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AMD Desktops Outsell Intel

prostoalex writes "For the week ending August 21st AMD managed to capture 54% market share among new desktops sold. Intel's share during the week was 45%. While Intel leads the U.S. CPU market with 82.7% market share, folks from AMD are proud to announce this is the second week this year - they also outsold Intel on the desktop market one time in April 2004."

28 of 468 comments (clear)

  1. and with pointless time-wasters like EPIC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...Intel will begin to lag behind in the server market too. What exactly does EPIC provide, apart from a lot of work for compiler writers and a (theoretical) maximum 4-fold speed increase with current designs?

  2. Re:Including businesses? by mentalflossboy · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Agreed. AMD seems to appeal more to individual consumers/gamers. Businesses all still buy the generic Pentiums from Dell.

    --
    "I make people like me... WITH VIOLENCE!" - ATHF
  3. Re:Including businesses? by bigman2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The lead-in paragraph mentioned that Intel has like 82% of the market in the U.S.. I would guess that the rest of the world does not just automatically call Dell/HP when they need new computers.

    The more work a person is willing to do to buy a computer, the greater chance they will purchase AMD. Someone who is just picking up a box with 'everything in it' might be more likely to see the 'Intel Inside' sticker on that new computer stacked 10 high at Best Buy.

    Then again, my purchasing department doesn't seem to understand that there are computer makers other than Dell.

    But what if I was in Italy- and buying from Dell was a pain in the ass? The chance of purchasing AMD just went up about 200 times.

    --
    No reason to lie.
  4. Re:Including businesses? by JoshMooney · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wasn't it Intel who decided that they were too good for nVidia's nForce mobo? And didn't people say that nVidia would go down for choosing AMD over Intel in this market? (correct me if I'm wrong, as I probably am)

  5. A Long Way from "AMD is Dead" by dragon_imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We've come a long way from the "AMD is Dead" and "Intel Rules" days.

    Intel let its marketing people get caught napping. Intel pushed the Itanium and said it will never make a 64-bit chip that is x86 compatible.

    AMD came out with the 64 bit chip that was compatible with the x86, and it got rave reviews. And, it gets sales!

    Now, AMD outsells Intel again. Did you see that -- the article said "again."

    Not bad for a company that was being written off a couple years ago.

    1. Re:A Long Way from "AMD is Dead" by melted · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >> Intel let its marketing people get caught napping.

      To the contrary. Intel let its marketing people tell the engineers what to do. So they basically said, "we want a 3GHz chip, because consumers are stupid and they only look at GHz figures". P4 is a result of this. It's only real feature is that it can be clocked insanely high. Clock for clock it's not only dumber than AMD chips, it's also dumber than some of Intel's own processors (Pentium M for example).

  6. Re:Who would buy intel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    .. ever heard of the nForce chipset?

  7. Re:Who would buy intel? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    200 patches just to work?

    the BS-o-meter is going crazy... yes, we have a troll.

  8. Re:Who would buy intel? by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone who cares about using their computer for professional audio applications, for one.

    Funny, we seem to have rather a lot of pro audio users on Macs, last I checked.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  9. Re:Who would buy intel? by RichM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In my experience, AMD Athlon CPUs tend to perform better at video editing which is why I chose an FX-53 over a P4EE - it has much better memory bandwidth due to the memory controller being on the CPU instead of the northbridge and the FPU performance is usually superior.
    Of course, there's always the 64-bit thing to take into consideration (and the no-execute extensions in Windows XP SP2).
    Intel themselves admit that the only way they could make 64-bit desktop chips was by copying the AMD 64-bit extensions.

  10. Whether you like Intel or AMD or neither by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a 100% bonafide GOOD THING. Have you seen what these guys have done to each others margins? Have you seen how fast processor speeds have become these last 4 years? This is competition at its absolute finest.

    Cheers to AMD for not giving up and dying. And cheers to that chairman of theirs who looks like he oughta be out selling chicken.

