As hardware enthusiasts, is it wrong to support Intel?

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Macro2

Diamond Member
May 20, 2000
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RE:"You would help AMD a lot more by buying a 2400+ which AMD can make a profit from, rather than a bargain basement 1600+ for which AMD is making a loss. "

Amen to that.
 

Macro2

Diamond Member
May 20, 2000
4,874
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Snatchface,
Your posts make a lot of sense.
I expect the Intel employees/shareholders/pensioners here to disagree...but the others? hummm.
 

kgraeme

Diamond Member
Sep 5, 2000
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Originally posted by: Macro2
Snatchface,
Your posts make a lot of sense.
I expect the Intel employees/shareholders/pensioners here to disagree...but the others? hummm.

What's to agree with? Buying anything as a political statement is just weird. Look at the Apple fanatics.
 

smadavid

Member
Mar 17, 2000
34
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Originally posted by: Snatchface
Ok, addressing multiple replies here...man some of this stuff is just preposterous.


First you say its a good, competitive thing for AMD to force intel to lower its prices, but then when intel goes ahead and does it, you say Intel's being anti-competitive.
Yes, it is good that there are two companies and that they are competing. Yes, it is also bad that Intel is intentionally losing money undercutting AMD in a blatant attempt to drive them out of business. The benefit is only temporary and once AMD is gone you'll be paying $600 again for your average-performance processor from Intel. Most here do not seem to realize that.

The point is not to ensure the survival of competitors, the point is to make sure consumers get the lowest price possible, even at the expense of the compeition. AMD going out of business would be a bad thing for AMD, nothing more. There would be no long-term effect on consumer prices, it would not fundamentally alter the marketplace. As soon as Intel tried to raise prices again, someone else would step in to undercut them again. At any given price point, if its profitable to be there, someone will be there. I don't think AMD going out of business would kill the market for $100-200 CPUs.

People keep talking about how high Intel's prices were before AMD stepped in. There's only one reason for that -- Intel had the best product, hands down. When you've got the best product, people will pay for it, and any company in their right mind would charge for it. What has happened in the last few years is that AMD realized there was a hole in the market, lower-priced, higher-performing CPUs, and they took advantage of it. Now Intel has decided they want that market too. Nothing wrong with that. Call me an optimist, but Intel's goal is not to put AMD out of business. Their goal is simply to perform as best they can in the marketplace.

I don't think Intel is losing money by undercutting AMD. Even their least expensive chips, from what I understand, cost Intel less than they sell them for. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about that, I don't know the numbers. By the time a chip is at a mass market price point, say $100, its design and development costs have already been recuperated, its only the manufacturing and marketing costs they have to worry about.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, and I don't mean to sound like an Intel guy. Were AMD in Intel's position, I'd be saying the exact same things about it.
 

Macro2

Diamond Member
May 20, 2000
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RE:"What's to agree with? Buying anything as a political statement is just weird."

Political statement? I thought his point was that if AMD goes under you'll be whining about paying $600+ for a P4. 2.0 or whatever.
HE'S RIGHT.

AMD offers the best bang for the buck. Their processors are fast and stable. It's not like buying a VIA/Cyrix 800 just to hurt Intel.

I don't think you realize how many Intel Shareholders are lying around praying for AMD to turn into a flash only company just so they can raise the price of processors and make their stock go back up.
Just doesn't sound "american" does it...lol

Mac
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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I don't think you realize how many Intel Shareholders are lying around praying for AMD to turn into a flash only company just so they can raise the price of processors and make their stock go back up.

Actually, I think we ALL realize how many "tech" shareholders are praying for a turn around in the economy so the demand for PC's and components is increased so our friends and neighbors can just keep their jobs. Intels stock price owes far more to selling their wares period than AMD's marketshare. Its tough out there...real tough.
 

