AMD/Intel, Nvida/ATI

[superkdogg]

As soon as ATI had a marginally better product (9700-9800) their market share was growing rapidly.

Many of us educated readers consider the A64 a better CPU for performance, even though the P4 has retained the lead in certain benchmarks. Even those whose prefer the Pentium 4 have to admit that a compelling case could be made to at least call the A64 a toss-up with current Intel CPU's.

Why, in that case, hasn't AMD been able to dent the Intel marketshare domination?

 

[Snoop]

Intel has incredible market dominence which has been classified by many as nearly a monopoly.

 

[EndGame]

Marketing and overall sales.....

AMD doesn't do much big time marketing compared to Intel and Intel manufactures and sells many, many times as many chips as AMD annually. At this point, AMD just doesn't have the capacity to compete numbers wise.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Because even when ATI was a huge performance underdog, they still produced cost effective sloutions for integrated graphics as well as cheap budget cards for low end PCs - which is actually where most of the money is made in the graphics business. Really a big reason why companies even bother with the super high end graphics cards is to boast performance advantages and gain "prestige". People see the name "GeForce" or "Radeon" and associate that with quality products and performance, all the while ignoring the MX or LE or whatever low end markings accompany the brand name. At the same even the ATI or nVidia name gains adavantage. People will go with a slow nVidia or ATI because they know (or think) they can rely on it and that (they think) is worth more to them than a gamble on some other company.

Just because nVidia is/was the market leader does not mean they're an intel equivalent of the graphics market.

 

[Duvie]

INtel has marketing superiority..lets use the right word shall we....allegiances (albeit shady in terms of business practices) with pc makers....more fab space and more production capability....and basically their upper management is not a bunch of retards...AMD has world class engineers designig the stuff, but they have no brains pushing the technology....

the key is to market, which should have been done back in the days of the Tbirds and AMDs emergence as a real force.....Instead of making a name for themselves that would at least be recognized by the average Joe person, they just sat back and wasted their chance...

i dont buy the whole production thing. There is plenty of Fab space and companies that build fabs for the renting. They could have used this fabs with the cheaper 180 and 130nm process and built more fabs for the race to 90 and 65nm.....They say they cant afford the marketing....This shows the retards that run their business. You cant sell a product if ppl dont know about it. They counted on us technopiles and our word of mouth. Our reward was cheap (some say too cheap) cpus which didn't make them squat. This just isn't enough to spread the word as compared to the one of many Intel commercials touting their stuff as well as any pc maker that sells a pc using Intel chips. Marketing money spent wisely now will build a base of users knowledgeable abut their product and sales will go up. We all know their product is very strong, it will sell to the ones informed on the marketing myth, and about INtels cpu shortcomings....Sell more chips, then demand increases, coffers get filled, and more fabs are built. Intel didn't start out with umpteen billions...they built it up... AMD has just wasted what they have been building on since 1999 IMO....

 

[imported_Bleh]

One word: Dell.

 

[Acanthus]

ATis market share also immediatly dwindled again with the release of the 6000 series.

More recently both have gained market share on intel extreme graphics. (thank god, id love to see the death of anything graphical by intel).

Edit: as for the intel/amd marketshare, AMD has a winner on their hands, but up until Nforce 4 (and still with NF4 to an extent) it has been plagued with buggy chipsets, this steers businesses and OEMs away.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: Bleh
One word: Dell.

 

[uOpt]

Major reaons:

• AMD cannot produce enough CPUs even if e.g. Dell would pick them up.
• People fear compatibility issues and new stuff in general. It is much easier to adapt a new graphics card which, when it screws up, doesn't mess with your important applications.
• You are talking about gamers (ATI adaptors) versus general population/business (non-adaptors). Gamers and geeks in general are of course much quicker.

Minor reasons (technical reasons, they don't really matter much ):

• Intel still has the better chipsets and the better foot in the door for notebook chips.
• Until very recently AMD was the power hog and Intel was reasonable. Only the very latest generation reversed that (prescott and Athlon 64).
• Motherboard with integrated garphics for office grunts are more available.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Bleh
One word: Dell.

LOL. You think Dell is the reason for AMD's inferior marketing? Dell sells a helluva lot of Intel CPU's. Thats a given. But that is not where Intel is making ALL of their money.