    1. Re:Whether you like Intel or AMD or neither by Entropius · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed. Especial applause to AMD for always finding new things to do. They realized that there was a market for 64-bit, so they made the Athlon 64. Then they realized that their target market for the A64's was enthusiasts who live in the same room as their computers, so they introduced Cool and Quiet.

      And, of course, they noticed the rising market share of laptops and realized that the same technology they use to make A64 machines not sound like leafblowers can also provide decent battery life on a laptop.

      The Athlon 64 laptops don't have battery life like a Centrino, but they're much better than Intel's P4-based laptop line, and they blow the Pentium-M's out of the water in performance for hundreds less.

      The Athlon 64 may have started out as a niche product, but now it's the preferred performance-processor for many enthusiasts and a decent processor for both performance and low-price laptops (you can get an Athlon 64 laptop for $1150).

      Then they realize that Intel has been neglecting the low-end foreign markets: *poof*, Sempron.

      The Athlon XP-M chips are still wonderful in laptops--they're Fast Enough for almost anyone, don't drain that much power, and are cheap.

      AMD gets credit for doing marketing the old-fashioned way: find an area that Intel's not up to par in, and design something that beats Intel's current offering in that area. This is the sort of marketing I benefit from, the sort of marketing that gives me cheap, fast hardware. I like that.

  11. Re:I don't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, it could have been anything; the video cards, the motherboards, the RAM, the power supplies, inadequate cooling or ventilation, who knows. Who put together the computers?

    I am very doubtful that the actual CPU was the cause of any instabilities.

  12. Re:Great to hear! by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Competition means better products at lower prices

    Almost always, competition means lower prices. It does not always mean better products, unless you mean better product for the dollar. If a product were a third less reliable for half the cost, then I suppose that is a win, if you don't consider environmental impact of each respective product.

    As for better product, it doesn't always seem to be the case, at least as often. Sometimes there is some corner cutting on the part of all competitors, note the quality or availability of support lines, flimsier material or the missed testing step in a rush to get the product out to beat the next company. Many consumer electronics seem less reliable these days.

  13. Re:Makes Sense To Me by celeritas_2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm very impressed with AMD and how it has evolved from a basic clone to an innovative competetor, and in my opinion, the better of Intel. My next system will be AMD, but really what are the benefits of Intel? Before it was the cool 'brand name' but now it just seems to be the bloated expensive version.

    --
    -- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
  14. Re:HT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Considering AMD doesnt need the HT crutch to make up for an extra long pipeline, no they probably wont be implementing it. Not to mention the Dual core chips that are going to be out before Intel's Dual core chips.

  15. Huh? by zaxios · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder if they believe that they can eventually drive notebook sales upward to the point that they outsell Intel more often than a handful of times a year?

    The article says that AMD's desktop successes are partially a result of Intel's tendency to emphasize notebooks. If "they" (Intel, I hope you mean) drive notebook sales upward, and assuming that damages desktop sales, Intel's sales would increase because of their notebook dominance and AMD's would decrease because of their desktop interests. Overall the desktop market would shrink (or grow less), while AMD's share of it might grow marginally as a result of the notebook market distracting Intel from pushing its desktop CPUs as aggressively. We might then have more "AMD Desktops Outsell Intel" stories, but it would definitely not be good news for AMD.

  16. Re:Including businesses? by Silverlancer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...

    You've been brainwashed by Intel. In almost all applications, a similarly priced Athlon 64, without 64-bit, wipes the floor against Intel. And in 64-bit compiles in Linux 64-bit, the Athlon 64 gets an extra 30-40% boost. Now obviously we won't get that in Windows, as most companies won't come out with 64-bit compiled versions. But hey... who uses Windows anyways? ;)

  17. Re:HT by spuzzzzzzz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The purpose of HT is to make up for Intel's crappy super-long pipeline (something like 32 stages!? Someone correct me if I'm wrong). Whenever it does a jump, many instructions are wasted. AMD's pipeline on Barton was something like 12 stages, so there's much less wastage going on. All HT does is allow the wasted cycles to be used for another thread. Since AMD's processors don't waste so many instructions, HT wouldn't really help that much.

