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AMD Intel Hardware

AMD's "Frantic Price Cuts" May Pressure Intel 135

Posted by kdawson from the chips-falling-where-they-may dept.
kog777 writes in with news of a Needham analyst report alerting their clients to a possible price war between AMD and Intel. Analyst Y. Edwin Mok notes that AMD has cut its prices three times in three weeks. He says that Dell has been playing off the two chipmakers against one another to drive costs down. He suggests that bargain-hunting clients avoid both AMD and Intel stock for now. As an aside, Mok notes that so far Vista is not causing a spike in demand for chips. This story hasn't been picked up very widely; other coverage is at Seeking Alpha.
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AMD's "Frantic Price Cuts" May Pressure Intel More

AMD's "Frantic Price Cuts" May Pressure Intel

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  • It seems the author is still using his P1 (Score:4, Funny)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:07AM (#18024640) Homepage Journal
    shares of AMD rose 3.17 percent, or 46 cents, to $3.17

    Maybe he should check his math processor :P

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by modemboy ( 233342 )
      Yeah WTF? Shares of AMD are at $14.80. I thing they cut and pasted wrong...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by eviloverlordx ( 99809 )
      Maybe he should check his math processor :P

      Wouldn't that be 3.1699999999999999999 then?
    • shares of AMD rose 3.17 percent, or 46 cents, to $3.17

      Maybe he should check his math processor :P

      Haven't math co-processors been on the die since the 486 and original pentium (with the fdiv bu...)

      Oh, wait. d'oh.
  • to see how many suppliers they can drive out of business before they drive themselves out of business.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 )

      ...to see how many suppliers they can drive out of business before they drive themselves out of business.

      How would Dell drive people out of business by making two companies compete for their account? It is not like anyone will sell at under the cost for a prolonged time. Dell only has about 20% of the market. They are not vital to anyone's survival.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mfh ( 56 )

        They are not vital to anyone's survival.

        You are absolutely right, but 20% of the market is a big chunk of change to pass up.
      • Well they could. Companies get sold or go out of business when they are still making a profit but profits are to slim for the owners comfort. So if Competition is too stiff and they are making a small amount of profit, then it would be easy for the competing company to go under costs for a little bit to force them out of the market then they raise their prices again. If say the margins are too small for Intel CPU chips then they will stop making them and go with better margin products. In general a co

        • Shutdown Condition (Score:3, Informative)

          by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
          Just to expand on the point I think you're making, companies generally go out of business when the profit they generate is less than the amount of money that a similar amount of capital could make, if invested elsewhere.

          I.e., if your semiconductor business, which has physical and cash assets of $1B USD, is generating less than $1B invested directly in the stock market, then it probably doesn't make sense to keep going, unless you expect that you can turn the company around and get it more profitable.

          In real

  • Of course (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Chris whatever ( 980992 )
    Vista aint creating any spikes in purchases since the people that usually upgrade are the Gamer and we all know that Nvidia has serious driver issues, not sure if that affects ATI as well but as far as i know i will not buy a new sata drive and install vista anytime soon just to get my framerate lowered.

    --A great company said "framerate is life"--

    • ATI and Vista graphics in general (Score:4, Informative)

      by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:47AM (#18025252)
      ATI has not released its upcoming DX10 graphics card yet, so the only available DX10 card is the Nvidia 8800 with lousy drivers.
      Vista drivers for older (DX9) cards also suck, both for Nvidia and ATI. But for DX9 you can stay with XP anyway ;-)
      • You speak as if this is a suprise. Fisrt gen drivers are usually sub par. The gaming community is gearing up to buy the nVidia 8800 crads in anticipation of the first crop of DX10 games due out very soon. this means they will be either dual booting with Vista or diving into Vista completely. I have 2 systems so I for one will run Vista dual boot on my bleeding edge Gaming/Graphics Workstation rig and XP on my good enough gaming system. Only reason I'm dual booting the new system is for my 3D modleing a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nik13 ( 837926 )
        I've been wondering what ATI is up to lately. I always liked their offerings, but for the last while it seems they hardly have anything worthwhile (at my usual shopping places, all the nvidia-based offerings are cheaper, faster, and have FAR more selection!). Perhaps they're working mostly on their chipsets instead, but they're REALLY falling behind on video cards right now.

        And about AMD's price cuts, it's a good thing, but too little too late IMO. When a 200$ Core 2 Duo E6300 can easily be OC'ed to be fast [tomshardware.com]

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Bugs42 ( 788576 )
        In a related announcement, IBM disagreed saying there's only a market for maybe 5 copies of Vista in the world...
        Oh wait, sorry, that's the market for PS3s.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by DarkJC ( 810888 )
          How did we go from AMD/Intel price cuts, to Vista demand, to...