Daovonnaex

Golden Member
Dec 16, 2001
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The only time it is wrong to support a company is when it is engaged in unethical or illegal practices. Sweatshops, dumping, etc. fall into this category. Intel has not participated in any unethical or illegal activities (aside from their dispute over EPIC with Intergraph, but that's more of a patent issue and not a moral dilemma). It would be a crime to refuse to support Intel just because you're afraid that they'll clamp down later. Competition, even oligopolistic competition as we see in the x86 CPU market, is ALWAYS good and will ALWAYS resolve any issues. Purchase whatever product best suits your needs and you're doing all the good you need to do, because you are then pressuring the competition to improve.
 

Alptraum

Golden Member
Sep 18, 2002
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I don't really agree that its a given that if AMD went under Intel CPUs are gonna make some major jump in price. I think they enjoy the fact that the lower pricing on their CPUs has allowed them to get more and more computers sold for pretty low prices and allow them to get that much more market penetration. If they make some of these drastic raises some of you seem to think they would they would lose out on a lot of customers. From numbers I have seen its much better for them to sell at the price points they are now. Even assuming they have no competition. While there are some people that will pay whatever the cost because they need a computer other people will not buy one if its over a certain price. That group of people is a HUGE market. I think Intel CPUs would have come down in price even without AMD just due to the general nature of the computer industry and electronics in general. But certainly AMD made that go somewhat faster. I for one have owned both AMD and Intel based machines. I am not biased towards either one. I just buy the fastest thing I can whenever the need to upgrade comes up. At the moment all my machines are Intel and it looks like my next upgrade (within the next month or so) will also be Intel. But thats just based on the products offered and not on wether I like Intel or AMD as a company.
 

Macro2

Diamond Member
May 20, 2000
4,874
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RE:"Intels stock price owes far more to selling their wares period than AMD's marketshare. Its tough out there...real tough"

Of course you are right but trust me on this one. The hatred by Intel insiders and shareholders for AMD and vice versa is beyond belief. Especially Intel. They would rather see AMD go down rather than see the market recover. It's really sadistic.

Mac
 

Alptraum

Golden Member
Sep 18, 2002
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Of course you are right but trust me on this one. The hatred by Intel insiders and shareholders for AMD and vice versa is beyond belief. Especially Intel. They would rather see AMD go down rather than see the market recover. It's really sadistic.


I myself doubt this. If nothing else Intel can avoid a lot of the stuff MS has to go through by having AMD around. And they know that. I personally dont have any stock in Intel but out of the people I do know that own it none of them want AMD gone.
 

Wingznut

Elite Member
Dec 28, 1999
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Originally posted by: Macro2
I don't think you realize how many Intel Shareholders are lying around praying for AMD to turn into a flash only company just so they can raise the price of processors and make their stock go back up.
I obviously cannot speak for all shareholders, but speaking ONLY as myself, and ONLY as a shareholder with a vested financial interest in Intel's success...

I want to see the market turn around. I want to see people buying PC's like they are going out of style.

I don't want to see AMD (or any other corporation) go out of business. I know people (GOOD people) who work at AMD, and I could never "wish" them out of a job.

It wasn't that long ago when both companies made a boatload of money. It's not an either/or situation... You can have multiple companies competing and making a significant profit.

And for what it's worth, I've worked at Intel for two years now, and I don't recall EVER hearing ANYONE say that they wish AMD would go out of business. More days than not, I don't even hear the name "AMD" mentioned at all.
 

rayster

Member
Oct 29, 2002
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The basic premise behind the question is flawed. The assumption is being made that if AMD goes out of business Intel will become a monopoly, free to price gouge the consumer bacause they have no competition. The logical flaw is overlooking the fact that AMD isn't the only company in the world capable of manufacturing x86 CPUs. If AMD went belly up tomorrow, and Intel hiked their prices severely, you'd immediately see Via, Motorola, or some other company within large scale semiconductor fabrication capability buying up AMD's patents and hiring their engineers. Within a year Intel would have a new competitor, and prices would fall back in line. If fact, I can see a scenerio where AMD going out of business causes prices to fall. If you look at most of us, we have a cost/performance ratio that determines what we buy (otherwise we'd all be living on the street, in the box that our really cool RS6000 came in). There is also the cost of manufacture/sale price ratio that determines profit margin. If AMD were out of business, and if Intel were smart enough, they could keep their chip pricing under the average person's cost/performance cutoff point and just above the cost to manufacture/sale price break even point and effectively make any new competitor inherently nonprofitable, while lowering actual cost to the consumer. The problem created here would be, with no competition, what would spur innovation?
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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The hatred by Intel insiders and shareholders for AMD and vice versa is beyond belief. Especially Intel. They would rather see AMD go down rather than see the market recover. It's really sadistic

