Intel To Slash Prices Up To 60%

Chuan-kai Lin writes "According to Bloomberg, Intel will slash product prices by up to 60% in order to regain market share captured by AMD." From the article: "Intel said it will reduce prices of faster dual-core chips by about 15 percent, according to Alex Lin, a product marketing manager at Micro-Star, Taiwan's third-largest maker of motherboards, which connect electronic parts in computers ... Shares of Intel have fallen 33 percent since Otellini succeeded Craig Barrett in May last year. Advanced Micro's stock has gained 77 percent during the same period. Intel fell 31 cents to $17.08 at 12:06 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. Advanced Micro dropped $1.55, or 5.5 percent, to $26.45 on concerns that Intel will lower prices."

Comments

My god

[thePig]

Does this mean, I was paying up to 160% more than what I should have, till now?
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Re:My god

[cnettel]

No, only 150 % more. (100 - 60 = 40, 100 / 40 = 2.5, (2.5 - 1) * 100 = 150)

Re:My god

[SolusSD]

no.. it means if a chip costs $100 now, it'll cost as little as $40 after the price drop. In this case you are paying 250% of the new price, or 150% more.

Re:My god

[ChrisGilliard]

Does this mean, I was paying up to 160% more than what I should have, till now?

Actually, you would have been paying 150% more because 100%/40% = 2.5. 2.5 - 1 = 1.5, In other words, 150%. But yes, this is why competition is good! :)

Re:My god

[aristotle-dude]

No, you were paying the price that the market could bare. Now Intel is sacrificing some of their profitablity in order to regain market share from AMD.

Re:My god

[morethanapapercert]

which of course means that once they have enough of the market back in the palm of their hand, it'll be time to resume squeezing......

Re:My god

[stinerman]

To be philosophical, it depends if you believe in the labor theory of value or the subjective theory of value. If the former, you're still being had; if the latter, then by definition you can never pay "more that what you should have".

Re:My god

[jdwilso2]

Which is, of course, completely and utterly anti-competitive in this case.

Re:My god

[Neoncow]

So technically, original poster is correct. They said up to 160% more and 150% is well within that bound.

<Wanders back to algorithms assignment ;)>

Re:My god

[Surt]

No, it means you already bought your chip. Prices change. No doubt if you bought a pentium 1 on the day it was released all those years ago for $600 you're feeling like a real rube now that you can get them essentially for free?

Just accept that you amortized the higher price you paid with the additional CPU cycles you got by not waiting.

Re:My god

[ChrisGilliard]

To be philosophical, it depends if you believe in the labor theory of value

In order to believe in the value of labor theory, you have to deny the value of capital. As it says in the "Applicability of LTV" section, describing the value of land (just one example of capital) is problematic with this theory. Or if you believe in socialism, you believe that the government should own all capital and determine it's best use. The capitalist philosophy is that the government cannot make the best decisions about the use of capital and that it should be left up to the free market.

Re:My god

[PitaBred]

A bare market? Sounds fun... don't think my girlfriend would appreciate me "appreciating" the wares, though...

Re:My god

[stinerman]

The thing that most suprises me about LTV is that Adam Smith was a believer in it. Marx was, too, but both had different interpretations of what it meant. For Marx, if I was paid $1 to make 10 widgets to be sold at $1 each, I was essentially robbed of $9.90.

The capitalist philosophy is that the government cannot make the best decisions about the use of capital and that it should be left up to the free market.

Capitalism and free markets are not synonamyous. I didn't really want to get off topic, but read my sig link. I don't necessarily believe it; it just seemed interesting.

Re:My god

[drinkypoo]

For Marx, if I was paid $1 to make 10 widgets to be sold at $1 each, I was essentially robbed of $9.90.

If that's accurate, Marx was an idiot. Those $1 widgets are only worth $1 if you can get them to customers. Otherwise they're worth $0. I hope and pray there's more to it than that...

Re:My god

[EugeneK]

If by "getting them to customers" you mean the value of transporting, marketing, stocking on shelves, etc., I suppose Marx would say those are also components of labor that go into the total value.

Re:My god

[stinerman]

If I recall my political science classes correctly...

I own a factory that makes widgets. At the end of the day, my labor costs are $100. I also sold all the widgets made that day, (assume they are made to order) for $1000. My profit (neglecting other overhead) is $900. Marx believed that any profit made was essentially labor (read: money) that was stolen from the worker. By his definition, profit is theft.

The labor theory of value says that an item has an objective value. For Marx, the processor in your PC has an exact, objective value which can be derived by summing all labor costs directly involved in making the processor. If you sell it for more than that, you are essentially committing theft by underpaying the workers who made it (says Marx).

This is only limited to value, not price. In this example, the widgets have an exact value -- labor costs divided by widgets made. They would be worth more or less depending on how much labor was involved in creating them. Whether or not you can sell them at that price isn't considered.

Re:My god

[drinkypoo]

For Marx, the processor in your PC has an exact, objective value which can be derived by summing all labor costs directly involved in making the processor.

But like, that has never been true. People have been haggling since time began. Besides which, what's a labor cost? Typically it's how much you pay your help. You could pay them more, but you don't, because they'll work for n dollars.

If you sell it for more than that, you are essentially committing theft by underpaying the workers who made it (says Marx).

What about committing theft against the person who bought it, because you're charging them more than it costs to make?

I thought there was more to Marxism than a phobia related to making a profit - but I've never studied it, hence my questions.

Re:My god

[slowbad]

No, you were paying the price that the market could bare.

Bare ... as in, pull down your shorts? As long as places kept saying "We are an all-Intel shop" they stuck it to you.
This also went for places who only bought Dell, and thus, all-Intel as well.

Kind of like fleet sales for so many years were Ford or GM only ... no way could cab companies or a government
purchase large volumes of Japanese cars (unless it was a specialty market with no Detroit equivalent like hybrids).

Intel no longer has as many large "captive" consumers today as it once had, and complacency has finally caught up!

Re:My god

[Anonymous Coward]

> Or if you believe in socialism, you believe that the government should own all capital and determine it's best use.