          PS3 bashing? This must be one of the biggest stretches of topic I've seen lately.

  • Best bit in the article... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:09AM (#18024670) Homepage Journal
    ...is totally OT, but it's where he says that a seasonal dip is occurring in PC sales in spite of the release of Vista, which is not causing a rise. In other words, people are either not buying Vista, or are successfully (?) running it on their existing computers. I suspect it's more the former, since Vista is reputed to run slowly on even the latest equipment.
    • I suspect it is the former but for other reasons. Vista runs fine on even turn of the century equipment, as long as you don't use Aero. It runs more or less like XP. But DRMier. And with annoying installation popups.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by archen ( 447353 )
      This is after Christmas is the big slump in pretty much every industry due to holiday spending hangover - computers are certainly no exception to this. If MS wanted better Vista sales, they should have gotten the OS out before the gift PCs were purchased at years end. I think more than anything this is probably proof that people just use what comes with their computer (whatever it may be), and very few would actually bother to change the OS - Microsoft or otherwise.
    • On current computers Vista runs fine, people rightly said it was slow while still in Beta, but both my systems run it fine, Desktop is an athlon x2 4200, 2gb, x1800, and laptop is c2d 2.0ghz, 1gb, nvidia go 7600.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      ...is totally OT, but it's where he says that a seasonal dip is occurring in PC sales in spite of the release of Vista, which is not causing a rise. In other words, people are either not buying Vista, or are successfully (?) running it on their existing computers. I suspect it's more the former, since Vista is reputed to run slowly on even the latest equipment.

      I think you're reading too much into that. I read it just as "people aren't in a hurry to move off XP". There's nothing to say there's a drop because

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fred_A ( 10934 )
        As far as I can tell the only reason for upgrading to Vista for "normal" MS users would be DirectX 10. However no apps use that. Is there anything out there at all that mandates the use of Vista ?

        From a users'pov, Vista does little more than add some eye candy and some extra clicking (and maybe provide a few more games on top of solitaire and spider). I doubt that anyone cares about the "added security" given MS's past record in that area.

        Now that everybody has spent $$$ on XP software to lock down his mach
      • Doesn't Vista's Aero Glass render text and icons as 3D textures, so they scale evenly? I know too many relatives with 17 or 19" LCDs running at 800x600 because otherwise the text is too small for their liking. In XP, even if they change Windows' to Large Fonts, icons are too small to be readable, as are many apps.

    • LitePC? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by flyingfsck ( 986395 )
      I wonder when the Vista version of LitePC http://www.litepc.com/ [litepc.com] will be available. Once one can successfully remove DRM and other cruft from Vista at the click of a button, it should become more popular.

  • Fab prices (Score:3, Insightful)

    by modemboy ( 233342 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:16AM (#18024788)
    I wonder how much of the price cuts have to do with the fab costs. Intel has pretty much completely transitioned to 65nm fabs for their new chips, while AMD is still in the middle of the transition and just launched retail 65nm chips at the beginning of the year. Perhaps AMD is dropping their prices to get rid of all of their 90nm chips, and/or they are getting good deals from the 90nm fabs as they drop prices to compete with the 65nm fabs (I believe AMD outsources a lot of their fab work.)

    • Re:Fab prices (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bindo ( 82607 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:27AM (#18024936)
      or they are getting good deals from the 90nm fabs as they drop prices to compete with the 65nm fabs (I believe AMD outsources a lot of their fab work.)

      you believe wrong.

      Intel, amd and IBM are the three last big behemoths of bleeding edge chip fabrication. And to keep up IBM and AMD signed a deep alliance at the beginning of the decade.

      First outsourcing for chips from AMD was last year and it took 5 years and a failed deal to arrange.
      Normally in these conditions partners are NOT fungible. As in THERE ARE NO 65nm merchant fabs in the world who can compete with Intel or AMD ...

      They are clearing inventory. The point is: what will the price of the new parts be??
      In the chip industry this is the way price wars erupt. You make MORE space than necessary in your listings and the new parts start lower than where the older parts started.

  • Umm Yea... So... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:17AM (#18024794)
    Isn't that what competing companies supposed to do? This has been happening for a long time. During the 1990s AMD was selling their chips for cheaper prices then Intel. Then around the Early 2000s AMD finally got a good reputation and better then Intel's so Its prices went up (Increase in demand). Now with Intel Core Chips which perform very good and are relatively inexpensive Intel Chips are getting more demand. So in order to keeps AMDs line selling they will Lower the prices on their chips. Now Intel will choose wether the demand for their chips at there prices will still work with the market or they will need to lower the chip prices. Now a word of waning about Price Wars, The consumer usually wins at first then they they slowly get screwed as the war lingers. Lower Price Chips means less R&D and Less Good Improvements and More Quick Patches and Fixes. So quality will drop. I know people want to think of a perfect world where we get Top Quality Products at Discount Products, But in reality that is not the case, I am sorry but the $400 Dell Laptop is Lower Quality then the $2500 MacBook Pro. There may be a feature that is better but overall you are getting less.

