Overclocked Phenom II effect: AMD's 1Q'09 market share up to 21%

[Flipped Gazelle]

Text

In a run-up to the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4890, we heard a lot of rumors coming from Taiwan about the lack of AMD 7-series chipsets, and how sales of AMD CPUs are taking off in a really big way etc. The most radical bit of information came from one of Top 3 motherboard vendors, who said to us in confidence that they went from 8% AMD 92% Intel to a 70:30 mix with the tendency of going 60:40 in Intel's favor during Q2. Naturally, we expected that the market will react positively after all the good PR AMD received with various overclocking records. Once more, it was proven that power users are the ones that will build up the sales of a platform, regardless what some uninformed technical and sales executives in AMD claimed. Selling canola oil was one thing, but computing components are whole another ballgame. According to the preliminary data received from Mercury Research, AMD took 20.9% of word-wide CPU market share, with Intel dropping to 78.2% from the heights of 82.1% in 4Q'2008. AMD took 3.9 percent in a single quarter, and our sources inside the company are telling us that April really took off in EMEA and North American regions. Things are looking bright for AMD, now everything is about execution. If AMD does not fail its overclocking and enthusiast crowd, the company could see rebirth of their positive karma in late Jerry Sanders times, just before Hector took over. Does anyone remember the Mobile Barton 2500+ and what effect that tiny CPU had on the whole CPU market?

 

[SickBeast]

AMD is in a pretty good position now across the board with their CPUs and GPUs. Is Hector Ruiz still the CEO? If he's not, then that's why they're doing better IMO.

Basically all of their stuff is a better value than the competition.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
AMD is in a pretty good position now across the board with their CPUs and GPUs. Is Hector Ruiz still the CEO? If he's not, then that's why they're doing better IMO.

Basically all of their stuff is a better value than the competition.

Ruiz resigned last year.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Basically all of their stuff is a better value than the competition.

It will be even better when they finally figure out that all processors should be unlocked; not just the few black editions.

(from the article)
Things are looking bright for AMD, now everything is about execution. If AMD does not fail its overclocking and enthusiast crowd, the company could see rebirth of their positive karma in late Jerry Sanders times, just before Hector took over. Does anyone remember the Mobile Barton 2500+ and what effect that tiny CPU had on the whole CPU market?

Some people probably don't, so let's review. wikipedia

Athlon XP-Ms were popular with desktop overclockers, as well as underclockers. The lower voltage requirement and higher heat rating resulted in CPUs that were basically "cherry picked" from the manufacturing line. Being the best of the cores off the line, the CPUs typically were more reliably overclocked than their desktop-headed counterparts. Also, the fact that they weren't locked to a single multiplier was a significant simplification for the overclocking process. Some Barton core Athlon XP-Ms have been successfully overclocked to as high as 3.1 GHz.

As stated, the chips were also liked for their underclocking ability. Underclocking is a process of determining the lowest Vcore at which a CPU can remain stable at for a given clock speed. The Athlon XP-M CPUs were capable of running lower voltages per clock rate compared to their desktop siblings. As such, the chips were used in home theater PC systems due to their high performance and low heat output at low Vcore settings.

Besides not being locked to multiplier, they were also not disabled from SMP operation as were other AthlonsXP. Thus one could use them instead of the more expensive Athlon MP in dual socket A motherboards. Since those boards lacked multiplier and voltage adjustments, and could run only 133MHz FSB the adjustment could have been made by wire-modding the CPU socket by connecting adjacent CPU pins. It was normal to overclock mobile 2500+ CPU to 2.26GHz with 17x multiplier thus being faster than fastest official 2800+ MP CPU running at 2133MHz.

The black editions are a step in the right direction, but it would be great if all processors were like that. I would love to take a $40 low budget AMD for a file server then overclock the hell out of it.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle
Ruiz resigned last year.

The new CEO must be pretty good. They could be better but I give them a 6.5/10 thus far. They had Ruiz's mess to clean up, unfortunately.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
It will be even better when they finally figure out that all processors should be unlocked; not just the few black editions.

