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AMD To Close Plants, Lay off 2300, Lose Gateway
cdrudge writes: "According to this article on CNN, AMD will be closing 2 plants in Austin, TX and also their operations in Penang, Malaysia due to slack demand. 2300 jobs will be cut in the process. The same article mentions Gateway dropping it's 'Select' line of computers. Their 'Select' line of computers were Gateway's only AMD-based systems. A Gateway spokesperson said 'We're consolidating all of our offering behind Intel, which was the biggest part of our mix already.'"
However, the line about Intel "aggressively pricing" their P4's is just so much CNN tripe. A quick look at Sharkey's Extreme Weekly CPU prices shows this to be BS.
(hint: top of the line AMD - 100 bucks, Intel -- 500 bucks)
- Cheers
- RLJ
I don't see that there is much to worry about here. I'd be more concerned if AMD wasn't laying-off people. As it is, I think people have enough computer power for the time being. How many MHz does the average person/business really need?
There are always going to be adolescents out there who will buy the latest/greatest hardware just for the sake of it(and god bless 'em--they get fleeced and absorb research costs while we level-headed folks get affordable technology); but real people have enough computers right now.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Somehow I'm not surprised. Gateway has been consistently using AMD as a bargaining chip with Intel. They have now twice adopted AMD lines and dropped them when they thought they could get a better deal from Intel.
I suspect that AMD will pull through this, and most likely will re-activate the foundries when they need more capacity, though that might take some time as they still haven't reached 100% at Dresden yet and they're already transitioning to 0.13 micron process.
What does confuse me is why AMD consistently adopts such low selling prices. I think that people would still buy their processors even if they tacked on a minimum of $50 on the high end, if not even $100. A full base system based on AMD costs $400 these days and for that you can't even get a high end P4.
Sometimes the market economy and technology adoption just confuses me. I mean we've had Firewire (IEEE 1394) for almost a decade and it's only just now catching on, and even now with great resistance... go figure.
AMD is far from an upstart. They've been making semiconductors since 1969, although most of the initial line was made under license (i.e. they were more of a manufacturer than a maker).
In fact, they have been building chips to fit the PC platform nearly as long as Intel has. Take an old original IBM PC and fit an AMD 8088 clone in it and see what happens. Unfortunately, the inability to deliver a Pentium-class CPU in time (they were WAY behind Intel) hurt their revenue and market share a lot. Intel's "Pentium" name gained worldwide recognition - and left AMD in the dust.
Hopefully, AMD is not done yet, and like with the K5 they will be able to prop themselves up and surge ahead.
Hopefully.
- Ed.
the ability to overclock a chip says nothing for the quality of that chip .... i've never seen anyone throw away a processor out of a sun box because it couldnt be overclocked... besides, nobody overclocks in real situations, as it's known to cause computational errors. So, go ahead, buy your cheap $50 durons, and coverclock them to your heart's delight, but realize that that is NOT how businesses who buy systems operate, and what works in your house doesnt work for large companies.
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'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
See my homepage, where I detail the parts I used for my 1.4GHz Athlon machine for work. It's the third Athlon system I've built, preceeded by numerous 386/486/Pentium/PPro/K6 systems.
Antec has a new 350W p/s that makes a good, inexpensive choice for a single-CPU system, and they sell a nice midtower case that comes with it. I say "inexpensive" relative to the PC Power & Cooling gear I usually get.
Toy stores: MWave.com for selection, Newegg.com for price. I've bought a lot of stuff from MWave, haven't tried Newegg yet but will next chance I get, they're supposed to be good. EMS Computing has great prices on Antec stuff, I bought from them once, but their site is s-l-o-w.
Intel is pulling the same bullshit. They want to squeeze out the competition so they best way to do that is to force large outlets of computers to stick w/one chip vendor.
I don't think that's the issue, here. Vendors get a discount for a line of computers (e.g., Dimension, OptiPlex) that use exclusively Intel processors. That's essentially why the Select line exists: to sell Athlons without jeopardizing Intel discounts on other lines. I'm not aware of additional discounts for total exclusivity.