    • Re:Umm Yea... So... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:28AM (#18024956)

      Isn't that what competing companies supposed to do?

      Yup.

      Now a word of waning about Price Wars, The consumer usually wins at first then they they slowly get screwed as the war lingers. Lower Price Chips means less R&D and Less Good Improvements and More Quick Patches and Fixes. So quality will drop.

      I'm not sure I agree with this. No company with any sense ties their R&D budget directly to their incoming revenue. R&D is an investment and the amount should be based upon a risk/reward/intitial cost assessment. Just because I lower prices by 20% does not necessarily mean my investment in some new tech has any less potential for profit in the future. The real danger is not lower quality, but the possibility that one company might "win" and monopolize the market, then use that monopoly to entrench their position and ruin other markets. For example, suppose Intel drives AMD out of business, then introduces some patented feature to the "standard x86" chipset. Or suppose they dominate the market, but ship integrated graphics chips with all CPUs, thus forcing consumers to either use theirs or buy a second one as well, that works better.

      • Well it could. Lets say some research is based on using more expensive materials to make a performance exponentially faster. Now the company needs to be more cost competitive the R&D is changed from making Faster Chips to more affordable ones. So more effort will be towards making chips that run at the same speeds but are cheaper to produce.
        • Lets say some research is based on using more expensive materials to make a performance exponentially faster.

          Taking 'exponentially' non-literally, do you mean something like a brand-new fabrication plant with state-of-the-art technology for a smaller silicon node, which costs billions of dollars that cannot be recouped until well after the plant is finished and producing production parts? Developing and re-tooling for silicon on insulator or strained silicon?

          I don't think you realize just how competitive t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I'm not sure I agree with this. No company with any sense ties their R&D budget directly to their incoming revenue. R&D is an investment and the amount should be based upon a risk/reward/intitial cost assessment. Just because I lower prices by 20% does not necessarily mean my investment in some new tech has any less potential for profit in the future. The real danger is not lower quality, but the possibility that one company might "win" and monopolize the market, then use that monopoly to entrench t

        • Competition to the bottom works great, until you hit a certain point where it's really detrimental to the consumer. Take for example cellphones. Ever notice that Europe and Asia get a lot more cellphones that do everything or nothing, while we get 3-generations behind phones here in North America?

          You attribute this to too much competition instead of not enough? The difference between the US and Europe is not that there is less competition among cell phone providers in Europe. The difference is that in Eu

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            There's a difference between increased competition and increased commoditization. Having a larger number of competitors increases innovation. Increasing the price-oriented competition between the existing players increases commoditization, which progressively decreases innovation until a new player enters the field or until one of them realizes that they've made a mistake. You do not want processors to be purchased based primarily on cost.

            Of course, one could legitimately argue that it is the lack of a

        • Or it could be that that small county's have Just one Phone Network and only a small number of tower to update to make changes to there network to support things like 3G and other advanced Features were in the USA we have the opposite effect Large Area Lots of Towers and slow upgrade cycles. Plus the existing Networks of Verizon and Cell One Plus the Newer GSM networks that phones have to be setup to work with. It was less then 1 Year ago when Verzion phones droped the analog network and just support 3 Di

    • Re:Umm Yea... So... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:39AM (#18025122)

      I know people want to think of a perfect world where we get Top Quality Products at Discount Products, But in reality that is not the case.
      You're saying that value to the customer is a constant, and the only thing that changes is the tradeoff between price and quality. I completely disagree. Until about 4 years ago, Intel had screwed customers for 20 years because they had no real peer. Quality was (mostly) good, but Intel's prices were extremely high, and didn't start to fall until about 1999. For all those years, Intel had a huge profit margin, allowing them to live high on the hog, expanding into lots of business where they failed, waste *billions* on the failed Itanium, and grow top heavy. The war chest to survive all this and come out none the worse, came from consumers' wallets.
      • Well I am sorry but the value to the customer is less variable then Cost vs. Quality. Competition is good, it keeps the company honest. Competitive Wars are not, to many resources are towards fighting the war. There is usually a degree if a company has a large enough lead, where both Price and Quality can both go in positive direction. But in a situation of a Competitive War sacrifices are needed to be made.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by geekoid ( 135745 )
        I would like to add that there were a series of production 'break thoughs' about 3 years before that. They dramitically lowered the cost of the chip. AMD , at that time, was in a better position to leverage those changes.

