Poll : DC opteron prices in 12 months

[Hard Ball]

I'm building a dual socket opteron rig at this moment with a pair of 246s. And one of the reasons I went with this setup instead of the X2 is the possible future of this platform being 4 cores. I plan on an upgrade to DC opterons some time next year. Please vote to let me know what price range it will be in, even if it's only a guess.

Educated guesses are all I have right now.

 

[Furen]

I guessed 500-650 depending on the rate of adoption of the new server socket (cant recall the name at the moment). The 65nm shrink should be especially helpful in bringing dual core prices down but it really depends on whether or not faster cpus are released. I dont think AMD will make an even more expensive cpu, so with each release (hopefully) there'll be a drop in price. It also depends on how well the xeons shrink. If they can get to 3.6+ on the dual cores with decent heat output (hah, by decent I mean less than 110W) the opterons should drop in price significantly.

So basically there are three factors that can affect opteron pricing:
- New socket adoption rate.
- New dual core operating frecuencies (I'm pretty sure a 2.4GHz part is coming out).
- Intel's shrink (hey, they gotta F-ing up at some point).

Though it could actually be lower priced, I wouldnt count it on going lower than 400.

 

[Hard Ball]

Originally posted by: Furen
I guessed 500-650 depending on the rate of adoption of the new server socket (cant recall the name at the moment). The 65nm shrink should be especially helpful in bringing dual core prices down but it really depends on whether or not faster cpus are released. I dont think AMD will make an even more expensive cpu, so with each release (hopefully) there'll be a drop in price. It also depends on how well the xeons shrink. If they can get to 3.6+ on the dual cores with decent heat output (hah, by decent I mean less than 110W) the opterons should drop in price significantly.

So basically there are three factors that can affect opteron pricing:
- New socket adoption rate.
- New dual core operating frecuencies (I'm pretty sure a 2.4GHz part is coming out).
- Intel's shrink (hey, they gotta F-ing up at some point).

Though it could actually be lower priced, I wouldnt count it on going lower than 400.

I tend to agree with you for the most part;

My thinking is that,

1) AMD should come out with a clock bump about twice a year for the Opteron, so we could anticipate on average that the top clock will be 2.6 GHz by the Spring of next year, which may be the last S940 part; or there could be a 2.8GHz part in the fall. This would make the price of a part like 270 < 800 USD.

2) AMD will begin the switch to the new DDR2/FBDIMM socket for servers sometime next year; and if that happens, there would be more used S940 parts on the market, and the new S940 parts would need to be gradually cleared out of the fabs and channels, so there would be somewhat of a price drop at the adoption of the new socket.

3) New Fab36 should be rolling by that time, and AMD would not be as fab capacity constrained as before; so we should see the volume increase moderately, and price possibly drop slightly due to this. Or at least parts won't be sold that much above AMD list price.

So my prediction, after it's all said and done, is that next year this time:
Opteron 265 -- ~350
Opteron 270 -- ~500
Opteron 275 -- ~800
Opteron 280 -- ~1200
Opteron 285 -- >1500

 

[Furen]

AMD's fab wont, by itself, lead to lower cpu prices, Intel being able to deliver dual-core server chips at decent clockspeeds is what will drop the opteron prices, in my opinion. Going from a 3.6GHz xeon to a 3.2GHz minifurnace doesnt make much sense right now, but if the 65nm shrink can tame the dual-cored xeons, things are going to be completely different and AMD prices WILL have to drop. I'm actually hoping for socket 940 to make it through next year without much problem, since having a few more upgrades on the same infrastructure will be beneficial to AMD. Once we jump onto quad-core cpus, though, the added bandwidth of DDR2 will probably be necessary.

 

[Hard Ball]

I think going by the drop of price between Spring 03's original release of the Opteron to the Summer 04 prices of Opteron 240/242/244, ~500 for the 270 for summer of 06 is a pretty reasonable estimate. But I guess you never know.

Either way, I'm looking for the date when DC opterons drop to a reasonable price level, and that's when I'll plan to upgrade. Along with an additional couple gigs of memory.