I hope you've qualified that statement, because it's rather close to baiting. There are many existing socialist nations where no one goes so far as the abolition of private property. They just have different conditions in their social contract. What do ours look like? Whenever we grant major tax breaks to corporations, we aren't becoming more capitalist, we're taxing everyone else to give gifts to these corporations. Be as against taxes as you like -- I certainly am -- but looked at in in relative terms, a gift is a gift, it's an outright transfer of wealth.

I always find it funny that ideologies like socialism are always derided by people who cannot see any bad extreme of ideological adherence to capitalism. I say this as a capitalist, though not an absolutist dogmatic one. Wal-mart would die in a truly competitive landscape where values actually competed with pure dollars.

Re:My god

[Darby]

No doubt if you bought a pentium 1 on the day it was released all those years ago for $600 you're feeling like a real rube now that you can get them essentially for free?

I recently got 2 brand new (in the box) P3 Xeons for free from a friend who had a bunch lying around. I went on eBay to try and find a dual proc mother board for them and found one for $20. The funny part? It included 2 P3 Xeons ;-)

Re:My god

[Gentlewhisper]

Before you guys get too excited and wet your pants read again, it says "Up to"

In other news Intel slashed 60% off the selling prices of 286 processors and 1% off the latest Core chips.

Re:My god

[samkass]

Which is, of course, completely and utterly anti-competitive in this case.

Um, no, actually it's virtually the definition of competitive. You know, competition leading to lower prices. If AMD can compete, they will, and consumers will win.

Re:My god

[kthejoker]

Dude.

Original Price = X.

New Price = 2/5X. (Slashed priced by 60%)

Original Price = 5/2 New Price.

5/2 = 250%.

In plain English terms: if you cut a price in half (50%) that means you were paying twice as much. So cutting the price by more than half - means you were paying more than twice as much.

Re:My god

[Meph_the_Balrog]

Which is, of course, completely and utterly anti-competitive in this case.

How so? I was under the impression that competition between companies in the same industry was all about product and price. AMD will most likely follow suit, and the end user (ie. us) benefit.

Re:My god

[Anonymous Coward]

If your blog is as cohesive as your math, I certainly wouldn't dream of reading it. Not to mention you're now the second math whiz who made this mistake already, in this thread, today.

(hint: if the price drops by 60%, it ends up costing less than half as much... i.e., you'd be paying over 200% before the price drop...)

Re:My god

[woztheproblem]

150% more than the new price is the same thing as 250% of the new price.

Re:My god

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if you're paying $40 at 60%-off, then you were paying 250% more for the product at $100.

40 * 2.5 = 100

Re:My god

[ChrisGilliard]

I hope you've qualified that statement, because it's rather close to baiting.

I actually wasn't baiting. I'm stating fact. From Wikipedia: "As an economic system, socialism is usually associated with state or collective ownership of the means of production.".

There are many existing socialist nations where no one goes so far as the abolition of private property.

If you define a socialist nation as one that has some social policies, then yes every nation is a socialist nation. In the US we have a welfare system and a graduated tax system, not to mention social security. These are all social policies. There's no pure socialist nation and no pure capitalist nation because both would be very difficult to maintain. In a purely capitalist nation, people who couldn't work would starve. In a completely socialist nation, there would be no reason to work because if you didn't work, you would still get your allocated food, shelter, etc. This causes a downward spiral as no one works.

Whenever we grant major tax breaks to corporations, we aren't becoming more capitalist, we're taxing everyone else to give gifts to these corporations.

I don't see your logic. The dollars that corporations send to the government in the form of taxes currently go to fund programs they do not benefit from. Some examples of this are: Social Security, welfare, etc... Instead, it benefits all of us if we allow them to reinvest this money to create more jobs. It's so simplistic to think that we should tax corporations heavily. One of the best things we can do for our economy is to reduce the cost of capital for corporations. This will create jobs and raise the standard of living. We do this by lowering taxes on corporations.

Wal-mart would die in a truly competitive landscape where values actually competed with pure dollars.

Walmart is in a truly competitive landscape. If you don't want to shop at Walmart, you can go to Albertson's or Safeway, or another grocery or various other forms of retail stores that Walmart competes with. The thing that many people don't like about Walmart is that they do not employ Union workers. The reason Walmart makes so much money is that they have competed very well. This is in part due to the fact that they don't employ union workers. But they also have created many innovations around their distribution system, their use of RFID, etc.

Re:My god

[masterzora]

Exactly. The old price will be 250% of the new price or, in other words, 150% more than the new price. Try brushing up on comprehension before you criticize somebody else's mathematics.

Re:My god

[masterzora]

Good, well-thought-out post, I just wanna point out one thing:

I think by "truly competitive", I think he meant "perfectly competitive", a landscape Walmart is not in. In fact, I am fairly certain that perfect competition does not exist except as a theory, though IANAE, so I'm not certain.

Re:My god

[sumdumass]

evidently the market couldn't bare those prices. intel was losing ground for many reasons and one was it's overly expensive prices. I guss it took long enough to realize the market wasn't going to bare those prices. They lost a good portion of market share while fooling around.

But when we say "what the market will bare". I'm not sure thats exactly the principle they need to use. It should be the price that is most profitably for them. The market might bare charging 200% more but less might be sold were finding the right price structure would allow a smaller profit per unit but larger consumption wich could equaly more overal profits. The total cost of producing the product isn't static if the quantity is increased.

AMD has usualy sold at a lower cost then intel. It took a while to convince the public they had a comparible if not better product. It apeared that by increasing thier prices, More people (instead of just geeks, enthusiest or gamers) started taking them serious. I wonder if AMD will be tempted to follow Intels lead and drop prices too? It shure would be nice to get another Price/performance ware going on and get some really good hardware really cheap again.

Re:My god

[sumdumass]

Well, we have some major differences here. First, It is one thing if prices change because advancments on power, abilities are functions have made then lacking. It also goes to say the same if a flaw is found or they changed a manufacturing process that allows them to produce it cheaper.

Now that is perfectly exeptable and usualy doesn't leave a felling of getting ripped off when they notice prices are different. This isn't limited to processors but, I get so anoyed when I buy somethign just to see it go on sale the very next day or week. And if a company admits it was charging too much by lowering thier prices just to sell more of the product, i get the same feeling. It is a different thing all together i supose. At least it seems that way. It is kind of like noticing that the boy mowing your lawn is charging you $5.00 more a week then the guy up the street who has a larger yard. You feel like the kid took you for a ride. Well, It seems like intell took some people for a ride.