  • A plea to Dell (Score:5, Funny)

    by jeffmeden ( 135043 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:20AM (#18024830) Homepage Journal
    Please, mr dell, start a price war between RAM manufacturers next! I live in perpetual obsolescence thanks to the dramatic cost of DDR and DDR2! Won't someone think of the child processes!
    • Please, mr dell, start a price war between RAM manufacturers next! I live in perpetual obsolescence thanks to the dramatic cost of DDR and DDR2! Won't someone think of the child processes!

      Memory prices are already down to about where they were last July (2006). That's about 30-40% less then prices were in Nov/Dec 2006.

    • A joke this post was meant to be but by golly this lad has a point.

      WTF is with ram prices? CPU's, hard disks, displays are all going down as per usual but ram, which normally follows the rest of the industry is sticking darn tight to that 200$ US per 2gb of decent quality ram level.

      It's been there for a while, it's becoming quite annoying - I had a 2gb machine 2 years ago and it cost maybe 300$ US, 100$ US in 2 years does not make for a good price drop!

      4GB "kits" need to come soon from OCZ / Corsair / Kings

      • WTF is with ram prices? CPU's, hard disks, displays are all going down as per usual but ram, which normally follows the rest of the industry is sticking darn tight to that 200$ US per 2gb of decent quality ram level.

        It's been there for a while, it's becoming quite annoying - I had a 2gb machine 2 years ago and it cost maybe 300$ US, 100$ US in 2 years does not make for a good price drop!

        I hear ya. RAM prices are so frickin' unpredictable. I've been hoping for a DDR2 price war similar to the fantastic PC133 price war of November 2001 [anandtech.com], when the shipping cost of PC133 was higher than the price of the RAM itself (128MB - $5, 256MB - $10).

  • What are pre-prepared , planned advertisements, allowed?
    This is MORE than hollow ...

    • What are pre-prepared , planned advertisements, allowed? This is MORE than hollow ...

      Are you always this dumb, or is your brain at the cleaner's?

      An article about how AMD can't sell processors so they are forced to drop prices ain't an advertisement for AMD. It's also not an Intel advert, because it suggests that AMD processors are getting damned cheap.

      Most geeks use PC clones because they feature the best price:performance ratio. So this is news for nerds. And you are just whinging.

      • To be honest, my first thought when I read this was: "Did someone just spam slashdot?"

        Imagine:
        1. Sell short on Intel and AMD shares.
        2. Post Slashdot story about price war between Intel and AMD.
        3. Watch as the share prices fall and your profit goes up!

  • Price War (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:23AM (#18024876) Homepage
    There has been a "possible price war" for the better part of a year with these two companies. AMD has cut prices [slashdot.org] a couple times now and Intel has responded similar moves and with new chip technology that proved to be a large, significant advancement. I am not sure what we are looking for to confirm a price war, but as far as I can tell, these companies have been going at it for some time now. With the industry changing every year it seems, it might be difficult to classify this as a price war. Is this simply strong competition in a large market that effects both business and individual consumers?

    For those looking for a "price war" you do not need a confirmation. It has been going on for over 7 years now. This [my-esm.com] article dated Feb 28, 2000 details price cuts by AMD in response to Intel cuts. Then, look who is still at it 6 years later - Price Wars Intensify as Intel Slashes Chip Prices [pcworld.com]. It is a seesaw game that, hopefully, will not end any time soon. The more they go at it, the more the consumer stands to gain.

    Now a related question... Do you think consumer demand or competition with each other is causing the rapid advancement in chip design and architecture.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sporkinum ( 655143 )
      At least in my case, I see no reason to change CPU as my xp2400 does well enough by me. I would need to replace my ram, mobo and CPU and possibly video card to move to a newer generation. That's at least $300 with even a cheap CPU and getting a mobo that supports AGP It also wouldn't cover replacing the 2.5gb of ram I currently run.

      I'm sure most people don't need as much horsepower as they are pitching now.
      • I agree. I have the same urge to have the best this-or-that like many people but after pushing my emotions aside my current system (AMD 64 x2 3800, 2gb ram, NForce4, etc) runs like a champ. I wouldn't upgrade until new software starts to grind or I have to run at annoyingly low settings at games. Even then it would have to be at a point where it wasn't just the CPU but the MB, RAM, and video that needed replacing too.

        My last upgrade was a complete rebuild of every single component. I went from a 486 VLB

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by benzapp ( 464105 )
          My last upgrade was a complete rebuild of every single component. I went from a 486 VLB system to my current PCI-E one. I think I skipped about 4-5 generations.

          Umm, is this a joke?

