Should we buy those AMD CPU's NOW?!

[Caminetto]

Have been waiting to buy a new processor until the expected price cuts due today. Now it looks bad for those really hot deals:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4273557/

 

[MDE]

The world's biggest oxymoron: AMD marketing campaign.

 

[Drizzy]

Well, I guess this week should be interesting with announcements from both AMD and Intel in the making.... I personally am going to wait until after this week. I think some price cuts will start trickling down. Much the same as ATI cards have seen some nice price cuts after ATI made their announcements about their future and using PCIe cards this year.

 

[shiftomnimega]

Well Athlon's TV ads a while back with the train were semi-good marketing.

 

[EarthwormJim]

They have "AMD Me". Although how can that compete with "Intel Inside" and the Blue Man Group.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
They have "AMD Me". Although how can that compete with "Intel Inside" and the Blue Man Group.

Don't tell me that you thought Intel having those morons who spray paint themselves blue was a good idea!

 

[wkabel23]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
They have "AMD Me". Although how can that compete with "Intel Inside" and the Blue Man Group.

Don't tell me that you thought Intel having those morons who spray paint themselves blue was a good idea!

Have you even seen the Blue Man Group perform? Untill you do, shutup.

 

[cowdog]

Reminds me of a football team playing a "prevent" defense to protect a small lead. That fails all the time, esp. against a good team.

I think Intel is a pretty good team; they seem to find a way to get the ball and kick the winning field goal in last few seconds of the game against AMD over and over. Coming soon to a theater near you --> instant repeat?

 

[SneakyStuff]

Haha yea, the Blue Man Group is vicious........... Who is AMD going to choose to represent them? Carrot Top? Gary Coleman? Bill Clinton? The possibilities are ENDLESS!

 

[jkj]

So whats the deal with these prices? Are there even going to be price cuts

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: jkj
So whats the deal with these prices? Are there even going to be price cuts

No.

 

[jkj]

I guess I may go ahead with a p4 then

 

[RussianSensation]

It seems AMD just cut prices on Some XP models....now it doesnt look like they will reduce A64 prices possibly until 3700+ comes out? hmmm....that sux

 

[EarthwormJim]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
It seems AMD just cut prices on Some XP models....now it doesnt look like they will reduce A64 prices possibly until 3700+ comes out? hmmm....that sux

It's a little hard to cut prices though when the die sizes are 193mm2.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: shiftomnimega
Well Athlon's TV ads a while back with the train were semi-good marketing.

I never even saw one of them until I actually went looking for it on the Internet. Mustn't have had good channel coverage or something.
I'll agree that AMD needs to find a better marketing department.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
It seems AMD just cut prices on Some XP models....now it doesnt look like they will reduce A64 prices possibly until 3700+ comes out? hmmm....that sux

It's a little hard to cut prices though when the die sizes are 193mm2.

Yeah its expensive to produce the chips on a wafer that size, but I am sure the cost per unit is somewhere around $40 per A64. They wouldnt be selling XP models for 40-50 if they weren't making money on them. Its a matter of keeping high profit margins now since the demand hasn't fallen and the competition isn't forcing them to lower the prices just yet, thats my logical assumption.

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim
They have "AMD Me". Although how can that compete with "Intel Inside" and the Blue Man Group.

Don't tell me that you thought Intel having those morons who spray paint themselves blue was a good idea!

FYI... The Blue Man Group was Intel's most successful marketing campaign to date. Even outshined the dancing bunny suit guys.

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: EarthwormJim

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
It seems AMD just cut prices on Some XP models....now it doesnt look like they will reduce A64 prices possibly until 3700+ comes out? hmmm....that sux

It's a little hard to cut prices though when the die sizes are 193mm2.

Yeah its expensive to produce the chips on a wafer that size, but I am sure the cost per unit is somewhere around $40 per A64. They wouldnt be selling XP models for 40-50 if they weren't making money on them. Its a matter of keeping high profit margins now since the demand hasn't fallen and the competition isn't forcing them to lower the prices just yet, thats my logical assumption.

Maybe $40/die for material only... Unfortunately, there is A LOT more to designing/manufacturing cpu's than the materials themselves.
And considering that AMD lost money for like nine quarters in a row (until Q4 '03), it isn't inconceivable that they lost money on many of their cpu's.