To the OP: Just look at the sheer magnitude of products Intel delivers besides CPU's. I could not possibly name them half of them. But, I can name every product AMD makes. CPU's. Whew, that was tough. In terms of corporate size comparison, Intel is the Sun, and AMD is one of Saturns moons.

ANYWAY. Unless your a stockholder, why should you care how successful a company is as long as you get what you want out of them? A powerful CPU. You should be happy with that. You want AMD to steal market share from Intel? Why? What would you get out of that? Higher prices for AMD chips? That's right. For the same damn CPU. This should not even concern you unless your a AMD stockholder. And if you are, you better hope that the "retards" Duvie mentioned wise up. It may even be too late.

 

[Duvie]

I believe AMD makes some flash memory as well...It seems to hit their pocket book every few years like a cycle when the flash memory market goes to shite.....


I ageree Dell is not the sole reasons....It is a contributing factor, but no more then the contributing factor of AMD not spending a drop on advertising....

 

[SNM]

According to AMD's homepage, they make "Innovative microprocessor, Flash memory and low-power processor solutions".

And it's definitely the marketing. The first time I'd ever heard of AMD was when they broke 1 GHz first...and then I never heard of them again in the news or in any ads.

Intel, on the other hand, is probably the way the Blue Man group is best known. (I didn't even know they were actually a performing group until long after I knew they were in Inte'l ads.)

 

[hippotautamus]

Intel is so much larger because they still own the corporate desktop market (HP and Intel still use almost entirely Intel chips in their computers, and these are the two largest resellers to the corporate desktop world).

Intel has also traditionally been the industry leader, and unlike gamers and enthusiasts, the more mainstream and corporate markets don't feel the need to change processor brands to gain a small performance advantage if it isn't necessary. If it ain't broke, don't fix it..

 

[paulsiu]

Most people buy their computer from stores. A lot of major manufacturers like Dell tend to stick with Intel, probably because they can swing deals by buying them at high volume. Intel also make everything from processor to MB.

In addition, a lot of Intel boards come with integrated video. While this is a dirty word for performance folks, most people use their computer for office application, which works just fine. Not everyone need a 3D card.

Paul

 

[ahock]

I agree Paulsiu Intel offers everything when it comes to PC.... Their chipset is incredibly good... And dont forget also Intelin the leading market share when it comes to integrated graphics

 

[DrMrLordX]

A lot of people are forgetting that ATI has been a player in the graphics industry longer than Nvidia, and that they have had sales of low-end products bolstering their R&D and production efforts from the get-go. Neither is true for AMD with respect to the x86 CPU industry.

If anything, it's surprising to me that it took ATI so damn long to make a decent 2d/3d graphics accelerator that could compete in the PC market.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think the situation on the desktop market is totally different.

In the graphics industry 9700 dominated geforce 4 series. Even 9600pro (midrange card) was faster. A64 doesnt nearly dominate that much compared to P4. Also the difference between a graphics card is huge for games as opposed to a CPU (HL2 vs. Doom 3 for example). In every day tasks/multitasking, P4 easily keeps up with A64, not giving enough incentive for the average user to upgrade. There is no 64-bit operating system still now, 2 years after A64 debut. 70% of ppl who buy computers dont play games or care for the difference. If they do, they'd rather get a faster videocard (thats why the graphics card market is more prone to fluctuations every new generation - and those generations are every 1 year, minor every 6 months, as opposed to CPUs that dont get a full rehaul for like 2 years, if that). That is why a part of the reason why ATI had a larger market share than its competitor since it has had faster cards for 2 generations now (also 6600GT didn't come out fast enough, while 9800Pro continued to gain midrange share and 9200/9500 cards were a better choice than overpriced FX5200 cards).

Intel also is untouchable on the mobile market. Add to the fact that for those users who just want onboard videocard, Intel has a solution for every market. A64 lacks this variety for onboard graphics card on their motherboards on the desktop for sure. On the mobile market, their cpus dont have as long of a battery life; and the notebooks are much larger and heavier. I remember seeing guys wearing Centrino shirts on downtown last summer just showcasing the technology to people on the street. AMD hasnt shown its logo on national television in 10 years.