          I have a Compaq LTE Elite laptop I got in 1994 for like $4,000. It has a 486 DX2/50, 16 megs of ram, and an ungodly slow 340 meg hard drive. It has Windows 95 installed it. They made computers solid back in those days. This thing still works incredibly.

          I powered it up a few weeks ago and was amazed at how slow it was. Netsca
          • This was well over a year ago but no, this isn't a joke and yes, barely anything ran on it towards the end. I was using it mostly for email and web browsing but some apps, like MAME, would actually run reasonably well on it. It was so old the CPU heatsink didn't even need a fan. My current video card (Nvida 7800gt) has more memory on it than all the ram in my old machine. I put off upgrading since it seemed I always had another cash priority at the time. The thing NEVER failed amazingly enough (for the
      • The solution to your woes exists but good lord is it ugly, there are mother boards that support Core 2, DDR1, AGP and IDE.

        Unfortunately these boards are designed to be very low end and this tends to come at the cost of reliability, stability, and driver support.

        Asrock makes several such boards and these boards are responsible for their reputation of poor quality.

        When performance starts to degrade and the upgrade market doesn't look promising overclock (hey you were gonna replace it anyway right? If it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kabocox ( 199019 )
      Now a related question... Do you think consumer demand or competition with each other is causing the rapid advancement in chip design and architecture.

      My Girl is just finished selling Girl Scout Cookies. It's competition with other girls and not demand for the cookies. There isn't any demand until you start deliverying and then some one wants a box right then. The GSC are all the same product though troops sell boxs at different prices. If you want cookies, it's cheaper to go to Walmart and buy almost anyot

  • analysts produce news like cows produce methane (Score:5, Insightful)

    by markhahn ( 122033 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:25AM (#18024900)
    the analyst industry is quite amazing - all you have to do is repackage common knowlege as something special and people will pay you for it!

    seriously - AMD and Intel are normally out-of-phase in product intros. it's been this way for many years, so we have to assume it's deliberate. Intel made a major improvement by souping up the Pentium-M line into Core2, and has gained a nice lead in some, even most, benchmarks. mainly due to some fairly narrow improvements that AMD hasn't yet answered, like 1-cycle throughput SIMD operations. AMD's current offerings are largely unchanged since the original Opteron intro (2003?), except for smallish tweaks like bigger caches, faster memory, doubled cores. AMD still does well for applications which are sensitive to memory bandwidth, for instance - part of the original technological jump of the K8.

    AMD is about to introduce their response to Core2, and it seems quite promising based on the hints AMD has provided. Intel's not in a position to respond immediately, since 45nm production is some way off, and it (Penryn) will apparently be just a shrink of the current Core2 design.

    in short, it's only sensible, sound business practice for AMD to drop the prices of their mature, high-yielding, partly-outsourced half-gen-old products. performance is still competitive with Intel's products - at a time when Intel's yields are probably not yet mature. in a way, this sets the stage for AMD to introduce its next-gen parts at a more comfortable margin.

    • seriously - AMD and Intel are normally out-of-phase in product intros. it's been this way for many years, so we have to assume it's deliberate.

      Why is that? I cannot disagree strongly enough. As long as there's demand for your chip, you can sit fat, dumb, and happy, selling processors. When there isn't, you'd better get that next chip our the door, or your ass is grass. You don't want to bring out the new chip too early, though, or else either you will not be able to price it competitively, or it will canni

    • AMD still does well for applications which are sensitive to memory bandwidth, for instance - part of the original technological jump of the K8.

      Latency, actually. The on-die memory controller puts RAM closer to the chip and is thus faster to access. K8 does do well in the bandwidth category in multi-socket situations, since the on-die controller means the amount of bandwidth scales with the number of sockets (memory controllers).

      Just a nit to pick for those who are interested. :)
    • AMD is about to introduce their response to Core2, and it seems quite promising based on the hints AMD has provided.
      Yes but promising in what vector -just performance or price/performance? Barcelona is a big huge die (costly to make) that AMD has already hinted they want to sell at a premium. Just putting the other K8 architecture onto 65nm isn't going to gain them the kind of across-the-board improvement in all segments that Core 2 architecture will for Intel -which is just now phasing out the last of th

  • 90nm Fabs aren't going anywhere fast. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by basicguy ( 1063914 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:34AM (#18025076)
    Price wars (or marginal return on investment) are always going on for the products of fabs still producing older technology. It is just more noticeable when the old technology is still highly desirable. From a business view point, it is desirable to get every last dollar return for the multi-billion dollar investment made in the original technology as long as the marginal cost of production is less than the revenue obtained. When the curve inverts then the fabs get taken off line, or upgraded. AMD has next to nothing to lose on the price drop of outsourced fab product except cannibalized sales from the new 65nm. Since supplies are limited and selling, cannibalized sales has to be a zero quantity at present.