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: shiftomnimega
Well Athlon's TV ads a while back with the train were semi-good marketing.

I never even saw one of them until I actually went looking for it on the Internet. Mustn't have had good channel coverage or something.
I'll agree that AMD needs to find a better marketing department.

I dunno if I really WANT to see AMD step up marketing. If they spend money on slick TV commercials during ER and CSI, then that's just gonna lead to either a) eat in to their profit margins and hurt them financially or b) keep the prices of their chips high. I mean the advertising costs are for example what make prescription drugs so damn expensive. It costs a lot ot run those ads and pay for all the swag and those costs are almost always passed on to the customers.

Plus, TV advertising is very ill-suited to for selling processors, anyway. You just can't "sell" the benefits of a processor in 30 seconds, so you are forced to go for stupid gimmicks that no one ever pays attentuion to. I seriously doubt if hiring the Blue Man Group ever helped change the mind of a single potential AMD or Apple customer and made them go over to Intel. It seems like AMD could find better uses for the money than a new marketing campaign.

 

[MichaelD]

*Well-dressed man walks into laboratory setting, workbench with opened PC case lays on table*
*Man walks over, starts installing motherboard, etc*
*Picks up CPU, looks at it, shows it to camera, camera quickly ZOOMS IN on A64 slug*
*Camera cuts to mans' face. He says:*

You absolutely need this f8cking thing in your next Uber Rig...believe dat!

*Cut to benchmark shots of A64 stomping the crap out of the competition*

Copyright, MichaelD, February 2004. For an address to mail my royalty checks, PM me.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: batmanuel

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: shiftomnimega
Well Athlon's TV ads a while back with the train were semi-good marketing.

I never even saw one of them until I actually went looking for it on the Internet. Mustn't have had good channel coverage or something.
I'll agree that AMD needs to find a better marketing department.

I dunno if I really WANT to see AMD step up marketing. If they spend money on slick TV commercials during ER and CSI, then that's just gonna lead to either a) eat in to their profit margins and hurt them financially or b) keep the prices of their chips high. I mean the advertising costs are for example what make prescription drugs so damn expensive. It costs a lot ot run those ads and pay for all the swag and those costs are almost always passed on to the customers.

Plus, TV advertising is very ill-suited to for selling processors, anyway. You just can't "sell" the benefits of a processor in 30 seconds, so you are forced to go for stupid gimmicks that no one ever pays attentuion to. I seriously doubt if hiring the Blue Man Group ever helped change the mind of a single potential AMD or Apple customer and made them go over to Intel. It seems like AMD could find better uses for the money than a new marketing campaign.

I completely disagree. Brand Name Recognition, learn it, know it, live it Television advertising is paramount to the process and should be the cornerstone of advertising for any company with a national/international presence. I have heard from a source within Intel that the Blue Man group was the most successful marketing campaign in the company's history. The old business axiom which states "you have to spend money to make money" is never more true than it is with TV advertising dollars. Make your product a household name and it'll sell well, so long as it's a quality product with a comparable, or preferably, superior value to the competitor's.

One of the primary reasons for AMD continuing to languish in obscurity is the lack of demand for it's products. That demand must be created, and TV advertising is the way to create it. Another axiom states "strike while the iron is hot!" and if AMD fails to aggressively market 64bit desktop computing to the masses, Intel eventually will. If that happens AMD having been the Industry leader in developing the technology will translate into precisely zilch, zero, nada, for their bottom line. By launching a media blitz and marketing it heavily they start to position themselves as the current computer technology leader in the public's minds now! Combine that with the facts that AMD is the only game in town for the time being, and that MS will market their 64bit OS, perhaps even before Intel has a desktop product ready to go, and you have a formula for a very nice return on investment for your TV AD dollars. It doesn't hurt to target the potential corporate customers the way IBM does with their TV ADs either.

