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AMD Beats Intel in CPU Sales
glockenspieler writes "As reported by Ars Technica, for the week ending April 24th, AMD accounted for 52% of desktop CPU sales. Granted its just one week but perhaps this indicates that AMD is really building momentum in the desktop market. So, when will Dell begin carrying AMD?"
When AMD beats Intel for several weeks in a row, let me know.
Finding God in a Dog
All I want, and all I care about is having the best product for the best price.
Windows sells more computers with their OS on in then anyone else, are they better?
Opinions aside, all that will matter to me when I build my next PC is proformance and price.
TruePunk | Games
I've seen it coming - why pay more $$ when you get can get better bangs for less $$??
:)
I try to be as savvy as possible concerning my purchases - and I just can't afford to buy a 32 bit Intel chip when I can get a 64 bit AMD chip for comprable costs
keeps you thinking...
Wanna cyber? I have my robe and wizard's hat.
AMD is not only a maker of excellent processors, but I like the fact that some at least some are made in Europe. I think the XP processors are made in Germany.
I like buying hardware that makes me feel good about the working conditions of the people manufacturing the product.
the K6-3. It was only inevitable
what Dell's next step would be. I heard they have an exclusive contract with Intel till 2006 (correct me if I'm wrong), but they can't ignore the fact that AMD is rocking the CPU market now.
Only on desktops. Intel still owns the laptop market by a wide margin, especially as AMD is completely ignoring the low-power market. Remember, laptops are now over 50% of all PC sales.
When will people stop asking about when Dell will start using AMD CPUs?
If you want a machine with an AMD CPU, go to someone else. Dell is hardly the end-all-be-all of desktop computers. Yes, they're huge. No, that doesn't mean they're the best, are the least-expensive or have the best service. They're merely the most-popular.
If I were the CEO of a chip company looking to court one of the most successful PC makers to use my processors, I probably wouldn't do so with a comment like this:
Which probably indicates that AMD has resigned itself to !Dell for a decent period into the future.
if a member of your family said they wanted a new pc, what name are they going to associate with a new computer? chances are if they don't say hp, they'll be saying dell. dell may not be the entire pc industry to geeks, but for "average users" they represent one of the main places to get a fully loaded pc over the internet alongisde hp/compaq. the ceo of amd needs to have the foresight to see that while the server business is nice with the opterons, it would be foolish to just insult one of if not the main pc supplier in the united states if you want them to put your chips in your servers/desktops.
One week with 2% over in sales than Intel and you think Intel's finished? This is laughable. Once AMD beats Intel out over many months, even years, perhaps. Healthy competition is GOOD for consumers. Intel being dead would be very bad for consumers.
Are consumers choosing AMDs on purpose or are they simply going with what seems to be the least inexpensive pc? Do finicky consumers(who may or may not be tech savvy) still see the intel bong at the end of a television commercial as a sign of quality(and thus worth the extra price?) Intel has had a name for a while that seemed worth the extra price. It may be a combination of AMD improving their image, superior CPU's and a decline in cpu brand importance that lead up to this surge.
I'd bet on "omitted". There's a lot of anti-Intel sentiment around here, afterall, and people will skew whatever they can to make the "good guys" appear to be winning.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
as someone who has done sales as well, I can assure you that the driving factor is "better and cheaper" - flashy names help, but 'better and cheaper' goes a long, long way.
..mork
For the two seconds ending 3:22:05 04 May 2004, AMD sold one processor and Intel sold none, giving AMD 100% market share and Intel 0%. Sure it's only two seconds, but perhaps this indicates that AMD is really building momentum!
This one-week stat means little or nothing since: a) it discounts all notebooks which are primarily Intel, and b) it's only talking about the US retail channel. So it ignores the fact that the #1 PC maker in the US (Dell) only sells Intel, and it ignores the massive number of corporate purchases that are mostly Intel. Besides, maybe this wasn't an average week for the industry. Maybe Best Buy was back-ordered on their best-selling Intel part and it skewed the stats.
This is analagous to Tom's Hardware reporting that ATI beats the new NVidia chip in Battlefield 1942 at 640x480 with FSAA disabled and it "could indicate a growing trend!"
Only 1.04%, actually. :(
It's the principle of it. Good shot in the arm for AMD.
As far as all of you bashing AMDs chipsets and processor quality, aside from the fact you're probably not able to fully substantiate your claims.... you're again missing the point. If there was no AMD, a 3.06 GHz CPU would prob still be $1000, like things were 6 years ago (price for bleeding edge CPUs, not 3.06GHz 3 years ago).
COMPETITION.
AMD keeps Intel honest (sorta), and likewise, Intel keeps AMD honest. It would be bad for either one to drop to less than 10% market share, because the consumers would lose out.