  • He suggests that bargain-hunting clients avoid both AMD and Intel stock for now.
    First of all, where in either article was this even eluded to...I did not pick up on it at all. Secondly, is there any alternative to AMD or Intel for an average PC technician?

    • He suggests that bargain-hunting clients avoid both AMD and Intel stock for now. First of all, where in either article was this even eluded to...I did not pick up on it at all.

      It must have eluded [reference.com] you. (The word you want is "Alluded". If you don't want to look like a total idiot, try not to use words you don't understand.)

      Here is the bit of the article in question: "Intel will likely feel pressured to respond with cuts of its own," Mok contends, driving down profits for both firms. "We would avoid both nam

      • Thanks for the clarification, I'm not much of a stocks person so that just flew over my head. I'll make sure to double check my spelling next time...even though that won't stop me from looking like a total idiot

  • Price war and competition (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:48AM (#18025266) Journal
    Yes Intel and AMD are competing with one another. Prices are dropping. When there is true competion in the OS market, OS prices also will drop. When there is true competition in the Office market, Office prices will also drop. Office prices will drop only when the consumers, (mainly the corporate consumers, we retail customers dont have much weight) stop confusing interoperability with windows compatibility there will be true competition in that market.

    Why keep bashing Microsoft, calling it evil etc? It is the consumers who should wake up. Let us say I give these companies big discount so that they can "make the numbers" for this quarter. But that would force them to give all their data to me and they have to pay me every quarter to access their own data. In a rational world, I would be laughed out of the business meeting in no time. But that is precisely what is happening in sales meetings between MS and the fortune 500 companies.

    When it comes to the chips Dell is able to play AMD against Intel. It is in Dell's own interest to have a competition in OS/Office market so that it can play one against another and reduce the cost of computing to its customers so that it can sell more. But Dell buries alternatives deep, makes it difficult to buy the alternatives. Why? Why? Isn't there anyone who can break through the non-disclosure agreements and the secrecy and shed light on why corporations are acting seemingly irrationally? Sunlight is the best disinfectent.

    • When it comes to the chips Dell is able to play AMD against Intel. It is in Dell's own interest to have a competition in OS/Office market so that it can play one against another and reduce the cost of computing to its customers so that it can sell more. But Dell buries alternatives deep, makes it difficult to buy the alternatives.

      I don't think they are being buried - this link was only one click away [dell.com] from the main www.dell.com page.

      I did find a little interesting the big AMD sticker pasted on the outside of

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Miseph ( 979059 )
      Dell could care less about alternative OSs. In fact, they could care less about primary ones too; the only reason that Dell cares what operating system comes on their machines is because their customers do. Specifically "everyone" (vocal minority aside, they do) wants Windows on both personal and business machines.

      The reason that Dell offers blank PCs "intended for Linux" at all has nothing to do with actual customer demand for them: if it did, they wouldn't make them so hard to find on their site. The real
      • No company likes to compete on price alone. Every company strives to get a "brand" image or some kind of differentiation from its competitor. Something that will make its customers stop looking at the price and something else. At least one big name PC vendor should get the idea to ship a PC with Windows, but with Firefox as the default browser, OpenOffice pre-installed, and advertise its product as "a more secure PC". But not a single vendor is pre-installing Firefox. Not one is installing OpenOffice. Why?

  • Good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by d3ac0n ( 715594 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @11:51AM (#18025364)
    I'm sick of seeing these chips at outrageous prices. Who other than the most rabid gamer is going to be willing to fork over $500 - $1000 (US) for the latest processor? The worst part of it is, the processors are starting out so overpriced, that when they start to drop, it takes over two YEARS before they become reasonable. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot, but I'd like to be able to get something less than 4 generations old at a decent price point.

    It used to be that you would spend, AT MOST, about $100 - $200 (US) for the latest AMD offering (usually much less, under $75.00 US). Intel was never considered for gamers or home-builders because they were overpriced and underpowered. Lately AMD has been pulling the same crap that Intel was pulling back in the 90's. End result? We now have two chip makers, both with overpriced CPU's, trying to compete. It's about time there was a price war! They are using smaller and smaller die sizes, and are thusly getting more and more out of each silicon wafer. The damn things should be getting CHEAPER not exorbitantly more expensive!

    Bring back the sub-$200.00 bleeding edge CPU. It's well past time.

    • Re:Good. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Chicken04GTO ( 957041 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @12:06PM (#18025628)
      Ummm, no. Only the very TOP of the line chips cost that much. You can still buy "slightly less than uber" processors for a great bargain. Your essentially bitching because their product offerings are more varied then they used to be. Cry some more, your tears cool my CPU down.
    • Holy jebus! What do you want. - On sale today, Canadian dollars!! so it is actually well under $200

      AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Dual Core Processor Socket AM2 Brisbane 2.3GHZ 2X512KB 65NM 65W Retail Box $198.98

    • I'm sick of seeing these chips at outrageous prices.

