Is AMD a sinking ship? Far from it.

[jpeyton]

Intel ups server share, but AMD wins in PCs

AMD made 4-5% gains in laptop and desktop market share in Q4 2006. They have the largest segment of the market (budget laptops/desktops) locked up.

Their lack of quad-core offerings is certainly hurting them in the server market. The bleeding will only slow down when they launch the K8L, but they'll have to win back some customers that converted to Intel. In the 8-way server market, they shouldn't have a problem, since it has already been shown that AMD scales better than Intel in that environment.

AMDs share of the notebook market should increase when the fruits of their merger with ATI come to market. AMD/ATI will offer better performance per watt than Intel/Intel in the huge integrated graphics market for notebook computers, probably at a better price too.

I hope this quiets down some of the newbies who pop into every thread and cry of AMDs swift demise. I personally own X2 and C2D systems, so I'm only a fanboy of competition bringing about innovation.

 

[Tangerines]

Server chips have significantly higher margins compared to desktop chips.

 

[gOJDO]

AMD are gaining market share, but their share price is melting down so fast:
http://finance.yahoo.com/charts#chart1:...sshair=on;logscale=on;source=undefined
They better bring Barcelona and the stars faster!

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: Tangerines
Server chips have significantly higher margins compared to desktop chips.

Yep, server chips is where they make their money and the server segment is where AMD made their first quarterly profit after many years of losses.

AMD desktop chip sales are up because they slashed their prices to maintain market share and because many people still think that AMD has the lead and haven't heard about(or simply don't believe) that whole Conroe thing.

I hope AMD makes a comeback... if it weren't for AMD we would all be paying $1,000 for a Pentium2-300. They keep Intel honest.

 

[Kreon]

AMD will make a comeback

AMD and Intel are like any other 2 companies competeing for profits.

One makes a sttride, the other matches/surpasses it
and the cycle continues, on and on

 

[stogez]

I hope AMD comes back. You'd have to be an idiot to NOT want that. Competition brings lower prices and who doesn't want that?
Its not that AMD keeps Intel honest, if AMD was the only company, it would be the same thing. ALL companies try to make the most money they can. Without competition, they have no reason to lower prices. They don't like the consumers that much

 

[gOJDO]

Not only lower prices, but better products also. This will be the very interesting year. AMD & Intel will bring more new stuff than they have brought in the last 3 years.

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: stogez
I hope AMD comes back. You'd have to be an idiot to NOT want that. Competition brings lower prices and who doesn't want that?
Its not that AMD keeps Intel honest, if AMD was the only company, it would be the same thing. ALL companies try to make the most money they can. Without competition, they have no reason to lower prices. They don't like the consumers that much

Yep, AMD was raping everybody when they had the X2 series and Intel had nothing even close to it. AMD prices dropped like crazy with the Conroe release.

Neither of the big two CPU-makers care about individual consumers... all they want is your money.

 

[MDme]

Originally posted by: Beachboy

Originally posted by: stogez
I hope AMD comes back. You'd have to be an idiot to NOT want that. Competition brings lower prices and who doesn't want that?
Its not that AMD keeps Intel honest, if AMD was the only company, it would be the same thing. ALL companies try to make the most money they can. Without competition, they have no reason to lower prices. They don't like the consumers that much

Yep, AMD was raping everybody when they had the X2 series and Intel had nothing even close to it. AMD prices dropped like crazy with the Conroe release.

Neither of the big two CPU-makers care about individual consumers... all they want is your money.

I'm not sure about AMD raping everyone with the X2....I mean, sure they priced them expensively (300+ for the 3800+) but one way of looking at it is that they priced it comparatively to intel's offerings: The cheap (but underperforming) P-Ds. remember, Intel has the dominant market share so they can dictate the prices. also, it would have been pointless for AMD to undercut the PD prices since they were already capacity limited selling all the CPUs they could make so lowering prices to match PDs would not improve market share. Since the C2D dominated them from a performance standpoint, Intel could have done either of 2 things: price C2D based on X2 prices or price them to force AMD to drop prices by significant amounts. Here you see why Intel did the latter: They were producing CPUs at 65nm and are not capacity constrained. So it would make more sense to drop the prices to put real pricing pressure on AMD. By doing so, they can force AMD into the red (which they did) and limit AMDs expansion.

 

[SickBeast]

They're not a sinking ship, but they need to buy more factories so they can produce enough of their chips to meet demand.

 

[Conky]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
They're not a sinking ship, but they need to buy more factories so they can produce enough of their chips to meet demand.