Which probably indicates that AMD has resigned itself to !Dell for a decent period into the future.Note: Dell only exists where it does in the market, because they cut their costs by going all-Intel. I doubt Dell will kill their profits just to cater to a second source. Dell's agreement with Intel is kind of like Intel's agreement with Microsoft, a sort of mini-wintel, if you were. I doubt they'd do anything to sabotage that until and unless Intel either goes down in flames, or sets them up the bomb.
Once upon a time, you were told not to buy AMD chips because of the bugaboo about them not being "100% Intel compatible" or somesuch.
Since then, I've owned at least three, if not more, AMD chip based machines, from an early K5, to two current machines, an Athlon 1600 and a 2000+ in my wife's laptop. I've never, ever, seen a reason not to trust an AMD chip. Granted, we don't do that much with them, but all of the things that we have done have worked pretty well.
The benchmarks seem to make them an excellent choice in terms of price/performance. I'm curious: is there really any reason, anymore, to avoid an AMD chip?
Software is like a goldfish - it'll grow to fit the size of it's bowl...
Good grief.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
That means that the marketing AMD is using is WORKING.
If by "marketing" you mean "bearing prices significantly lower." I'm not trying to say that more expensive means "better," but I will venture to say that different people like Intel or AMD for different reasons. Why do people in the retail market like AMD? Because it's cheaper, and when they ask sales people who are desperate to make a sale if there's any difference, the sales people (who are also AMD fanboys, when they're not being Mac fanboys) tell them no.
I'm not going to take a side in the Intel/AMD war. My desktop is a P4 and I love it. My server is an AMD Athlon, and I love it too. All I'm saying is that in the retail market-- and yeah, I've worked there-- people "like" AMD because it's cheaper, not because they have any clue about quality.
--Obyron
Yes, and lots of corporations and government entities buy Dell as a matter of course. Nonetheless, the fact is that AMD now has better technology in many ways (especially multiway Opteron boxes, which aren't retail either;). AMD is gathering momentum, and Dell would do well to not ignore it...or it will finally start to lose some marketshare over time.
Remember, Dell wasn't always #1...and another entity will be sometime down the road.
It's also quite telling that Intel was forced to adopt the AMD64 instruction set (even if it's calling it something else). ;-)
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Really? Checked out the price of a P4 Extreme Edition CPU lately? Check it out:
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz 800FSB 512KB: $279.00
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz 800FSB Extreme: $910.00
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz 800FSB 512KB: $412.00
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz 800FSB Extreme: $1,139.00
A grand for a CPU... man, I thought those days were long over...
Joe Consumer never "puts together" his computer or upgrades his CPU. Joe Consumer buys prepackaged systems with Windows XP preinstalled.
Personally (and probably a lot of
I assume Dell gets better prices on intel processors than their competiters, I assume this is a function of the size and loyalty of Dell. IBM ,Compaq/Dec ,HP etc were all large players but they competed directly with intel in some way, shape or form (i.e. Power,Alpha,PA-RISC, setting bus standards, form factors etc). I assume this has been a symbiotic relationship for both. Intel locks competition out of the largest box mover without giving up margins for anyone else, this helps with maintaning that formidable manufacturing economey of scale advantage. Dell gets to eliminate R&D as a cost plus gets a big pricing advantage. I think if this vertical monopoly cracks it will mean a great deal. I don't think it will happen, to the degree it does I suspect it will be intel saying to dell "yank them around for us".
Ruiz tweaking Dell is not as foolish as it may seem, they are a long shot no matter how good the AMD product is. Intel can legally copy AMD due to the the results of previous law suits. If Intel has to copy it will and still compete on economey of scale.
I suspect Ruiz, who knows all of this far better than I, is playing enemy of my enemy for Dells competiters.
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If there was no AMD as we know it, Intel may have not ever been pushed enough to get to the 3.06 GHz by this point in time. Although its likely there would be another competitor, that they would have inspired Intel to get into the clock war like it has with AMD is anyones guess. I think just AMD being a good competitor has improved not only AMD's chips, but also the quality of the Intel chips.
Uh, yes it does. If you're a fanboy and think 2% in one week is amazing, go right ahead...but before this can be some sort of breathless victory, one should expect a little better.
You're missing the point. The point isn't that AMD have suddenly won the race and crushed Intel into the dust and from now on the world shall be ruled by the noble and wise Athlon and there shall be peace and goodwill and so on. The point is that this is the first time in a long time that AMD have sold more than Intel in a week.
It's what's called a "milestone". Passing a physical milestone isn't much of an achievement - you walk a foot and it's done. The point is that it proves you've travelled far enough to reach it.
That's why it's significant, and you don't have to be a fanboy to think so. It's not a victory, but it's still significant.
Anonymous Coward,
Obvious troll but I had nothing better to do but bite. Perhaps together we can help to raise Intel and Dells stock prices!
I take umbrage at your calling me a stupid customer.
I have two Dells. I think Dells are excellent PCs. I have recommended purchase of Dells to my employers. My recommedations are responsible for having had over 100 Dells purchased. Dell PC's are solid, dependable and cost effective. Dell customer support is usually decent.