The irony about that, though, is that BE editions encourage overclocking solely thru multiplier manipulation. However, there are significant gains to be realized thru Uncore overclocking. The funny thing is that wouldn't make any difference to 99% of users, but the 1% who get excited over such things would then heartily recommend AMD to their acquaintances.

 

[Hacp]

Still no mobile chip. Desktops are dead. Until AMD designs a chip specifically for notebooks, it will not compete with Intel. Cmon AMD, I know you can do it. 10 hours of battery life is all I'm asking for.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
It will be even better when they finally figure out that all processors should be unlocked; not just the few black editions.

The irony about that, though, is that BE editions encourage overclocking solely thru multiplier manipulation. However, there are significant gains to be realized thru Uncore overclocking. The funny thing is that wouldn't make any difference to 99% of users, but the 1% who get excited over such things would then heartily recommend AMD to their acquaintances.

Outside of the CPU itself, overclocking the FSB does very little. We often put a lot of thought into ram and chipset but in the end it usually doesn't mean a heck of a lot. Example:
Anandtech benchmark: ram speed doesn't do anything. Because CPU and GPU are a much bigger bottleneck, the memory speed makes no difference.

What I can say with at least some certainty is that doing a 40% multiplier overclock will beat a 25% FSB overclock any day of the week. I use that 25% number because that's where my past 2 motherboards would stop detecting hard drives. The computer I had before that had such a crap motherboard that PCI and AGP were tied to the FSB, so overclocking the FSB by as much as 5% would cause blue screens. Slots like PCI and AGP don't like being overclocked.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
It will be even better when they finally figure out that all processors should be unlocked; not just the few black editions.

The irony about that, though, is that BE editions encourage overclocking solely thru multiplier manipulation. However, there are significant gains to be realized thru Uncore overclocking. The funny thing is that wouldn't make any difference to 99% of users, but the 1% who get excited over such things would then heartily recommend AMD to their acquaintances.

Outside of the CPU itself, overclocking the FSB does very little. We often put a lot of thought into ram and chipset but in the end it usually doesn't mean a heck of a lot. Example:
Anandtech benchmark: ram speed doesn't do anything. Because CPU and GPU are a much bigger bottleneck, the memory speed makes no difference.

What I can say with at least some certainty is that doing a 40% multiplier overclock will beat a 25% FSB overclock any day of the week. I use that 25% number because that's where my past 2 motherboards would stop detecting hard drives. The computer I had before that had such a crap motherboard that PCI and AGP were tied to the FSB, so overclocking the FSB by as much as 5% would cause blue screens. Slots like PCI and AGP don't like being overclocked.

Sorry, I didn't intend to imply a FSB. What I meant was overclocking of NB/HTT is greatly desirable, as this also overclocks the L3 cache and the IMC. Folks who have played around with that - myself included - have noticed a measurable bump in performance. That is, a PhII @ 3.4ghz w/NB @ 2.5ghz is faster than 3.5ghz w/NB @ 2.1ghz.

 

[thilanliyan]

I'm glad to see they're clawing back some market share. Hopefully the trend continues for CPUs and GPUs as well.

 

[richierich1212]

Wow that's really good. But yeah they need to improve their notebook/portable cpu lineup.

 

[dennilfloss]

Originally posted by: Hacp
Desktops are dead.

Not for me they aren't. I like my desktop.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

Originally posted by: Hacp
Desktops are dead.

Not for me they aren't. I like my desktop.

hehe same here, i love my builds and i plan on keep building/tweaking them with passion.

going back to the topic, great for them. AMD is in much better shape in both CPU and GPU business.

 

[LoneNinja]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

Originally posted by: Hacp
Desktops are dead.

Not for me they aren't. I like my desktop.

I like my desktops as well, just can't get that kind of performance out of a laptop without sacrificing battery life and portability, not to mention the lack of overclocking and extremely high sticker price for anything with good performance.

Find me a laptop with a 3.0Ghz quad core and a 4670 or better that still uses a 15.4 wide screen and weights under 8lbs while maintaining at least 3 hours battery life for under $900 and I'll consider it, until than laptops are just toys for internet and multimedia to me.