Thats simply untrue, at least with the people I know (lots of Intel folks here in Washington County, Oregon) AMD maybe Intel's competition in some markets, but Intel has many good "people", real, working people at every level just like AMD and countless other Tech firms here and elsewhere. These so-called bitter wars exist mainly in peoples heads and makes for good fodder, but is rarely reflective of the actual reality. Its business, and business is cut-throat.....you want hatred around here?, talk to PGE employees with Enron retirement accounts, that my friend is real hatred.
 

maskey

Junior Member
Nov 6, 2002
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Very interesting discussion and I can see there is a lot of intelligence on both sides.

Here is my spin:

As an enthusiast, wouldn't it make sense to support the technology, not the manufacturer? Who cares if it is Intel, AMD, CYRIX or Uncle Bob as long as it pushes the technology forward. The enthusiast market is trending towards Intel because of the technology, not because of the company.

Enthusiasts seem to be Early Adopters or Innovators, so they will tend to be willing to spend a higher dollar amount for the best product. This allows Intel and AMD to in turn produce better technology, which pushes the price of older technology down. Entusiasists also tend to educate the next purchasers, the Early Majority who then educates the Late Majority. The Late Majority are those group of people who don't purchase anything until there seems to be a consensus to the quality.

Enthusiasts also help push technology further along. Frankly without Enthusiasts we will all be running 1ghz Celerons with MX Graphics in plain old beige boxes. Enthusiasts make us think about modded cases, overclocked cpu's and water cooled systems.

So as an Enthusiast, don't focus on the manufacture, focus on the technology. IF AMD produces better technology then buy AMD, if Intel produces better technology then buy Intel. If, as an Enthusiast, you purchase the lower technology (in order to help maintain competition) then you could create a slowdown in new technology.

A couple of great points were made in an above post:

* If AMD drops out, someone else will take up the space. Monopolies don't survive long. Even the Post Office, one of the biggest monopolies, has competition with Fedex, Airborne and Email. Someone will always be there to keep the number #1 person in line. And yes Microsoft has competition. Apple and Linux have not gone away, and Linux is growing its marketshare.

* Enthusiasts don't dictate the successs/failure of the marketplace. The dictate the success or failure of the new technology. The success or failure of AMD as a company will be dictated by the people buying computers at Costco, Circuity City and Best Buy. The success of AMD's technology will be dictated by the Enthusiast.

Personally I think that "He who has the best Marketing Department Wins". There are too many examples in history (Beta/Vhs, IBM/Apple, etc) that show that the better product isn't necessarily the winner. Intel just out-markets AMD, so they have a bigger foothold on the mindshare of the Early and Late Majority.

Mark
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
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Is Intel evil, no. I used to think so, but have come to realize that they are just trying to make money. OTOH, if AMD went under, Intel most certainly could bump prices through the roof if they wanted to. Some seem to think that current prices are purely supply/demand driven or that some other guys could just enter the market to take AMD's place, neither are true.

Supply/demand has some impact on prices, but certainly AMD's past success at gaining marketshare was the major catalyst to Intel's much lower initial pricing strategy. To deny this is akin to denying that the Earth is round.

If it were so easy for some other competitior to enter the market, wouldn't it have happened already? Why does Cyrix hardly exist, where is Transmeta? Designing and producing cpu's isn't like making cookies or ice cream. A lot of money($billions) is needed to start a competitive company in this market and a lot of technological know-how is also required. If AMD went down the tubes only a company like IBM or VIA would stand a chance at developing/offering a competitive cpu.