What's humorous is that there is still huge demand for the 939 socket chips but since they decided everybody needs to move to AM2 that they stopped producing 939 chips. AMD is shooting themselves in both feet right now. Didn't anyone at AMD take Marketing in college? :laugh:

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Beachboy

Originally posted by: SickBeast
They're not a sinking ship, but they need to buy more factories so they can produce enough of their chips to meet demand.

What's humorous is that there is still huge demand for the 939 socket chips but since they decided everybody needs to move to AM2 that they stopped producing 939 chips. AMD is shooting themselves in both feet right now. Didn't anyone at AMD take Marketing in college? :laugh:

Yeah I agree, they don't do the simple things right anymore. I remember when Socket 7 lasted forever. Actually, the constant flow of new sockets is why I stopped buying intel chips.

Another problem is their pricing. They need to halve their high end prices. Noone in their right mind would pay $600 for an Athlon when even the cheapest C2D will outperform it.

The Opteron thing kinda miffs me too. The best time to buy a CPU was back in the Athlon 1400 days.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: Beachboy

Originally posted by: SickBeast
They're not a sinking ship, but they need to buy more factories so they can produce enough of their chips to meet demand.

What's humorous is that there is still huge demand for the 939 socket chips but since they decided everybody needs to move to AM2 that they stopped producing 939 chips. AMD is shooting themselves in both feet right now. Didn't anyone at AMD take Marketing in college? :laugh:

I don't think the demand for socket 939 is actually all that great. Yes, it's a big thing for people who are upgrading their systems to dual-core, for example, but OEMs are ceirtainly not going to go out of their ways to buy DDR when DDR2 sells better ('cause of the greater numbers), is cheaper and is also used in Intel systems. Having to stock both DDR and DDR2 in significant numbers is hardly cheap.

AMD is doing ok but it sacrified a whole lot of profit to keep its market share. Personally, I think it was a good call, since any market share that went Intel's way would be hard to recover, but the beating AMD took margin-wise is not pretty to look at.

 

[jpeyton]

About the whole socket thing:

AMD has much better chipset/socket longevity than Intel, especially in the server market. That is a BIG deal for companies that want to keep hardware costs down while scaling their server performance 12-24 months into the future.

AMD has already said the Socket F platform (which brings DDR2/quad-core support to their server platform) will be supported with CPUs until 2009. They have mentioned many times publically that BIOS updates will maintain compatibility with newer AMD CPUs.

In contrast, every source I've read about Penryn (which is scheduled for a Q1 2008 release) has said the CPU will come paired with a new chipset (similar to how Pentium Ds required a new chipset even though they were pin compatible with LGA775 P4 motherboards, and how C2D were not compatible with LGA775 PD motherboards).

I agree; it's too bad about socket 939 being phased out. But from a financial perspective, they need to move their entire line to pinless CPUs.

 

[zsdersw]

Coupling Penryn with a new chipset is about adding DDR3 support and improving the architecture. If Intel didn't do that, the complaints from people like you wouldn't be that they change chipsets too often, but that they sell new chips with "old" and "outdated" chipsets. You can't have it both ways.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: zsdersw
Coupling Penryn with a new chipset is about adding DDR3 support and improving the architecture. If Intel didn't do that, the complaints from people like you wouldn't be that they change chipsets too often, but that they sell new chips with "old" and "outdated" chipsets. You can't have it both ways.

Trust me, nobody wants it both ways. Nobody wants to buy expensive, hot-running FB-DIMMs when ECC/REG DDR2 is just as fast/reliable and much cheaper.

NEVER have I heard a company tech complain about NOT having to upgrade to a new motherboard/chipset to utilize a newer CPU. They love drop-in solutions. They love keeping their operating costs low.

Intel/AMD can go back and forth with CPU price cuts, but Intel's platform is more expensive and has a shorter lifespan on their roadmaps.

 

[zsdersw]

I wasn't talking about servers exclusively.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: zsdersw
Coupling Penryn with a new chipset is about adding DDR3 support and improving the architecture. If Intel didn't do that, the complaints from people like you wouldn't be that they change chipsets too often, but that they sell new chips with "old" and "outdated" chipsets. You can't have it both ways.

Trust me, nobody wants it both ways. Nobody wants to buy expensive, hot-running FB-DIMMs when ECC/REG DDR2 is just as fast/reliable and much cheaper.

NEVER have I heard a company tech complain about NOT having to upgrade to a new motherboard/chipset to utilize a newer CPU. They love drop-in solutions. They love keeping their operating costs low.

Intel/AMD can go back and forth with CPU price cuts, but Intel's platform is more expensive and has a shorter lifespan on their roadmaps.

Servers have been relatively stable on Intel's side since the introduction of the Socket 604 back in Mid Prestonia times and stayed with until the Dual Core Paxville's so that is around 2002 to around 2005.