 

[Idontcare]

What percentage of AMD's Q1 sales are actually from Phenom II chips?

 

[PingSpike]

You can build a solid midrange gaming rig for almost nothing now, parts are stupid cheap. You're looking at around $700+ to get any kind of laptop with what would be a $50 desktop graphics card these days...and it can't be upgraded. Then you've got neutered ATI/Nvidia parts under that that suck and by the time you get down into the sub $500 price range its pretty much always that shatastic intel video chipset.

They still want you to pay big for a gaming laptop. On the desktop side all you have to do is buy a Dell special and plop a hot deal video card in there for like $100 and you've got yourself a pretty kickass rig.

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

Originally posted by: Hacp
Desktops are dead.

Not for me they aren't. I like my desktop.

Yes, but if you look at the numbers, the future (and profits) are in small portable machines, laptops and netbooks. The "family" computer is dead and everyone is buying a laptop these days. Nothing can compete with a desktop for performance and features (and price) but anyone who studies the market knows that computer companies must have a strong foothold in the portable market to survive.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: nerp
Yes, but if you look at the numbers, the future (and profits) are in small portable machines, laptops and netbooks. The "family" computer is dead and everyone is buying a laptop these days. Nothing can compete with a desktop for performance and features (and price) but anyone who studies the market knows that computer companies must have a strong foothold in the portable market to survive.

I agree with this and want to add that mobile computing performance is increasing at a very fast rate. While a laptop that matches the performance of the average desktop is a little expensive at this time, in a few years that is going to change since the majority of PC buyers are moving to the devices. As the volume of these higher performing laptops increase, the cost will decrease. It is simple economics 101 at work.

In a few years when it is time to upgrade my new build, I may make the jump to a desktop replacement, as these types of laptops are quickly coming down in price and the performance is getting close to that of a desktop.

 

[Phynaz]

Funny what happens when you have a competitive product.

That said, IDC brings up a good point, how many of these are chips that AMD are selling are actually (profitable) K10 vs (less profitable) K8?

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

Originally posted by: Hacp
Desktops are dead.

Not for me they aren't. I like my desktop.

maybe i should show him my desktop and have him tell me a portable or even an enterprise machine that could keep up.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: dennilfloss

Originally posted by: Hacp
Desktops are dead.

Not for me they aren't. I like my desktop.

maybe i should show him my desktop and have him tell me a portable or even an enterprise machine that could keep up.

There is no way a laptop can be run 24/7@100% load and live long. The people where I work use them a lot, and over 50% of them die in a year, brand new Dell and HP machines. Laptops may be indispensible, but do are desktops.

And there is no way any current laptop can touch a high end SLI or crossfire gaming setup.

desktops are here to stay, at least for the forseeable future.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Phynaz
Funny what happens when you have a competitive product.

That said, IDC brings up a good point, how many of these are chips that AMD are selling are actually (profitable) K10 vs (less profitable) K8?

Since (I think) 100% of their mobile line is K8, they probably could be doing a bit better on that mix, HOWEVER, with the mobile line they also have the addition of AMD based motherboard chipsets which can only help in some ways, and potentially that's the same with the desktop market. If AMD increase their desktop CPU share then they also increase the AMD motherboard share, which probably increases their own chipset sales (although it won't hurt NV either), so they (now) get a double bonus through the ATI acquisition.

I just bought a new laptop which ended up being a Turion X2 with HD3200 IGP because it was the cheapest thing I could find with reasonable graphic performance (the other option being some form of Core 2 with Intel integrated graphics - no thanks). The package system can work, especially when you are competitive in multiple areas.

 

[OCGuy]

They are on life-support until they actually turn a profit....

Id be interested in how the conclusion was reached that overclocking was the reason they gained marketshare.

I'd say it had to do with AMD finally having a marketable chip again after the Phenom disaster.

 

[Modular]

Good news! It's nice to see that they're back in the game.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: OCguy
Id be interested in how the conclusion was reached that overclocking was the reason they gained marketshare.

by: Theo Valich

It's Theo, which makes it questionable to call it news (at best) to begin with, and more appropriate to call it "speculation of the most optimistic nature" (also at best) and go from there.