I'm not going to beg or plead for people to support AMD, but I'd like to perhaps give people something to consider: Without AMD there *will* be *no* competition in the x86 cpu market. Are you willing to take a bet on Intel keeping prices low for the sake of charitable intentions?
 

socketman

Member
Mar 4, 2002
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I know a few folks at AMD. They dont cuss Intel or say horrific things about them (most of them anyway). In fact, I know one that bought Intel. When I called him on it, he said "they aint making a profit on what I payed for this chip". Which is true. Neither company is making money off their "value" processors. And like someone mentioned, only the large OEM sales make any difference.

AMD only has themselves to blame for their predicament. THey failed to execute. ANd then the market took a nose dive. So now it doesnt make sense to release what they have (hammer) cuz noone is buying.
 

Snooper

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
465
1
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Snatchface,

It's pretty obvious from your statements that you do not work in the IC industry. I've worked for Intel for 7 years now and I have gone through the good times (for both AMD and Intel) and the bad times (ditto). Personally, I am VERY glad that AMD became an actual competitor to Intel about 4 years ago. Why? Because Intel as a company works best when they are challenged and pushed. Intel was on top for a LONG time for a VERY good reason: they where making the best products on the market at the time. People who could afford them (yes, they DID cost more!) bought them. The folks that couldn't, bought else where. Then AMD started catching up. I saw it coming a LONG time before anyone in management said anything about it. I saw how Intel's best processors just wasn't as big a leap over the previous generation as in the past. I saw the chipsets go from the kick ass 440HX to the dismal 810/815/820 series of chipsets. AMD came on strong with their Atlon and kicked Intel in the teath by actually taking market share. Via and other companies did the exact same thing in the chipset market.

So what did Intel do? Did they start selling at cost or less to drive these upstarts under? No. They could have. With the cash reserves they had at the time, it wouldn't have really hit them too hard. But they didn't. They did lower the price, but they followed that up with a no holds bared push to reduce the cost per die (and as an engineer for them, I can tell you that SUCKED!) They cut costs everywhere they could. A lot of freebies that had been the norm in the industry (lots for free food on a semi regular basis, free T-shirts, large group meetings over seas, etc) came to a VERY sudden stop. They also started making a very concerted effort to evaluate where they went wrong and figure out how to get it right. I already had a pretty good idea, but then I'm a computer nerd at heart anyway! This took time. Large companies do NOT switch directions overnight. Even when they do, it takes many, many months before the results will be seen on the store shelves and even longer before they will be seen in the bottom line. Intel had a lot of catching up to do. The one saving grace for them during this time is that AMD could NOT meet the demand of CPUs even if Intel would have quit selling the chips all to gether. This gave them time. And they used it. They designed better processes, better designs, better packaging, and more efficient manufacturing processes. In time, this put Intel back in the lead (yes, I know they never lost the majority of the market share, but they definitely where NOT in the bragging rights driving seat for quite a while) and they started getting some of the lost market share back. One thing Intel did through out this whole time: they invested HUGE amounts of money on R&D and on constructing new and better fabs. It's paid off now and it will really pay off when (it seems more like "IF" at this point) the tech market turns around. They intend to be in a position to hit the up turn with all feet on the ground and running hard right out of the gate.

You also implied that Intel has done unetical things in pricing. Show your facts. But you can't, because you don't have any. In the seven years I have worked for Intel, no one has EVERY pushed us (blatently or overtly) to fudge the numbers to make things look better than they really where. Actually, they have pushed pretty hard to make sure that we have the right procedures and audit procedures in place to prevent any "funny business". I don't expect Intel to get a big government audit. But if they do, I DO expect them to pass it without any real problems. That Enron type of coruption works it's way down the line. It just doesn't feel like any of that type of crap is going on. One thing they HAVE done is push us (pretty much everyone at Intel) as hard as they possibly could to get prices down and profits up. But no funny business. Trim your costs, improve your efficiency, sell more product, and in general see your profits stay up even as your ASP goes down. Needless to say, I can't share any information on what has been done, but I can say that everyone has challenged every conception in an attempt to find a better, cheaper way to do things at every level of the organization.