As well FB-DIMM's are alot more advanced in terms of the features they offer in comparison to Registered DDR2, it's not a question of speed, it about more features for the memory.

AMD doesn't worry about changing chipsets so much as it doesn't make any money off of them, (until recently) Intel on the other hand does, so changing chipsets to add new features is a good idea for them. It's drives them to innovation and more profit.

Your also not reading correctly for the Penryn derivative transition, current compatibility with existing chipsets may or may not occur depending on what FSB Intel is introducing the processors at. If Intel is introducing at 1.33GHZ FSB for Penryn derivatives then only chipsets slated for 1.33GHZ FSB will officially work.

Intel also typically likes to introduce a new chipset generation each year, like clockwork updating the feature set with newer technology. It doesn't cost any more then AMD's platform costs when your both buying new systems.

 

[Hulk]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Intel ups server share, but AMD wins in PCs

AMD made 4-5% gains in laptop and desktop market share in Q4 2006. They have the largest segment of the market (budget laptops/desktops) locked up.

Their lack of quad-core offerings is certainly hurting them in the server market. The bleeding will only slow down when they launch the K8L, but they'll have to win back some customers that converted to Intel. In the 8-way server market, they shouldn't have a problem, since it has already been shown that AMD scales better than Intel in that environment.

AMDs share of the notebook market should increase when the fruits of their merger with ATI come to market. AMD/ATI will offer better performance per watt than Intel/Intel in the huge integrated graphics market for notebook computers, probably at a better price too.

I hope this quiets down some of the newbies who pop into every thread and cry of AMDs swift demise. I personally own X2 and C2D systems, so I'm only a fanboy of competition bringing about innovation.

You almost convinced me except for one bit of reality. The fact that C2D crushes all AMD chips. But I do hope AMD hangs in there. But then again if your signature is any indication you are not interested in any reality but the one you conjure up.

 

[StopSign]

These stats make perfect sense.

Desktop share is up because 99% of the people in the world are average computer users (a.k.a. noobs) who have never heard of Conroe and are still on the Athlon X2 bandwagon.

Server share is down because 1% of the people in the world are knowledgeable computer users (a.k.a. IT) who have heard of Conroe and hopped off the Opteron bandwagon.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: Hulk

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Intel ups server share, but AMD wins in PCs

AMD made 4-5% gains in laptop and desktop market share in Q4 2006. They have the largest segment of the market (budget laptops/desktops) locked up.

Their lack of quad-core offerings is certainly hurting them in the server market. The bleeding will only slow down when they launch the K8L, but they'll have to win back some customers that converted to Intel. In the 8-way server market, they shouldn't have a problem, since it has already been shown that AMD scales better than Intel in that environment.

AMDs share of the notebook market should increase when the fruits of their merger with ATI come to market. AMD/ATI will offer better performance per watt than Intel/Intel in the huge integrated graphics market for notebook computers, probably at a better price too.

I hope this quiets down some of the newbies who pop into every thread and cry of AMDs swift demise. I personally own X2 and C2D systems, so I'm only a fanboy of competition bringing about innovation.

You almost convinced me except for one bit of reality. The fact that C2D crushes all AMD chips. But I do hope AMD hangs in there. But then again if your signature is any indication you are not interested in any reality but the one you conjure up.

Awww, you're completely right. I think today's weather report for Baghdad mentioned something about it raining flowers and candy for our soldiers.

C2D does beat K8 in performance; the fact that you still equate that to desktop market share shows your ignorance of the personal computer market. As I said before, the fastest growing segments are areas where AMD is increasing market share.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: StopSign
Desktop share is up because 99% of the people in the world are average computer users (a.k.a. noobs) who have never heard of Conroe and are still on the Athlon X2 bandwagon.

And here's a perfect example of a computer forum elitist.

If someone buying a computer for home/office use can get an X2 rig for hundreds less than a C2D rig, the cost savings is worth the extra second or two it will take to load up Excel or Acrobat.

 

[StopSign]

Okay, taking out the "noobs" it makes perfect sense right?

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: StopSign
Okay, taking out the "noobs" it makes perfect sense right?

No it doesn't because price is not included in your equation at all.

 

[HopJokey]

Originally posted by: jpeyton

Originally posted by: StopSign
Desktop share is up because 99% of the people in the world are average computer users (a.k.a. noobs) who have never heard of Conroe and are still on the Athlon X2 bandwagon.

And here's a perfect example of a computer forum elitist.

If someone buying a computer for home/office use can get an X2 rig for hundreds less than a C2D rig, the cost savings is worth the extra second or two it will take to load up Excel or Acrobat.

Why stop there though? For a basic home/office use isn't the X2 overkill still? Couldn't one simply get away with using any budget offering from Intel or AMD (Cele or Semp)?