Originally posted by: bfdd
Viditor, so you're going to get one + a 280 dollar mobo without seeing any reviews on either before hand? What if they don't perform up to snuff with the q6600 stock to stock? When you could of picked up a q6600 and a good mobo a lot cheaper than that setup?
I think anyone honestly expecting the launch Phenoms to be competitive with even Kentsfield has a rude awakening coming.
I also don't think it's impossible that AMD could pull a rabbit out of their hat, and bring some serious heat down the line in the next few months with ramping/revision. AMD is like a cornered animal financially, and if they can't get back in the black, they're going the way of Cyrix, 3dfx, etc. They know this, and that desperation has the greatest potential to give them the fighting spirit they need to push out the products that are crucial to their survival.
The way I see it they have two choices :
(1)- Put everything on the line, every man, every resource, to field a product that can equal or exceed Intel's best.
(2)- Restructure their company to be much smaller and more streamlined, and focus on value products and non-CPU items.
Failing the achievement of one of these goals would have grave consequences. I understand fully that most CPU buyers don't 'need' or even 'want' the highest performing product available, BUT : if you do not control the high-end marketplace, you do not control pricing. For example : if Intel's C2Q-6600 performs better than AMD's Phenom XXXX, then the Phenom cannot be logically priced in excess of the 6600. The ASP suffers massively when the disparity is so large. If AMD fields a product that can meet or exceed the performance of Intel's $500, $750, $1,000, and higher processors, then they can make a *LOT* more money, even if they sell only a fraction of the number of cpus. Let's put it this way :
If AMD sells 5,000,000 Entry-Level Phenoms per quarter @ $200 Retail, but the profit per chip is only $20-40, then
If AMD sells 500,000 High-End Phenoms per quarter @ $750 Retail, but the profit per chip is $570-$590, then the profits AMD generates from the high-end sector grossly exceed those of the entry-level chips.
As they are all based on the same wafers, their cost is virtually identical whether they're sending out a $200 chip or a $1,000 chip. It's just the power that performance leadership / ASP gives you.
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