We all know that the real reasons for this lowering is that they have to justify thier pricing based on performance. AMD is generaly kicking thier ass in that department. If you had the best product out, it shoudl demand a premium. What this move does is reflect Intels acknowledgment that it doesn't have the best products anymore. Once the "Clock speed" stratigy stoped working and Intel countered years of marketing it that way with certain offerings, I think intel dug too deep of a hole to see out of. I'm actualy hoping this will start a price war and cause both Intel and AMD to start producing some killer processors at a more frequent rate with lower costs. Vista will help with sales of these newer more powerful processors.

Re:My god

[/ASCII]

The notion of 'too much' is wrong, at least from a capitalist point of view. You charge as much for your wares as the market is willing to pay. The only relation between cost of manufacturing and price in a capitalist company is that once they are equal, it's time to get out of the game.

Re:My god

[sumdumass]

Too much isn't wrong, It is just looking at maxinizing profits instead of just price. 5 people might purchase something at $10.00 that cost $1.00 to make. Now the same product might be sold 20 times if the price was only $5.00 because you can reach a wider set if people. The market will bare $10.00 because we know 5 people purchased it but we will only make (10-1=9 then 9*5) $45.00 profit from what the market will bare compared to $80.00 (5-1=4 then 4*20=80).

Capatolist are interested in making the most profit possible. This is also why cost of production come into play. Usualy when increasing the number of product being produced, you are only recreating portions of the cost. If the same product costs $1.00 per unit to make 10 at a time, then increasing production to 20 units might require widening a machine so the same amount of people can produce the extra units. In this case, the costs of matterial caries over, slightly more energy could be used and the cost of the modifications and any needed repairs need to be covered. This, while not automaticaly droping the cost of manufacturing in half, will decrease it quite a bit. Lets say increases production means the manufacturing costs go down to $0.80 per unit.

Now with 5 people buying it, you may not be able to produce them in the quantities required to decrease the costs. But with 20 people buying it, you will increase profits to $84.00 instead of just $80. Capitolism, at least how I was taught, means making the most money possible and capiolizing on the sale. What the market will bare can be a reletive term too. This is why it is important to include this other information.

Re:My god

[SQL Error]

For Marx, the processor in your PC has an exact, objective value which can be derived by summing all labor costs directly involved in making the processor.

But like, that has never been true. People have been haggling since time began. Besides which, what's a labor cost? Typically it's how much you pay your help. You could pay them more, but you don't, because they'll work for n dollars.

Exactly.

Which is why socialist countries invariably go broke.

Cheaper Macs?

[irablum]

Does this mean even cheaper macs are forthcoming?

Ira

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[CrpnDeth]

That would be awesome. I personally like Intel, and the biggest complaint I hear from people who don't use Intel is that they are too expensive...well maybe this will even it out. (I know I'm about to get flamed...there are other reasons people pick AMD over Intel, just sayin that price is the most common one I hear).

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[twitchingbug]

While traditionally AMD has been cheaper than Intel, this hasn't been the case with dual core chips. Athlon X2s start in the 300-350 range, whereas the Pentium D's start in the 150-200 range. Of course, you have to factor in performance per dollar to get an equal comparo, maybe someone has this information can post it?

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[no_pets]

True, but it seems as though a lot of /.ers like to root for the underdog as well.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[anaesthetica]

Does this mean even cheaper macs are forthcoming?

No, but it does mean that Apple's margin's will grow slightly larger. I'm sure that as a loyal Apple-user that will warm your heart. It warms mine. Yay!

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Jozer99]

No, it means even higher profit margins for Apple.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[dhasenan]

It means I might actually be able to get an Intel chip that understands the SSE3 instruction set so I can modify my computer and actually run OS X, at least.

Don't ask me why I'm doing it. I have no idea.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Darklingza]

Give it a year or two and /.'ers will be all over Intel again? Or god forbid, Cyrix is resurected and makes some sort of desperate play for our heart$ and mind$.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Peter Bonte]

I own Apple stock so yay indeed but i do think some prices will go down, the mini is 100$ to expensive for me or at least a dual core on all models.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[shawn(at)fsu]

Thats probably why I like AMD. The whole underdog thing. I hope that as being the underdog the company is forced to make a superior product to stay alive and is probably willing to except a lower margin to gain market share. Thats my hope anyway.

Oh and plus I hate the Blue Man Group.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Chabil Ha']

No, it just means that Apple's margins will be higher. You have to realize that part of Apple's image is not 'budget' computer. It is quality. Part of marketing is not just 'better price' but the placement of the product in a consumers mind. Take for instance diamonds, besides the fact that the market is cornered, they are just a rock. If someone sold a diamond for $100 and everyone else was selling them for $500 (assuming quality is equal) then consumers tend to shy away from the cheaper one thinking there's a 'gotcha' somewhere. It's like that with Apple. People associate Apple with prestige, and therefore they need to keep a price (no matter if the PC equivalant guts are equal) that appeals with that positioning.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[anaesthetica]

Actually, I agree. I think Apple may reduce the Mac mini pricing by $100's if they can swing it. I bought one of the new intel Mac minis right after they were released and wasn't terribly happy about the $100 price jump that the new intel chip brought. As the minis are their low-end switch-to-Mac-bait computers, I think they stand a good chance of seeing a price reduction, even if none of the other computers among Apple's offerings see a reduction.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Traiklin]

For Apple to make? Yes.
For you to buy? no.

apple will still charge an arm and a leg for the i(ntel)Mac and just rake in a bigger profit margin from it.

I'd like to get one but when you can't build your own and all their "Pre-configured" models cost $1500 at the cheapest I just lose all intrest when I can build or even buy one (or three) for more then half that.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you be willing to pay `extra' when by rights you *should* be paying less? Put another way - would a slight increase in Apple's per-unit profit make you happier than an equivalent amount of extra dollars in your pocket?

Just wondering...to me Apple's just this company, you know?