Finally, you stated that by the time the yields were up, the next factory would already been being built. How little you know. That definitely was the way things worked many years ago (at all IC companies, not just Intel). Not any more. I wish I could share some yield/vs time from start up data for a few of the various processes that Intel is currently running, but... Just settle for the fact that you are wrong in this statement.

So now that everyone is absolutely sure that I nothing more than an Intel bigiot (I mean, hey! I flat out admitted I have worked for Intel for 7 years!), let me share another side. I am a computer nurd. Have been for a LONG time. The first computer I worked on was a Timex Sinclair. My friends and family come to me when they have computer questions (either repair or upgrade) and I have recommended various systems to a LOT of people. And during the dark hour for Intel, I actually recommended to a couple of friends that they would be better served buying an Atlon system and even recommended the various parts I would purchase if I was buying it. And they did. I've always believed in compitition and will always recommend the best system/part when my friends ask based on what they need and what they want. And it's not always Intel Inside.
 

CrazySaint

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
2,441
0
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Originally posted by: Boris691
When I was deciding how to build my computer the first thing I was going to get was an AMD processor. I had read on the net that AMD was better then Intel now. After hours of research I decided against it. I could get an AMD 2200 for $314 or I could get a P4 2.4 for $339. So I thought it could be worth it to get the AMD considering that the performance loss would not be that big. Then I discovered that the AMD processor did not come with a fan or heat sink. And to get one that would support it I had to spend another 40-60 dollars.

This last statement is simply not true. First off, AMD sells both OEM (no box, no HSF, very little warranty) and RETAIL (has a box, has a HSF, has a warranty) chips, just like Intel. So many AMD chips DO come with HSFs. Second, to say that an AMD HSF is gonna cost you 40-60 dollars (assuming US currency) is ridiculous. I'm sure that if you went out and bought the most expensive AMD HSF combo you could find, you could probably spend 40-60 dollars on it, but that's true of Intel as well. But you can buy an excellent HSF combo for < $20 just fine.

Then I found out that p4 with 533 bus would be upgradeable to 3.6 gigahertz. Where as the Atholon would only go up to 2600 before I would have to get a new motherboard.

These statements are also not true. I'm not sure exactly what the deal is, but I've heard that Intel chips over 3.2GHz (or somewhere around there) would require a new motherboard because they would require 70 amps of power. Second, with the Barton core, the Athlons will get over 3000+ before you have to buy a new chip. AMD has already "released" Athlon XPs up to 2800+ that will work on any Socket A motherboard that supports a 333FSB
 

The Sauce

Diamond Member
Oct 31, 1999
4,741
34
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Well the conversation has clearly gotten more intelligent since I have stopped participating ;) (working a 12 hour shift at the hospital). I particularly enjoyed comments from sandorski and snooper. Very well said. For the record, Snooper, I never said anything about Intel cooking the books. Some other folks did, but I have no information or opinion on that subject.


You are correct that I am not an IT person, although I have been a hardware enthusiast ever since buying my C-64 300 Baud modem as a 13 year-old and starting my own BBS. However my point, which i still feel has not been adequately disputed here is as follows: Intel would be far more profitable without AMD to compete with - and that profitability would be extracted in large part directly from us, the consumer. The fact that they may have streamlined to cut costs does not obviate the fact that they have over the past few years systematically cut prices so as to drive AMD into marginal profitability (at best) and more recently frank loss. And once again I state that this is neither immoral or illegal...its just bad for us (the consumer) in the long run.

Yet your post has made me appreciate the effort which has lead to improved technology and decreased costs. I will grant that a lot of my opinion here is fueled by part speculation and part observation. I am glad that there are industry people here to get the details straight. And I still think that it protects us to foster competition and to do whatever possible to discourage monopoly.