If you go and price parts for putting together your own PC, you will find that it is difficult to put your own PC together at a price less than an off-the-shelf Dell.
I think some of this "I hate Dell" stuff comes from people who own HP's, Compaqs, Gateways, or Apples, who are happy with their own PCs. Most
PCs, from any manufacturer, work great. 99% of problems I fix as a consultant are software not hardware. Clients will often blame the computer when the problem is actually a software issue.
This "I hate Dell" Reminded me of the decals on the windows of Fords and Chevys with Calvin urinating on the other's decal.
It's hard to beat Dell's prices if you are purchasing a Windows PC. There is more to life than AMD market share. Most people could care less what the processor is as long as it will Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Office.
I am getting ready to build several PC's from scratch and I will probably base them on AMD processors. These PC's are going to be for edutainment rather than business.
I think it would be interesting to hear why you think "they build crappy computers suck big time". And why is it that "AMD is all that matters in the end"?
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
And on another note entirely, I might mention this:
When Grand Prix Legends was released, it only supported RRedline and Glide APIs (Rendition and 3DFX cards) for hardware acceleration. I should know, I played Grand Prix Legends on my Hercules Thriller 3D, and it was outstanding.
Three years after release, Papyrus released an unofficial Direct3D "beta" patch. I would not be surprised at all if this was only tested on a small segment of hardware, and possibly uses extensions or tricks proprietary to nVidia cards, as they were "the" card company without peer when this patch was released. Times have since changed.
Don't blame ATI for an unsupported patch for a game released 6 years ago. That's just wishful thinking. Do you expect your ATI card to magically run Glide games as well?
Let me give you an example of something you COULD rightfully get pissed off at ATI about. Let's say your ATI card couldn't play GLQuake, which was designed to be card-agnostic, so long as the card supported OpenGL properly. That would be unforgivable, even if it was some almost completely abandoned extension that Quake required...because it's a STANDARD, and the GL Quake renderer was well designed.
Unfortunately, you won't get an opportunity to rip on ATI's drivers in that case. My Radeon 8500 still playes GLQuake fine with zero glitches, 8 years after it was originally released. This is something that Matrox certainly couldn't do. Now THAT's what you expect from good drivers.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
If you look at net profit and total operating budget for any year you care to name, AMD is still "the little guy".
A good AMD motherboard costs about the same as a good P4 MB now days. That makes an AMD system still cheaper.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
It's unfair that AMD is always compared to Intel using processors that are generally the same speed. Like, Intel has a 3.2ghz P4 so the article compares a 3200+ AMD to it. Then, the 3.2ghz P4 beats the AMD in a few benchmarks...
/I'm gonna go shoot myself.
But what the hell is the real benchmark? PRICE. PRICE. PRICE.
When you can get a 3.2ghz P4 for $410 and an Athlon XP 3200+ for $200, AMD is a better deal. The +/- 5% performance is nothing. AMD will always beat Intel in terms of price/performance - except for the few instances where an Intel chip would overclock well.
Review sites should compare Intel and AMD in terms of price for processor. Like, they review the top processors for each company, then the $400 range, then the $200 range, then the $100 range, etc.. It's not like someone says 'I need either a 2.8ghz P4 or a 2800+ Athlon. A 3.2ghz will not do.'
I am so sick of seeing Anandtech, Ars Technica, Tom's, etc, etc reviewing processors and then saying something to the effect of, "After exhausting review of the two processors, it seems Intel pulls out ahead in 57% of the benchmarks. Therefore, in this case, we recommend Intel." But, the Intel CPU is twice the price. The way CPUs are reviewed is kind of like a car review magazine reviewing cars solely on engine displacement while the $30,000 difference between random GM and random Mercedes is ignored..
The CPU marketplace is fucked up.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
However...
The next system I intend to buy will be an Athlon64 from somebody. Are you really listening, Dell?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When you are talking about something as finite in it's intended function as a CPU then the requirements can be easily quantified and separated.
While they are numbered for clarity the order of importance depends on the user and the system being built.
1. Compatibility. Will it run the code I want it to run?
2. Speed. How long dose it take to complete task X ?
3. Temperature. Do I need a dedicated AC, a heat sink or something in between?
4. Price. How many dollars do I need to spend for this chip and it's "support infrastructure" (RAM, Motherboard etc..) ?
5. Power consumption.
For most users, All current AMD and iNTEL desktop chips are equal on points 1, 3 and 5. (Not that there aren't differences. They just don't matter).
With items 2 and 4 being the entire basis of choosing a chip the equation comes down to "How fast can my system run if I spend $250 on the CPU?"
PS: If it was up to me reviewers would abandon the "AMD's 3GH chip vs iNTEL's 3GH chip" comparisons and adopt "AMD's $900 chip vs iNTEL's $900 chip" matchup. It's how _I_ Shop for CPUs and until someone convinces me of a problem in this approach I will continue to use it.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?