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[trickonion]

The biggest reason I went for AMD when I was a kid (now I've fallen in love with them) is upgradability. I remember intel would always change their sockets, so that I could never upgrade my celeron to a PIII or later P4. AMD have been using slot a then socket a forever, so I could upgrade and still keep it hip! just another insight as to why somebody would pick amd over intel

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Kadin2048]

This is possible: the price point of the original Mini was $499, and it slipped up a hundred bucks when Apple switched to Intel, and it's possible they might let it go back down to half a K in time for the holidays: getting below the 500-dollar mark is important, psychologically. However, I don't think you'll ever see Apple go below $499.

Historically, Apple has kept its price points pretty much static: the equipment available at a given time changes, but the prices generally don't decrease too much, unless they introduce a totally new model of computer. This is in contrast to other manufacturers who introduce new models at high price points, and then slip them down in cost over time, while constantly introducing new models at the top, and then discontinuing models when they're so cheap as to no longer be profitable. (This approach is nice from the company's perspective because it ensures that out of every particular model you wring the most profit: you sell it at $1000 to all the people willing to pay that; then you sell it to the people willing to pay $899, etc.)

Oddly enough, decreasing prices actually pisses off past buyers and intimidates would-be new buyers more than increasing them does. Nobody likes to see the computer they bought on sale for less than they paid -- it makes them think that they got ripped off. Instead, you keep the same price point but just upgrade features (and maybe raise prices): that way people who purchased six months ago don't see "their computer" on sale for cheap (unless they dig down to find the refurbished deals), instead they just see a better computer on sale for the same price. Some people may have wished that they had waited to buy (so they would have gotten new feature x), but they don't feel as ripped off. That's pretty basic consumer psychology.

It would be possible for Apple to go back down to $500, since that was the Mini's original base price, but even then I don't think they'd do it lightly.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[anaesthetica]

Well, my post was made tongue-in-cheek as it were, spoofing the reaction a crazed Apple zealot might take toward Apple making more profit. Of course I personally would prefer more dollars in my pocket than in Apple's. Don't worry, I'm not that obsessed.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[necro81]

No, but it does mean that Apple's margin's will grow slightly larger. I'm sure that as a loyal Apple-user that will warm your heart.

Well, the mac owner in me may not be especially pleased (a price cut might make me purchase that next mac all the sooner).

On the other hand, the mac stock owner in me would rejoice if Apple's margins increase. One hundred shares bought back in January '05 for about $34. Today that stock has almost doubled in value.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[MaWeiTao]

Ha! When was the last time Apple reduced prices on anything? Apple is still charging full price for their Power Mac G5's despite the impending introduction of Intel-based Power Macs. And they'll be the same price right up to the very last day they're sold.

I don't understand how people can be so absurdly loyal to a company that so clearly demonstrates how little it cares for its customers.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Korin43]

No, Apple will just make more money off of them.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[toddestan]

And this continues on with the AMD64 chips, that have been using Socket 754... Oops I mean Socket 939 - wait it was Socket 940...or was it Socket AM2 for all this time?

Of course, you do have a point with Socket A, which started out with the Duron back in the 600Mhz days, and ended with the Athlon XP 3200. But I seem to remember that Slot A only lasted a short time.

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[GweeDo]

Oh where are my +1 Funny points when I need them!

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[WhodoVoodoo]

Cut that out, nobody bought anything not SocketA, 754, 939, and now AM2. 940 was for ECC memory used in servers, and very rarely at home.

The 754->939 seems superflous but the difference was the dual channel memory controller, AM2 is for DDR2 memory. The moral here is AMD will be flipping a socket every time you need to change your memory controller to support a new class of memory. Socket F is like 940 for the new gang, except it will introduce what's called a Advanced Memory Buffer (AMB) on a FB-DIMM (Fully Buffered). Memory would communicate serially with the AMB increasing bandwidth and theoretically providing the ability to use a hardware agnostic memory controller. Using Socket F may stop the need to buy procs to shange memory. You can go back to buying boards.

Notice it's all about the memory, since the controller is on the die. I don't know that much about Intel Socket Twister, perhaps someone else can enlighten me, but I don't think it had anything to do with memory controllers on die. Was there a real difference between Slot and Socket p3's?

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[titten]

As for the new PowerBooks and PowerBook Pros, the price really is competitive.
Compare the new Sony Vaio Core Duo 13,3" to the PowerBook 13,3". No matter what you add to the Mac config, you'll never reach the Sony's astronomical price.

What about comparing Dell's new Core Duo 17" to the PowerBook Pro 17".
The Dell is considerably more expensive.

This isn't saying Mac's are by any means cheap, but the competition isn't cheaper...

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[Curate]

Does this mean even cheaper macs are forthcoming?

No, it means that even larger Mac profit margins are forthcoming.

finally

[ystar]

It's about time! Intel has been gouging prices for too long. AMD's chips have repeatedly performed better than Intel's chips at a lower cost. It's good to see Intel learning from their mistakes, and the new Conroe and Merom architechtures have a lot of promise in them. (Lower prices are only going to make the R&D budget tighter, though, which will continue to hurt Intel even more in the long run.)

Re:finally

[RightSaidFred99]

Umm, how is this insightful? Is this 1995, when AMD chips were cheaper than Intel chips? Regardless of this price cut Intel CPU's have been less expensive than AMD CPU's for some time, for the most part.

Fantastic!

[Rob T Firefly]

This is just what I've been hoping for! Thank you, Intel, for addressing my needs as a consumer and forcing AMD to drop the prices on those Athlon 64s I love so very very much.

Re:Fantastic!

[Trigun]

Hopefully they drop them far enough that I can afford a decent server for home.

Re:Fantastic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is gonna want Athlon64s when Conroe is there? Faster, cooler, cheaper.

Re:Fantastic!