      Your joking right? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16819103735 [newegg.com] $109 for an Athlon64 X2 3800+......Just over a hundred bucks for a kick ass processor (I bought one myself last year when it cost $350 Canadian before tax). I was actually quite surprised to see it at $109 USD on newegg, considering I paid over 3 times that less than a year ago. Now, let's see how much 2 gigs of cheap value ram costs, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [newegg.com]

      • I think the point he's making is simply a few months too late - otherwise it's bang fucking on!

        I purchased an AMD Opteron 165 (Essentially an X2, 3800+ CPU) for about 480$ AUD (350$ US) around 18-24 months ago approximately.
        About 6 months ago, just before the C2D came out, this same CPU was STILL about 395$ AU or 300$ roughly.

        The prices just HUNG there, I admit AMD need cash and they deserve a break for a change but good LORD did the prices just STOP for a while.
        Now AMD are begging for us back, dropping the
    • I bought an (Intel) E6600, and it is extremely fast, and overclocks extremely well. I have lowly DDR2/667 RAM, not DDR2/800 and I still manage to get 3.05Ghz out of it. I've run it as fast as 3.2Ghz (to go any higher I'd have to go DDR2/800) and it's perfectly stable, but the temperature hits 85*C. I'd only push it higher (with faster ram, obviously) if I had a peltier or water cooling system.

      At 3.05Ghz, it normally runs at 51*C (normal tasks like web surfing, word processing, and so forth), and peaks aroun
  • I was really rooting for the latest Athlon/Turion 64 X2's, but my recent laptop has a Core 2 Duo. AMD was ahead for a while, but they're playing catch-up again, and I'm not really surprised if their prices reflect this. Intel has been 65nm for over a year now, and it shows in power usage at the very least. I'll admit this is an interesting war to witness, however.

    • Re:I'll care when AMD catches up to the Core 2 Duo (Score:5, Informative)

      by LehiNephi ( 695428 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @12:12PM (#18025716) Journal
      Careful with the "power usage" statement. While Intel certainly has lower power consumption in their Core2Duo processors, that's only in relation to the power-hungry Prescott-based processors. Intel's PR department has made a lot of hay out of their decreased power consumption. The fact of the matter, however, is that Core 2 Duo processors at 65nm now have about the same power consumption as their Athlon 64 X2 counterparts at 90nm--about 65W.

      I highly recommend taking a look at processor electrical specifications [erols.com]. And keep in mind that Intel's power figures are more optimistic ("typical") than AMD's ("max").

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 )
        Core2Duo may have lower power use but chipsets still use more.
        Intel's new exons may use less power for the cpus but when you add the chip set and the FB-Dimms it is about the same as amd cpus + chipset + ddr ecc ram.
      • AMD market's a typical "optimistic" spec. Where have you been? AMD's marketing trickery w.r.t. power numbers has been exposed on /. for some time. Both sides have their own "optimal" conditions.

        I refer you to this thread to see how AMD markets power. They use barrels of hype.

        http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210098&cid=171 20864 [slashdot.org]

        • And your proof is a link to your own post which makes the same unsupported accusation? Sweet, I'm convinced.

          Anyway, we're not talking about marketing about which uses less power in a common day's usage and will cost you less on your electric bill. We're talking about how their chips are rated for power consumption. This is the TDP, Total Design Power, the number that computer makers will need to use to design their cooling solutions. You can't market your way around TDP; if you try then the cooling solu
          • First of all, you don't even understand the terms:

            TDP = Thermal Design Power. Not "total". Get your facts right.

            You are totally wrong about TDP: TDP is entirely a marketing construct. It is based on a typical scenario. They choose a point arbitrarily that doesn't cause too much perf. loss from PowerNow!, but still reduces thermal solution cost. It's market pressure.

            Second: RTFA.

            http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2068252 ,00.asp [extremetech.com]

            "AMD's argument goes like this: Modern desktop and notebook processo
            • TDP = Thermal Design Power. Not "total". Get your facts right.

              Big whoop, an acronym wrong. Rote memory vs understanding? I'll take understanding, which you fail.

              Marketing drones on the prowl. AMD took Intel's spec, changed what is considered a "typical" day, and said, "Hey look, we win!!!" I'm sure Intel will respond in kind.

              I don't care about marketing spiels about how it costs less to own Brand X for Purpose Y. The article talks about situations where the processor is idle and consuming less power, in

              • TDP is about the physical requirements to transfer power away from the silicon. If they bullshit their TDP numbers, then the HSF the OEMs use will be inadequate, and they will absolutely notice this in the form of chips failing from overheating.

