd.com]

  • Off Topic: AMD PR Numbers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheRaven64 (641858) on Monday July 24 2006, @07:06AM (#15768557) Homepage Journal
    Back in the '90s, Cyrix introduced PR (Pentium Rating) numbers; their chips were slightly better clock-for-clock than Pentia (for integer ops, they weren't so good for floating point) and they marketed them based on the equivalent speed Pentium. When the Pentium II was released, these numbers started looking silly. A 233MHz Pentium II was a lot faster than a PR233 Cyrix part.

    The current crop of AMD parts are marketed with a similar scheme showing the speed of an equivalent Pentium 4. Intel have pretty much discontinued the P4 now, and an Athlon 4200 is definitely not twice the speed of a 2.1 GHz Core 2. Are these performance rating numbers going to make AMD look silly?

    • They are not "PR" numbers, they are model numbers. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by imsabbel (611519) on Monday July 24 2006, @07:22AM (#15768605)
      And certainly that 2.1GHZ conroe is sold as Core II 6600, which means intel is cheating, because its only as fast as an A64 5000.
      Do you get the point?
      Clockspeed is so yesterday. Just forget it.

      Its just a nametag. Live with it.

      • And certainly that 2.1GHZ conroe is sold as Core II 6600, which means intel is cheating, because its only as fast as an A64 5000.
        Do you get the point?
        Clockspeed is so yesterday. Just forget it.

        In a world where you were running true CISC chips and every instruction took at least one clock cycle, and most took several, clock speed was everything. Now you have superscalar instructions, dual cores, special optimizations for multimedia, 3D graphics, etc., and well, clock speed doesn't seem to mean much anymore

    • There is a difference, as with AMD those numbers aren't supposed to be an equivalent to Pentium Mhz. They are meant as a comparison to the original Athlon. An Athlon 64 3000 is about three times the speed of a classic Athlon 1000. Comparing the speed of Athlon and Pentium CPUs is much to complicated to be put into one number. The numbers are good for me as an AMD user because I know which speed improvent I will gain when I replace my Athlon 64 3200 with an Athlon 64 X2 4800. I don't like Intels labeling a
    • I was under the impression that the ratings are supposed to measure about how much faster the CPU is than the original Athlon.
    • Here's the thing about AMD's PR numbers for their Athlon CPU's: they are far more representative of true level of CPU performance than the old Cyrix PR numbers. If you note all the tests done by Tom's Hardware and Anandtech with the Athlon XP CPU some years ago, note that the Athlon XP 2400+ CPU running at a much lower CPU clock rate than the Northwood-core Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz CPU had almost the exact performance on speed test and real-time application programs. The reason is simple: AMD's CPU core proc

  • AMD CPU prices are not the whole story (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2006, @07:14AM (#15768581)
    Have you checked Core 2 Duo compatible motherboard prices?

    They are around 200 euros. You can get a pretty good NForce4 board for 939 X2 for under 100 euros, and even AM2 boards are in 100-140 euro range.

    So total price, board+cpu, AMD still wins by a clear margin (price/performance), because intel chipsets are as overpriced as ever...
  • The top hobbyist end of the market isn't really a big deal. Splurging more than the cost of a console on a CPU that'll be out of date in two months isn't a rational decision to begin with, and dateless nerds with nothing better to spend their money on (hello!) will make their decisions based on the latest review in Game Wanker Monthly anyway, not on a few dollars price difference. What really matters to AMD and Intel is how they do in the bread-and-butter low and mid end consumer and server setups. Looki
  • When your processors are significantly slower than the opposition's, then no discount can be enough. These Intel processors appear to rock, and AMD may have to go back to being the budget basement choice unless they have something up their sleeves and soon. I'm neither an AMD nor Intel fan boy. My computer is now AMD, the previous was Intel. My next will probably be Intel by the looks of this.

    • When your processors are significantly slower than the opposition's, then no discount can be enough.

      Well, I dunno.

      That's probably true for the hobbyist market, but I'd guess the vast majority of processors go into machines that are never upgraded; therefore the concerns of the manufacturers are probably paramount.