Now given the average user hears: 2.2ghz A64 DDR1 vs. 3.6ghz P4 DDR2, which one sounds like a faster system? The availability of choice at the stores like Futureshop, bestbuy, etc, is like 90% P4 systems vs. AMD systems. So it's only more probable that more people are likely to purchase a P4 system as a result of choice and higher percentage of available choices. Then you add Sony, Dell, HP, etc, which focus their marketing on Intel systems as well. And the fact that Intel is safe, proven and stable (by historic measures, and from user experiences).

Why do people buy Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics over Mazda 3 for example? Sometimes, what matters to an enthusiast, isnt what matters the most to the general population. If Intel means a peace of mind, fitting in with the crowd, and no hassle in the mind of the purchaser, they wont buy AMD.

 

[NightTrain]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
AMD hasnt shown its logo on national television in 10 years.

I see it on Speed every two weeks

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: NightTrain

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
AMD hasnt shown its logo on national television in 10 years.

I see it on Speed every two weeks

I think I remember seeing an Opteron commercial one time. Actually... it may have been a Hewlett Packard commercial advertising a line of servers that use Opterons. I do remember seeing the big Opteron logo though.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
A lot of people are forgetting that ATI has been a player in the graphics industry longer than Nvidia, and that they have had sales of low-end products bolstering their R&D and production efforts from the get-go. Neither is true for AMD with respect to the x86 CPU industry.

If anything, it's surprising to me that it took ATI so damn long to make a decent 2d/3d graphics accelerator that could compete in the PC market.

AMD haven't been around for that long?

Founded in 1969 and based in Sunnyvale, California, AMD provides microprocessors, Flash memory devices, and silicon-based solutions for our customers in the communications and computer industries worldwide.

Here they began production of Flash memory in 1993.
They were already producing processors (Intel clones IIRC< someone will probably correct me) from before then.

 

[Sentential]

Poor chipset stability has also plagued AMD for the longest while

 

[sbuckler]

If you're a serous computer geek gamer the A64 is king but for the rest of the world (i.e. 99%) with their cheap dell solutions running naff graphics then no one cares about games and for those people intel is right up with amd as hyperthreading and good multimedia performance matter. Even if they did the bottleneck would almost certainly be the cheap graphics card or lack of memory the machine shipped with not the cpu.
Now that's been said the pc makers are just going to go with the company that gives them the best deal and the cheapest most reliable platform (all these machines have warranties so it's important they don't go wrong to maximise profit). Up to now intel has won on that front - bet dell don't pay anything like high street prices for their chips.
Amd seem to be happy focusing on the high profit customers (i.e. us) not the low profit high volume ones (i.e. dell).

 

[redhatlinux]

It's time for a history lesson from the 'old dog'. AMD didn't make Intel Clones, they were a 'second source' for Intel Cpu's !!
The feds would ONLY buy product that had a second source manufacturer, AMD was that second source. Course in them thar days the cpu didn't have the 'math processor', BUT INTEL and AMD had 'cross licenses' and after a couple of court battles, AMD was allowed, some $$'s changed hands, to market cpu's with Floating Point units. Fast forward to the Dresden Plant opening, the Germans were able to polish the wafers with greater precision than Austin, they even sliced the wafer and 'looked' straight at the 'gates'. Pretty slick stuff. Can AMD compete at the $ level with INTEL...... never, and DELL is a VERY LARGE PIECE OF THE INTEL PIE. Can they make 'slick cpu's', ABSOLUTELY. We did the same thing to IBM when I worked at AMDAHL... beat the pants off Big Blue in innovation but was quite content with a smaller share of the pie. We even had VIRTUAL MACHINES inside REAL Machines, but thats all TRADE SECRET, seems things get smaller but not that newer.

Dr Eric Knott
Founder of Nano-Technologies

 

[DrMrLordX]

Lonyo, I think you missed my point.

ATI has been producing PC graphics chips, accelerators, etc longer than Nvidia.

In contrast, AMD has not been producing x86 CPUs longer than Intel. I believe AMD began first making x86 CPUs around 1980-81 or so.

The OP attempted to portray both ATI and AMD as underdogs, but in fact, ATI is not, and never has been, an underdog.

 

[Lysawy]

AMD = Hope

otherwise intel this and intel that ....