[jawtheshark]

A decent server for home? Boy... I didn't realise I needed Dual Xeons or Quad Opterons for that. Look, about a half year ago I just went insane and bought an AMD64 2800+ with 768Meg RAM for some spare change. Does my home server need this? Of course not! The P-I MMX 166MHz/256Meg RAM machine that it replaced just did everything just fine. The AMD64 is underclocked to 800MHz by now: I don't need more. The system runs OpenBSD:

[mako.sharks:/root] # uptime;top -n | grep 'Memory'
11:02PM up 66 days, 3:45, 4 users, load averages: 0.21, 0.16, 0.10
Memory: Real: 52M/193M act/tot Free: 547M Swap: 0K/1536M used/tot

This machine runs: ssh, sendmail, imap, dhcpd, ntpd, samba, pf, apache, X + Windowmaker, ftp-proxy and whatever I am forgetting right now.

My parents server is similar, well okay, it's full SCSI, but it's a P-III 800MHz. Same services (minus X). It also replaced a P-I 166MHz (non-MMX) with 128Meg RAM. That P-I didn't cope with exactly one thing I tried: IMAP. That was a bit too much. The P-III 800MHz? No problem at all. Oh, and this machine has way more users than the AMD64.

For home servers, one doesn't need much.... Sure, I have an AMD64, but it definately is overkill and I should have gone with something quieter.

Re:Fantastic!

[SenorCitizen]

I used to have a pretty similar setup. I ditched the old P200 because I found the Samba performance seriously lacking. Might be because the chipset didn't support ultra dma, just multiword dma. In any case, the P2-350 I've got now is a lot faster.

Re:Fantastic!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the poster's point is that with Intel being faster and cooler and cheaper, then AMD will have no choice but to make their chips even cheaper to compete, which will be good news for everyone.

Re:Fantastic!

[Trigun]

On a P3 500.

top - 16:16:56 up 99 days, 19:06, 2 users, load average: 89.64, 83.76, 57.53
Tasks: 127 total, 2 running, 123 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.3% us, 1.9% sy, 0.0% ni, 0.0% id, 96.0% wa, 0.8% hi,0.0% si
Mem: 125380k total, 123116k used, 2264k free, 212k buffers
Swap: 262576k total, 257072k used, 5504k free, 4848k cached

I definitely need more memory, and a faster bus wouldn't hurt. That was at the height of a farking, so the little bastard held up really well, considering I didn't tune apache or MySQL for low memory. I did reboot the machine, as I didn't want to wait for the low mem errors to fix themselves.

Re:Fantastic!

[jawtheshark]

WTF do you run to bog that poor thing down so much? Okay, I agree you need a beefier system... (You get an AMD64 + mobo + RAM for about 300€, that's what I did) I'm not sure if what you run still qualifies as a "home server".

Re:Fantastic!

[Trigun]

I got farked. I've managed to get a much faster PC, but it's going to be a bit before I get it up and running.

The killer was that Mysql would run out of memory and not fail gracefully. I've managed to pick up a P3-500 with 384 MB ECC ram and an ATA Raid card. I just need 4 drives, and I can do a nice and fast raid 10, and have the whole box CPU bound, like they should be!

Re:Fantastic!

[jawtheshark]

Well, it much depends on your connection. If anyone would fark/slashdot/digg me, the line would crap out before the AMD64 (and probably even before the P166). At 128kbps upstream, I won't serve much...

I'm sold!

[gforce811]

They need to start shoving these in the iMacs and MacBook(Pro)s and I'm sold!

capitalism!

[minus_273]

yay! capitalism! good.

Re:capitalism!

[stewie's deuce]

agreed 100% competition forces companies to keep prices low, while maintaining quality... Intels drive to stay in the market and maintain profits mean they have to compete by doing just that. This is the peoples' true voice.. voting with their money.

Re:capitalism!

[f1055man]

uhh, I wouldn't exactly call the cpu market 100% competitive. It's, for the most part, a duopoly, with massive barriers to entry including R&D, patents, mindshare, and vendor lock-in. The fact that they can drop prices 60% should tell you something.

I have to wonder

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

I have to wonder how Intel is going to rationalize it when people STILL choose AMD over Intel.

Re:I have to wonder

[DigiShaman]

They don't have too. The vast majority of people purchase a PC on brand, not what CPU it has. As such, Intel will have to rationalize with it's vendors, NOT the public.

Re:I have to wonder

[manno]

Not everyone's a zealot some of us use AMD chips simply because they're faster, run cooler, and suck less juice than P4's. Conroe looks to have adressed these issues, I was going to buy a opty 165 last week, for $325, but then I saw that Intel was scheduled to relese the better performing Conroe next month at some highly competative prices.

1.86GHz/2M for $183
2.13GHz/2M for $224
2.40GHz/4M for $316

Those were the prices posted before this anouncement, I hope they have dropped further. Even if they havn't I'm eyeing that 2.4 with the 4MB cahce HARD. I would gladly pay an extra $80-$90(CPU+Mobo) next month, than get an opty 165 this month that will suck more juice, and be significantly slower. I'm not loyal to any corperation, I'm going to put my money where it will give me the best return on investment...

Re:I have to wonder

[thePig]

Why would you say that people STILL will choose AMD over INTEL?

When the cost goes down, unless AMD cuts costs (they started doing it now), majority of people will NOT choose AMD over intel.

People who are undecided would now go for INTEL.
What the heck, even AMD zealots might now sing a different tune.

Money rules the market.

Re:I have to wonder

[gerilart]

There is no way you going to be able to buy Conroe next month. Maybe for Xmas, when 25% of intel production is going to be Conroe. And the reatail price is going to higher due to inavailability.

Re:I have to wonder

[SenorCitizen]

The vast majority of people purchase a PC on brand, not what CPU it has. As such, Intel will have to rationalize with it's vendors, NOT the public.

That's not all there is to it. Intel practically invented end-user microchip marketing. With the old Intel Inside campaign, ordinary people went from wanting an "IBM" or a "PC" to wanting a "Pentium". People do purchase PCs on brand, but it might well be the brand of the CPU.

Re:I have to wonder

[vertinox]

Money rules the market.

If money rules the market, then we'd all be using Packard Bells with Cyrix Processors today. ;)

Re:I have to wonder

[Deliveranc3]

While it's true that I'm currently on a 2+ yr CPU upgrade cycle anyone on a short cycle or who really cares about the consumer will be sad if Intel does start selling product at a loss to take over the market.

Remember when Intel decided that they were a monopoly, prices went up and we got brilliant marketting like Centrino as Intel tried to take over other markets.