      I have a friend in the auto industry who claims that engineers will sell their soul to save a nickel on a 30K$ automobile. Multiply that out by a lot of cars and it adds up. I imagine that it's t
    • My computer is now AMD, the previous was Intel. My next will probably be Intel by the looks of this.

      Agreed - I just thank Zeus that we finally have a good ol' fashioned price war again - Both Intel and AMD have, for a year or two, just kept pushing prices up as though not in competition (which I suppose partially holds true - Intel didn't need to fight for business market share, and AMD didn't need to fight for the DIY'ers).

      However, although Core II Duo (stupid name aside) looks rather impressive, keep

  • not the issue for many of us (Score:5, Insightful)

    by caudron (466327) on Monday July 24 2006, @07:39AM (#15768678) Homepage
    The real news for many of us about the AMD price cuts is extremely cheap CPU upgrades for our 939 socket systems. I have an AMD 3800+ and 3400+. Both are 939 and both mobos allow me to move up to one of the spiffy new dual core chips. With the new price cuts, I can upgrade my system to a dual core chip--each seperate core faster than my current single core CPU---for the price of a cheap-to-average video card. And there are a lot of AMD 939 users out there.

    That's the real news, not AMD missing the pricemark by 4%.

    Tom Caudron
    http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]

  • No reason to buy ANY new processors. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Monday July 24 2006, @07:53AM (#15768775) Homepage
    I just built a New media center PC for the living room. I am testing the XP based MediaPortal project that is turning out to be far superior to Microsoft's XPMedia Center 2005 and it's running on less than $150.oo in parts. Old Celeron 1.8 and horribly old ATX/AGP motherboard bought together from newegg for less than $50.00.

    There is no reason at all to buy a new generation processor outside of extreme gaming or science. Hell I still edit video on a 3 year old 2.8 P4 and it works great.

    The processor industry is suffering from stagnation. the new stuff is not fast enough to entice someone to throw away their current PC and buy the new performance stuff. and 64 bit has ZERO attraction to consumers and most people as there is no benefit or erason to switch to the 64 bit processors (unless you rtun linux and are a tinkerer.)
  • Entirely depends on what you're looking for.

    AMD cannot compete with Conroe in pure performance and yeah, the price cuts aren't enough to make the purchase of a high-end AMD CPU a good deal.

    But, the price cuts have made the 3800+ and 4200+ really great options for those with slightly older CPUs looking for a cheap upgrade path. The low-end AMD X2 CPUS will provide a great deal of horsepower for a much lower cost than the Intel E6300.

    It's like a Cyrix that doesn't suck.

    The E6300 will still be faster, but I th
  • tIME to upgrade. I was planning on upgrading my athlonXP +2400 to a +2900. However if these price drops occur I think I am just going to upgrade with a whole new motherboard and cpu. It would only be $150 more. But get them while they are hot!
  • See from what I can guess from it all is that I can remember when Intel was forced to drop its prices because of amd, and it was huge like that too. Not that Amd was any better, bu, If I am right, but they were at least half the price. Everybody went AMD, 90% for half the price, sounds good.

  • Marketing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by J-1000 (869558)
    AMD has done very little, marketing-wise, to strengthen its brand, which makes it very vulnerable to being marginalized when it starts being outperformed by the competition. Intel has their name everywhere and they have the little dun! dun! dun! dun! noise; they've also been a tough competitor even when AMD had the better performing chips. What does AMD have? A dull logo.
    • When Intel slashed the prices of the Pentium 4/D series, there was a lot of negative speculation. It turned out that they were just flushing their inventory before the Core 2 was released, since the Pentia were horribly uncompetitive next to the newer Core series and any left unsold after the release of the Core 2 are likely to remain unsold (or be sold at a loss).

      The release of the Core 2 caught AMD in the same way that the Opteron caught Intel; they didn't have a competitive product. Their only optio

    • You just don't have the right type of AMD's I guess.

      I am glad my AMD 1400 Thunderbird and Duron 1000 (both with 768 Meg of 168 Pinn simms) running my Linux servers for the past 4+ years is still worth something :-)

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