    --

    Don't you hate meta-sigs?
  18. Re:Including businesses? by MonkeyCookie · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Then again, my purchasing department doesn't seem to understand that there are computer makers other than Dell.

    It's quite likely that your company has some kind of contract with Dell where they purchase exclusively from Dell in exchange for a better deal on those purchases

    I believe it's relatively common for companies to do such a thing

  19. Re:Makes Sense To Me by MonkeyCookie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm also impressed with how far AMD has come. Part of me wants to see AMD clobber Intel, which had a monopoly for a long time, but it's probably best for each to have about 50% market share. It will keep both companies from getting fat and lazy, meaning more research and lower prices. Competition without a particular company dominating the market is generally a good thing for the consumer.

  20. Re:HT by MrNemesis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    HT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading) won't benefit AMD's chips as much as it does Intel's because of the way they are constructed.

    Due to the P4's incredibly long pipeline (30-odd stages?) and very high clockspeed, if the branch prediction goes wrong, the chip will stall

    HyperThreading is a clever hack that runs two simultaneous threads on the same die. In this way, if one thread stalls, the other can execute in it's place while the other thread waits for the pipeline to redo itself, hence being a very clever way of making up for the design "faults". AMD's typically run at a lower clockspeed, and have a much shorter pipeline, so even when their piplines stall, the chip does not waste as many cycles - in short, they;re not really designed to take advantage of SMT. Hence AMD not having SMT support is a bit of a non-issue.

    (Disclaimer: I'm not much of a buff on chip architecture, this is just stuff I've picked up from reading /.)

    --
    Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
  21. Re:Including businesses? by servoled · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Makes for a great headline, but it is not true at all, not even close.

    No, it is true. However, it is also highly misleading, but that doens't make it false.

    --
    "I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
  22. Overview of the discussion so far: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    • Intel still sell more CPUs than AMD
    • My friends' AMD blew up so I'm never using them again
    • The Celeron is a 'fine' processor
    • People keep mentioning that VIA make CPUs (chuckles ;-))
    • No-one gets to the point!
    Being that competition is a GOOD thing - why Intel is allowed to bribe Dell into supporting its massive monopoly is mind boggling. Another thing that I don't understand is this - if Dell were to swap CPU lines overnight, from Intel to AMD, no-one would care because its the Dell brand that matters not the CPU maker - I suppose its just about volume - you can bet if AMD could guaratee supplies to Dell they'd do it because it would be good for profits, whatever deal they are getting from Intel.
  23. Re:Including businesses? by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "But what if I was in Italy- and buying from Dell was a pain in the ass?"

    It's not. That's why Dell is so successful. No matter who you are or what you need, you call them up, and they ship it to your doorstop.

    Dell is very good at what they do: taking Intel parts, slapping them in a box, and shipping them out the door. Dell was the first company that realized that succeeding in the PC business had nothing to do with having the best PCs. Succeeding in the PC business means undercutting everyone else in overhead. That's what their entire business is designed to do, and that's why they succeed.

  24. Re:Including businesses? by alienw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Intels still run faster, even if they don't crunch the big numbers all in one cycle.

    Bullshit. A 1.6GHz Athlon will slaughter a 2.2GHz pentium 4 at most applications. The top-end Intel chip and the top-end AMD chip have roughly the same performance.

  25. Re:Including businesses? by mrchaotica · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh, I realize that it's good engineering; I was just commenting on the "Highest redline of any street car! Pretend you're a F-1 driver!" sound bite. Normal people don't consider whether high RPM is good or bad, they just think "ooh, big number!"

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  26. Re:old stolen story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    huh? stolen from which site? the graph is in the press release that TFA links to?