It's so great when a company does something so well that they decide to give up on doing that and do something useless.

If Intel released an amazing product or innovated in some way to prove they have the better engineers that would be fine.

But dipping into the war chest to break an opponent... that's ugly ugly ugly.

Well at least they didn't triple their marketing budget and try to make AMD disapear.

Hell by the time I buy another cpu maybe Cyrix will be competitive, hell maybe via will have an AWSOME desktop cpu, heck my next video card could be from Savage. Companies are a lot easier to break than they are to start and this kind of crap is tough to condone...

At least if patents were abolished AMD's research might survive.

Re:I have to wonder

[Firehed]

Money rules the market for products that don't suck. Of two desirable products, the cheaper one will win. Of one good product and one crappy cheap product, the more expensive good product will almost certainly win (divide difference in crappiness by difference in price, then decide a winner that seems vaguely logicial from that).

Re:I have to wonder

[ceeam]

Well, but he did not purchase his Opteron, did he? That's all Intel cares about for right now.

Re:I have to wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

by the time these conroe will be available (let alone for an interesting), AMD will have switched to 65 nm, and the 1st benchmarks will suggest that your loved opty's (&friends) have taken over the performance/ watt * price crown again. And you'll wait until they will be available, by which time intel will have ...

meet the paradoxial upgrade cycle ;-) When you look at it like this, it is a miracle anything get's upgraded ever, right?
1 chunk of silicon in my hand is better than 10 hot new specs on the web !

Re:I have to wonder

[ShapeGSX]

What makes you think that AMD's 65nm chips will be available in volume from day 1?

Re:I have to wonder

[MBGMorden]

I wouldn't worry too much about this move killing off AMD. They've been doing pretty good for a while, and generally have established themsvles in the market.

BTW, you mentioned Cyrix and Via as if they're seperate. Via bought out the processor division of Cyrix a long time ago ;). They also bought the processor operations of IDT, which was the original low power/cost/performance chip (sort of the the Transmeta of the 1990's :)). IIRC the current Via chips are a mix of the IDT and Cyrix technologies, being a bit more based on the IDT stuff than the Cyrix.

It is a bit sad though. At one time just for x86 you could choose from 6 or 7 different companies that made x86 chips. Now we're down to around 3.

Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[larsoncc]

Hey, news that Intel is dropping prices a bit doesn't change the near-to-mid term outlook for AMD. They produce some of gaming's monster chips, and power users know that. They continue to establish high profile deals, and they're still leading the move to 64 bit.

Jeez, a buck and a half off of shares. Buy!

(what do you think?)

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[chrismcdirty]

Not only gaming's monster chips, but servers' monster chips.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[larsoncc]

And heck, not just leading the way to 64-bit, but to multiple cores as well!

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[Dan Ost]

I'm sure that both Sun and IBM would disagree with you.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[HuguesT]

They might, however they might worry because the only affordable systems that run Win64 use AMD cpu.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[ShapeGSX]

Huh? Intel's Pentium D 805 is a dual core 2.66GHz processor that supports 64-bit that is going to be cut to just $93 in another month. Right now, it is $119.

AMD's cheapest dual core is the Athlon 64 3800+ for $297 at NewEgg right now.

Did you not know that Intel added 64-bit support to the Pentium lineup a while back?

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[HappyDrgn]

What about the Xeon? I get them for a few bucks over $200, pretty affordable for a 64bit dual core chip. Comparable AMD 64bit chips where easily $90-120 more. I'm not up to date on win64 (or win* for that matter), but does it not work with the Xeon EM64 chips? The whole system: 1U case, 2x Xeon's, 120Gb RAID (2x 80Gb), 4Gb ram runs me about $1,800.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[Exocrist]

Dual core != 64 bit.

About a year and a half ago, I got an AMD64 2800+ for about... $160. The reason I didn't go with Intel, is because 64-bit Intel processors were too expensive. I'll assume that the price has gone down over the past year.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[drinkypoo]

Did you not know that Intel added 64-bit support to the Pentium lineup a while back?

Did you not know that Core 2 Duo is the first intel dual-core with AMD64... er, I'm sorry, EM64T?

Is it just me, or is EM64T a leet acronym for E4T M6? Just notice that for the first time.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[japhmi]

Did you not know that Core 2 Duo is the first intel dual-core with AMD64... er, I'm sorry, EM64T?

Did you not notice the chip that he pointed out, which had EM64T?

Intel has been shipping EM64T-enabled chips for a while now.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[drinkypoo]

From what I've seen the only dual-core EM64T processors are Xeons, which tend to come with a big fat price tag. Also the P4 core is crap no matter what extensions it has. There's not a worthwhile 64 bit dual core until Core 2 Duo ships.

Of course, for most people, 64 bit isn't necessarily worthwhile anyway, and it certainly isn't worth running 64 bit windows, which is still a compatibility nightmare, so I'm not sure why this conversation got so heated up anyway.

I'd guess that 99% of the actual NEED for 64 bit PCs is in clusters, and the other 1% is made up of people who need more than 4GB physical RAM.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[ShapeGSX]

Jeez, do a little research, or at least read my post.

$119 Pentium D 805 at NewEgg

Description:
Intel Pentium D 805 Smithfield 533MHz FSB 2 x 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Dual Core,EM64T Processor - Retail

Intel has had EMT64 in their Pentium 4 and Pentium D lineup for ages. Where have you been?

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[drinkypoo]

Hmm, in AMD fanboy land, apparently. Also I'm too lazy to do much research. Back when intel processors had distinct names doing a websearch was a hell of a lot easier, and intel's site blows goats. That's good for the goats but pretty much puts me off of their website any time I don't HAVE to go there.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[ShapeGSX]

Jeez, who marked that post as informative? It is absolutely incorrect.

A search for EM64T on NewEgg

The search returned 34 Intel processors with EM64T.

Even some of the Celerons have EM64T.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that unless you have over 4 GBs of RAM (well, 3.5 or so if you think of everything thats memory-mapped), it doesn't matter whether or not your processor is 64 bit? There may be other features you like on other processors that happen to support 64 bit addressing, but its nothing intrinsic to "being 64 bit".