                Half wrong.

                If they lowball TDP, the OEM designs an inadequate solution, and both Intel and AMD cpus will throttle more, reducing performance. If the throttle cannot cool the CPU, the catastrophic diode triggers, halting the CPU.

                TDP is selected based on performance/c
                • If they lowball TDP, the OEM designs an inadequate solution, and both Intel and AMD cpus will throttle more, reducing performance. If the throttle cannot cool the CPU, the catastrophic diode triggers, halting the CPU.

                  AMD doesn't have thermal clock throttling. They didn't even have an on-chip thermal diode to handle chip kill until K8 -- K7-based designs required a sensor on the motherboard. Clock throttling based on temperature (no OS control) was a feature Intel introduced in the Pentium 4, and which was
                  • Heh:

                    Yes TDP is "selected" based on power/performance tradeoffs, but that is nothing like it being a pure marketing decision. Marketing may say that market X has max power envelope Y, but after that it's the physical requirements of the chip that dictate the cross of performance/TDP.

                    vs.

                    You're making it sound as though TDP is like AMD's model numbers, completely arbitrary, and nothing could be further from the truth.

                    I guess we just see the same data completely differently.

      • The fact of the matter, however, is that Core 2 Duo processors at 65nm now have about the same power consumption as their Athlon 64 X2 counterparts at 90nm--about 65W.

        I highly recommend taking a look at processor electrical specifications. And keep in mind that Intel's power figures are more optimistic ("typical") than AMD's ("max").

        I don't think we should trust the power "specs" from Intel, AMD, or any source that only focuses on the CPU. If you want to compare power consumption between Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2, I think you should look at total system power consumption with whatever chipsets you plan to use.

        For example, on the "mainstream" P965 and nForce 590 chipsets [anandtech.com], the Core 2 Duo systems consume significantly less power than the Athlon 64 x2 counterparts. Note that the nForce 590 chipset is power-hungry, but NVIDIA chipsets

  • ITs great! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday February 15, 2007 @12:19PM (#18025834) Homepage
    Us gutter IT guys can grab up Sempron 64 3000+ chips for absolute dirt right now. I built my daughter a computer to play Quake4 on for less than $150.00 and she can play it at high detail settings with that low end Geforce 6800GT on that cheap motherboard and really slow processor like that.

    Hell that setup has the power to record 4 NTSC tv channels and 1 HD channel at the same time. Makes a great cheap MythTV backend recorder.
    • aye, the sempron 64 3000's can have the dickens overclocked out of them -- it's a great bargain. I'd like to hear about what else you built the system with -- you re-used a lot of older stuff, right? I thought 6800GT's were still way over 100 bucks!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DarkJC ( 810888 )
      Remind us where you found a 6800GT for less than $150.00? The cheapest for that card on newegg IS $150.00. Unless the case, powersupply, ram, hardrives, optical drives, processor, and whatever all were free, then I call bullshit.

  • How was Vista's expected role calculated? (Score:3, Informative)

    by tinkertim ( 918832 ) * on Thursday February 15, 2007 @01:00PM (#18026474)
    Both articles linked mentioned that Vista just wasn't pushing PC sales as anticpated, but neither article shed much light on what set of numbers were used to determine what this push should be.

    Is this a forecast that MS puts out for each release, or is it determined by historical data? Since there's nothing really historical about Vista's CPU demands for the average user (well, not much really), how the heck did they come up with any kind of number?

    This would (I guess) have to be MS saying "This is what we expect people to do with it, this is what we expect businesses to do with it, and this is what we expect CPU demands will be in both cases, hence here's the data to forecast what you'll be selling, we expect to push xxxx copies per day .." (well maybe not that simple, but you get the point).

    Another way of looking at this would then be (speaking as Intel or AMD):

    "Microsoft sold us a load of fud, we need to keep focused on attacking the virtualization and server market, and the other guy already has a strong foot hold there." (as either could say that about the other).

    So in short, it looks like both AMD and Intel learned nothing from Enron's "virtual asset" mindset, which was counting on money that wasn't in the bank yet, but you were *pretty* sure would be there. Typical, I'd say unless I'm way off on how these predictions come into play?

    I also saw no data in either article about growth either company made which they now need to find another way of paying for, but I guess that's not going to be availble to sift through for a while.

    If I were either company, I'd be treating Vista like Bob [wikipedia.org] until some longer range (real) predictions could be made. But hey, cheap servers .. I'm not a stock holder of either, or complaining :)
  • Yea, I did RTFA, but I still have no idea what these 3 price cuts written about are or what I should now expect to pay for various AMD cpus. So much hype, so little information.

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