AMD might not be so screwed...

[Cheesus]

Shocking data by Mercury
We wrote that AMD is now focusing more on the sub-€200 / $200 market here and there is a good explanation why. Obviously, the key reason is that AMD's K10 cannot really compete with Penryn at 3.0+ frequencies; but it looks like the sub-$200 segment pays 96.6 percent of the bills.

This is the best bang for the buck market and, according to Mercury, in 2008 it is expected that 96.6 percent of the market will be under $200. This mean that only 5.5 million CPUs that are planned to sell in 2008 are going to cost more than $200. Shocking, isn’t it?

Mercury research projects that the rest of the 160 million estimated units in 2008 will be sub-$200, with the sweet spot in the $100 to $200 market.

With this in mind, Triple- and Quad-core AMD CPUs make much more sense, at least at their affordable prices.

Huh... Who would've guessed it?

SOURCE

[John Aiton]

AMD is on the up,

expect overclockable phenoms from now on since the eratta is removed
seriously..... like 1ghz overclocks on phenoms will soon become average

if you search teh intel vs amd 2007 thread, you'll see I predicted this ages ago.
Both the chip increases and amd's recovery

The next architecture looks promosing against nehalem,
but nehalem is already up at 3.2 Ghz

[Thanakil]

Originally Posted by Cheesus

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Huh... Who would've guessed it?

I did I don't see why it's so surprising either, the past has already proved that this approach to business was always a lucrative one. It's been talked about before in Intel/AMD threads I think, not too sure, but I think I remember a few comments about how AMD did that to target a wider audience. The bigger audience is the one who wants computer, but not to ruin themselves. People who simply want a nice PC to do common stuff. That's a big part of the pie right there.

It's obvious that the people who sell the most components are those who target the low-medium market, not the high-end part.
The high-end part is really a small market. A good one, but not the only one. You can live without it.

Keep in mind, it will always be this way, people will always like what is affordable. A lot of people want a computer but don't care about extreme performance, I think that has always been a given.

How many people buy a average TV instead of big-ass one? How many people buy a average cellphone instead of the top-of-the line one?
(how many people buy a wii? )


Nyway, AMD making big money that way isn't such a surprise. What make people sad with AMD is that they are "ignoring" the high-end, but I never expected AMD to die, simply to half-give up on giving high performance parts.

[Cheesus]

So far the highest Phenom clock speed I've seen is 3Ghz on an 9850 which is at 2.5ghz stock.

I doubt they'll ever become good OCers, although yeah, its not as bad as was originally thought.

[John Aiton]

Originally Posted by Cheesus

So far the highest Phenom clock speed I've seen is 3Ghz on an 9850 which is at 2.5ghz stock.

I doubt they'll ever become good OCers, although yeah, its not as bad as was originally thought.

have you searched B3 stepping overclocks?
Could B3 Phenom be the rebirth of AMD....+1000MHZ OC done! - XtremeSystems Forums

b3 is the stepping in which the problematic errata was fixed allowing higher clocks

[skoreanime]

It was already obvious that most of their income was from the mid range to budget market. Contrary to popular belief, the higher end stuff just makes up a fraction of both AMD and Intels total sales. AMDs still got hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts still up and kicking, so don't expect them to go away anytime soon.

To be honest, my next upgrade will probably be an AMD system that outperforms my current system by a good chunk. The Nehalem seems meh to me, not to mention it'll probably cost me my liver and kidney

[runawayprisoner]

Highest overclock on AMD Phenom is currently 3.5GHz.

And... to say that AMD is going to dominate the sub $200 market is not quite... correct (not exactly wrong). Why? Because Intel is going to have a price drop by the end of April... which is due in two weeks. After the price drop, Q6600 would be down to the $200 range, some Penryn dual-core processors would be down to the $100 - $200 range as well. That's not to mention we have the E7xxx series coming in. Penryn with lower caches... but powerful, nontheless.

Not taking those factors into consideration when talking about AMD's current pricing position... is almost suicidal (or too wishful). AMD is only dominating the sub $100 market... and they are only making profits in markets where users can't pay more than $200-300 for a COMPLETE computer package. Of course with $200 or $300 for a complete computer, Phenom processors would be out of the formula. Right now, I can only see Phenom processors as being a good update to users who don't want to replace everything on their computers (same as not having more than $300 for a complete computer).

So... with Phenom being completely obsolete, AMD can only rely on their older CPUs. Luckily, they can still hold their grounds... for the time being. I hope AMD had something to give in the Phenom processors, but it seems that was just wishful thinking... and to think Intel doesn't make profits from higher-end processors is still not... correct. Like... you wouldn't believe how many QX9650 processors were burned out due to insane overclocking sessions. You wouldn't believe how many batches of Penryn processors were bought. Even now, the only Penryn processors still widely available are the E8200, E8400, Q9300, QX9650, QX9770, and QX9775. All of the others are out-of-stock... WORLDWIDE!