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[fuckface]

I'm sure that both Sun and IBM would disagree with you.

I'm sure the dual Opterons in my v40z would disagree with YOU.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[eebl]

Wait, what? What you need is an OS and applications to take advantage of it. Doubling the amount of bits your CPU can hande has nothing to do with your RAM, except that you CAN use more than 4GB. :)

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[HuguesT]

Sorry I forgot the word "server". No one in their right mind would be running a server of any importance on a Pentium D, with its terrible implementation of x86_64. Recent benchmarks show that the best Pentium D runs slower than even single cores from either AMD or Intel.

For a reasonable server-class counter-offer to Opterons from Intel, we'll have to wait for Xeons based on core 2 duo, which are nowhere in sight AFAIK.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[ShapeGSX]

Xeons based on Conroe are called "Woodcrest." They are being released later this month (June). Conroe isn't being released until July 23rd.

Here is a review: Anand Tech

They are very much in sight.

What is with all the misinformation about Intel?

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[alienw]

In fact, 64 bit OSs run much slower than 32-bit ones. After all, your programs and data grow to twice the size, so you effectively have half the RAM. I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. With Firefox, Thunderbird, and a couple of console windows open, it was consuming 950MB of RAM. The 32-bit version consumes maybe 550MB with the same apps open. Of course, apps are also much slower to load and take up more space on the hard drive. Unless you have >4GB of RAM, 32-bit is much faster. Applications rarely, if ever, use 64-bit integers, and floating point has always been double precision regardless of the "bitness" of the processor.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[Puff65535]

IBM may have standing to disagree, but our opteron servers are way faster than our UltraSparcs. Its not until you get to the E6900 that Sun has an advantage, and that only because ther are no 16 socket opteron servers. Also, the "Large" E4900 costs $550K, whereas the Iwill 8502 costs only $45K loaded.

Too late

[sidfaiwu]

AMD has already captured this share of the market (me). Their chips have provided my home assembled computers with excelent processing power, no glitches, and at a lower cost.

Re:Too late

[Sebastopol]

No glitches?

Please elaborate on what you mean by this.

Re:Too late

[kckman]

If only they came with spell and grammar check eggsellant!

Re:Too late

[SaDan]

He probably means that he hasn't had any issues after switching from Intel to AMD. I know I didn't when I bought my dual-core 3800+ last fall.

Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, that's a start. No one wants your chips anymore, drop the prices.

Some other things for you Intel guys to try:

1) Start leveraging your compiler to inflate SPEC scores - special case and hardcode as many parts of SPEC as you can

2) Keep adding more cache so more synthetic benchmarks fit completely in high speed memory to inflate those SPEC scores

3) Dump truckloads and truckloads of cash on x86 hardware sites

4) Leverage Steve Jobs - there is no limit to how much he will lie about performance - you saved his ass when he got his annoying ass dumped by IBM, he's owes you guys big time

I could go on, but you get the picture.
Good luck guys!

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[level_headed_midwest]

Heh, don't think that Intel is the only one that tries to optimize SPEC scores, although if you WRITE SPEC to favor your chip... I have an AMD manual on compiler options and switches to use for best performance with AMD64 applications, and on the last pages, it has the GCC switches to compile SPEC2000 with to give the highest scores possible with the chip.

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[DrDitto]

2) Keep adding more cache so more synthetic benchmarks fit completely in high speed memory to inflate those SPEC scores

LOL! Now we criticize Intel for their superior SRAM technology (Intel can fit twice as much cache capacity as AMD for the same chip area). Server workloads see much higher working sets than SPEC. Even assuming you have AMD's fast on-chip memory controller, every cache miss will result in the processor spending 50+ nanoseconds doing nothing (the instruction window will fill up in no time). With a 3-issue superscalar at 3GHz, this is ~ 450 lost opportunities to retire an instruction.

So yeah Intel, keep adding more cache "to inflate those SPEC scores".

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[PlusFiveTroll]

1) Done.
2) Done.
3) Done.

Hell, 4 is the only option left!

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot:

5) Stress the importance of performance / watt, and how much better your "new and improved" chips are compared to the old ones in this respect (while neglecting to mention that your competitor's were almost there already :-))

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[Akdor 1154]

Some other things for you Intel guys to try:

1) Start leveraging your compiler to inflate SPEC scores - special case and hardcode as many parts of SPEC as you can

2) Keep adding more cache so more synthetic benchmarks fit completely in high speed memory to inflate those SPEC scores

3) Dump truckloads and truckloads of cash on x86 hardware sites

4) Leverage Steve Jobs - there is no limit to how much he will lie about performance - you saved his ass when he got his annoying ass dumped by IBM, he's owes you guys big time

You forgot:
5) Do NOT put hardware DRM on your chips.

I think it's quite clear that most educated end-users (yes, all forty of them) will choose a chip that doesn't affect what they can and can't do.

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's clear that most educated end-users (of which you are clearly not one) understand that hardware TPM can be an incredibly useful tool for the user when control is in the right place, and that its misuse is not the fault of the chipmaker, but the OS author.

Finally, someone that understands ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

"(Lower prices are only going to make the R&D budget tighter, though, which will continue to hurt Intel even more in the long run.)"

But as long as we're getting what WE want, then it doesn't matter what Intel's future is. Right?

Sounds Alright But...

[Valthan]

If they are doing it to capture the AMD market I think that it is going to fail because those of us on this side of the fence are here for more reasons than the "Hey, its cheaper... right?!" crowd. This will however be amazing if the price drop makes its way into the Macs, I have wanted one since they get their upgrade but I can't justify the cost...

Re:Sounds Alright But...

[Dan Ost]

I'm under the impression that they're dropping the price in order to move
chips that they're currently paying to store. They need to flush out the
channel before the new chips hit the market otherwise they'll be undersold
by their own product.

Re:Sounds Alright But...

[fitten]

...are there any P4 based Macs?

I think you'll find these drops are to get rid of inventory and to clear the shelves for Core2 parts.