As far as the comment about the Blue Men not swaying any AMD or Apple customers, it sways some, and combined their marketshare is only a small fraction of Intel's so that's not many competitor's customers that aren't succumbing to the allure of primary colors and basic geometric shapes that transfix the average 4yr old....... or TV watcher

 

[cowdog]

I agree with Dapunisher that branding via advertising is fundamental for AMD, but I'd also add that branding is a comprehensive strategy that typically works best when multiple paths are integrated: advertising for targeted groups, grass roots marketing, partnerships, media outreach, aggressive but strategic pricing, etc. Right now AMD seems to be going through a couple of steps to brand A64/Operton and position themselves; however, their current strategy seems contradictory. They have stated that they have a competitive window and because of that newly found status they will ... concede market share to Intel and instead focus on ... value. OK, that sounds like Apple to me, but now think about how advertising fits that strategy. Why spend huge dollars to advertise on TV if they aren't trying to gain market share? And why concede the market share battle if they now feel a competitve advantage?

I hope it all works out great for AMD so that we end up with a more balanced processor market between Intel, AMD, and others like IBM, and ... I just don't get AMD's approach. Of course, I live a quaint little life in the mountains of southwestern Montana, so what the heck do I know!

 

[batmanuel]

I've always thought that the cornerstone to Intel's success in the market was due mostly to getting big wins with Dell and Compaq and making sure that basically every single computer in most schools and offices have a Intel processor and and a little "Intel Inside" sticker on the case so people see the name every day and are used to thinking that a computer is not a real computer without the Intel and Pentium names. I think AMD really needs to attack the marketshare problem from the top down by getting Opteron servers into the datacenters and then getting the IT staff comfortable enough with the AMD name that they start putting AMD into their desktops (along with nice big AMD and Athlon case badges to get the name into potential customer's heads).

I just think about all those big 3dfx ads in my old Preacher and Transmetropolian comics. I saw them and it created brand recognition in my mind, but in the end I never did ever buy any of their cards. This must have been true for a lot of people considering how ATi and nVidia steamrolled them in the end. All the name recognition in the world couldn't save them when their products came in late and inferior to the competion in performance.

I know AMD needs to advertise, but they need to focus on the corporate customer and not the home user right now. They especially need to push the Opteron hard now that Intel is trying to make the transition from Itanium to te AMD flavor of 64-bit. Most of all they need to get a server win at Dell. Establishing a strong server market beachhead needs to be the focus of their energy right now, and I'm dubious if a big TV campaign will help win over the IT people that help make buying decisions (hell, most of those type peope probably zap through most of their ads with their TiVo's commerical skip anyway).

On top of it all, I just think the viewing public is too jaded to care about TV ads anymore. I'm just afraid that any ad that AMD could put out that would be heard over the din might be make the company look less professional in the eyes of those sorporate customers AMD needs to court now. IBM can get away with funny ads because it has such as uptight reputation. A smaller upstart can't really get away with that. I just don't want to see the little furry rat monster from Quizno's singing about the how great 64-bit computing is, that's all.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I just don't want to see the little furry rat monster from Quizno's singing about the how great 64-bit computing is, that's all.

But it worked, their obnoxious commercial registered on you and you know what product is being pushed. That's the entire point, you recognize the brand name Quizno's so it was money well spent It doesn't make any difference if you found the commercial inane or bizzare, the fact is you know who they are and that means they have a better shot at getting you to try/buy their product than if you had never heard of them at all, understand yet? You are worried AMD will lose respect or appear unprofessional if they advertise poorly, but they haven't even been heard of in many potential customers home yet so they have NOTHING to lose and everything to gain by making AMD a household name :light:

I don't know your age or educational background but if you've had marketing and advertising classes these concepts should be familiar to you. As to winning a contract from Dell, extremely unlikely, and would be unprofitable if they did since Intel gives them such prefered pricing that AMD would have to practically give them processors to make up for the price penalty Intel would slap them with. I do agree they need corporate wins since that's where the biggest profit margins are, and they are making in-roads there of late, but you won't see a trickle down effect even if they penetrate that market significantly because the desktop arena is more about making John Q. Public think about you when he goes to buy a computer.

BTW, you give the general public far too much credit IMHO, most people are not well educated consumers who research every purchase,They live for instant gratification and expedience. It's a "Fast Food" mentality and many are pursuaded by who's commercials they see more, not hours of research on the products. Most people do not know who AMD is, and it's nigh impossible to sell a product to a customer that isn't even aware of your existance now isn't it?