[fivefeet8]

I feel bad for those 10%(1,600) of employees they're laying off though.

AMD is pretty much back to what they were doing during the pre-athlon erra. Fighting on the mid to low end. It makes sense because of the situation they are in, but I would've liked them to also be competitive in the High end as well. Intel pretty much took away all(and then some) the market share they increased during the Athlon64 years in one fell swoop with the C2D in one quarter.

I'm sure they'll be around for a long time, but I'd much rather see them get back to their performance competition stance in the high end during that time.

[Borisz]

Originally Posted by John Aiton

AMD is on the up,

expect overclockable phenoms from now on since the eratta is removed
seriously..... like 1ghz overclocks on phenoms will soon become average

if you search teh intel vs amd 2007 thread, you'll see I predicted this ages ago.
Both the chip increases and amd's recovery

The next architecture looks promosing against nehalem,
but nehalem is already up at 3.2 Ghz

Wasn't the errata bug just some minor thing that needed extreme specific circumstances to be triggered? I fail to see how that hinders overclockability. And besides, not even +2ghz can save the phenom as it is currently, since its slower then the core 2 on a clock to clock basis. The fact that Core 2 can do +1ghz on stock setup isn't helping either.

[John Aiton]

Originally Posted by Borisz

Wasn't the errata bug just some minor thing that needed extreme specific circumstances to be triggered? I fail to see how that hinders overclockability. And besides, not even +2ghz can save the phenom as it is currently, since its slower then the core 2 on a clock to clock basis. The fact that Core 2 can do +1ghz on stock setup isn't helping either.

well yeah and no, it was a minor errata but it really limited the clockspeed to constrain it to just a minor errata
(or something like that, been a while since i read the article)

Amd still have to go 45nm to

[cottonvibes]

the problem was something like, if more than 1 of the cores try to write to the L3 cache at a time, then the what the first core writes can be overwritten by the second one...
or something like that...

anyways, it limits speed because AMD released a sofware fix for it.
and it made the processors run really slow in some processes.
in 1 PC game, it ran 50% slower.

on Linux, the fix was better because AMD was able to modify the Kernal; and i believe it only slows down the processor by 1%.
but on Windows, microsoft wouldn't let AMD modify the Kernal, so they had to do it with some other software and thats why its so slow.

also, the whole fact that its a software fix, its obviously going to be slower.
if AMD was decent, they should have recalled all their phenom processors and shiped out new ones without the bug...

[runawayprisoner]

And normally, Phenom was too slow compared to current Intel quads at the same clock speed... so that bug was almost lethal. Just now, some price drops have brought the Q6600 to the sub $200 market, making it even harder for AMD.

[fivefeet8]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

And normally, Phenom was too slow compared to current Intel quads at the same clock speed... so that bug was almost lethal. Just now, some price drops have brought the Q6600 to the sub $200 market, making it even harder for AMD.

That's another issue with the current situation. It seems that Intel is all too welcome to lower their prices as well.

[runawayprisoner]

It's raining deals this week. I've had to cancel 4 orders in 3 days because of better deals keeping on showing up.

[cottonvibes]

R.A.P.

are you ever satified with your current rig?

i don't even think you've had that rig longer than a month, and now you're buying new parts?

geeze, and i thought i was bad :/

[runawayprisoner]

Well, it was because I... sold all of my last computers. If no processor comes in tomorrow, I'll have to get on with the PS3. :/ It's not that I'm not satisfied with my computers... it's just that I'm just so darned good at convincing people to buy...

And the only thing I have left now is... the graphics card. The motherboard, the CPU, the RAM sticks, the case... the bolts in the case, the fans in the case, the cables in the case... everything is sold.

Edit: And yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't sell anything to Phil. Maybe next time, buddy?

[cottonvibes]

i recommend you wait till better games come out b4 you get a ps3.
unless you already like the games that are out.

i have the ps3, but theres only like 2-3 games out i like.

[runawayprisoner]

I already have the PS3... ever since... uhh... 2006! And that's damn right. I was that dude who walked right into the store when thousands of others stood outside staring at me. I got in, asked for a PS3, paid the price, then got on the car, drove home, plugged the thing in, connected it to the internet, and started downloading GTHD. 'Course people were shouting and stuffs... but I didn't bother.

[cottonvibes]

oh, then were you talking about selling your ps3?

[runawayprisoner]

Nope. I was talking about... trying to access the Internet with a PS3.