Re:Sounds Alright But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm an AMD user myself (athlon64, opteron, etc.,) and wouldn't buy an Intel box for -myself- (well, dunno about core 2 duo). On the other hand, I've bought 3 dell (Intel) boxes for members of my family. Price does matter: and for normal folks who wanna browse the web/check email/watch dvds, etc., it simply doesn't matter...

(ie: Intel -will- capture the market with this... they won't capture 1% that cares for quality/speed and not price... but the other 99% of the population simply doesn't care: cheap dell box generation).

Re:Sounds Alright But...

[Atzanteol]

I think you're spot on. I heard Hector Ruiz recently talking (on CNBC I think) about how Intel had lots of inventory to move, and how it's and advantage for AMD to not have so much old stock to push out the door.

Quite Possibly

[WombatControl]

It will either mean cheaper Macs, or Macs with more features for the same price.

Remember that Apple is not a company that tries (too hard) to compete for the bottom end of the market. Even the Mac mini isn't designed to compete with a bargain-basement Dell. Apple might very well cut their prices with cheaper chips, or they might sweeten the deal with larger hard drives, making the low-end mini use a Core Duo rather than a Core Solo, etc.

However, as a Mac owner and someone who's looking to replace an iBook with a MacBook (Pro) in the near future, this is good news indeed.

Re:Quite Possibly

[radish]

It will either mean cheaper Macs, or Macs with more features for the same price.

Or another yacht for Steve.

Re:Quite Possibly

[larkost]

No... "The Steve" seems to go in more for private jets.

Re:Quite Possibly

[Shivetya]

there is a significant price gap between the lowest end Pro and Macbook. This could help Apple exploit it by offering a more versions of the systems in Rev2 by using a wider variety of speeds. Sure more RAM might sneak in but I think with the new line of chips Intel is coming out it opens the possibility of filling the gap.

Re:Quite Possibly

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he doesn't seem to really go in for the big yachts... that's more a Larry Ellison/Paul Allen one-up-manship game. Heck, Steve isn't even on the list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_yachts_ by_length

Re:Quite Possibly

[MojoStan]

It will either mean cheaper Macs, or Macs with more features for the same price...

However, as a Mac owner and someone who's looking to replace an iBook with a MacBook (Pro) in the near future, this is good news indeed.

As I explained in my other comment, current Core Duo CPUs will likely get modest price cuts (up to 15%) because Intel will introduce a new fastest model (2.33GHz) on June 25. I bet Apple will just bump the CPU speeds up one level and keep their prices the same. This is still good news, though. Faster MacBooks for the same price and the overheating problems should be fixed by then.

Price cut or garage sale?

[Gadzinka]

I'm too lazy to RTFA (hey, this is /. ;), but isn't the price cut the same I've read couple of days ago, which basically boiled down to cleaning up inventory of crappy Netburst processors (a.k.a. Pentium D) in order to focus on PentiumPro-derived Core architecture? Yeah, go buy yourself dual core netburst processor. With both cores communicating via external, shared FSB...

Gawd, I was afraid that Intel would never put to sleep this monstrosity...

Robert

Re:Price cut or garage sale?

[drinkypoo]

If the prices drop sufficiently, it might be worth it. BTW, your sig is goofy, because nslookup is deprecated. You should now be using 'host' or 'dig'. And if you are willing to spell out bofh, you aren't one; if you have to explain what it is, your readers won't get it anyway.

Re:Price cut or garage sale?

[Gadzinka]

If the prices drop sufficiently, it might be worth it.

Not if you pay for energy as much as I pay, not really ;)

BTW, your sig is goofy [...]

There's also such thing as being tired of people inventing new, better ways to do sth with this IP address instead of just doing reverse dns lookup ;)

Robert

Re:Price cut or garage sale?

[drinkypoo]

My point is that nslookup is deprecated everywhere but windows and one day will [hopefully] disappear. The 'dig' command from bind (install "bind-tools" package on most Linuxes) is the appropriate way to do things, or the 'host' command which I have no idea where it comes from, probably the same place. Of course this is all wankery regardless... :) Progress marches on, with or without you.

This should have hurt Intel's stock more than AMD

[attemptedgoalie]

This would imply a significant source of free profit is being slashed. They're going to hope to make it up in volume, but they've got an uphill battle. Less profit in the stock should have reduced its value.

The amount of profit they had built in could absorb a class issue in the past. Now, an expensive problem with their chips could hurt their company even more. No more soft landing.

They have to prove they're better than AMD. While there are some that will buy the big name with the new pricing, there are a lot more that will stick with AMD.

The prices drops are for the P4

[ajiva]

Notice that the price drops are the same day as when Core 2 Duo is released (July 23rd), that means
the price drops are on the older P4s. That's great if you don't mind getting a P4, but Intel is doing what any other company would do. Drop prices on older products to clear out space for newer ones. Makes sense.

Re:The prices drops are for the P4

[fitten]

Yeah... amazing at how the obvious is completely ignored. This price drop is *obviously* to get rid of any inventory of chips that no one would otherwise buy because of the release of Core2. Price drops on P4s have little to do with "regaining marketshare", they are to cut losses of shelved inventory.

Drop prices TO instead of BY please.

[Vo0k]

How will Intel products fare compared to AMD, benchmark point per dollar now? The main problem with Intel was that it offered worse bang for the buck, you'd have a faster AMD for the same money or same AMD for less. This will certainly make Intel more competetive, but HOW competetive? ...now I expect AMD to slightly cut on their overall profit margins and drop the price too. Just to remain a step ahead. Let the price war begin, likely there will be no casualities, but the winners will be us, customers.

Re:Drop prices TO instead of BY please.

[RightSaidFred99]

Your premise is incorrect. Intel currently holds the bang for the buck advantage, especially in the dual core arena. AMD has been able to gouge because they hav a slightly better product and, more importantly, nerds love AMD because nerds are underdogs and nerds love underdogs (see: Linux vs. Microsoft). But when it comes to price/performance, it's hard to be the 805 or 9xx series pentium chips - the X2 certaintly doesn't. In performance - yes (in most things), in price/performance - no.

AMD's joining the party

[adam1101]

Begun these Price Wars have.

Re:AMD's joining the party

[snuf23]

Unfortunately these are the lower end single core processors. I'd love to see a drop in 4200+ or higher X2 chips seeing as I'm about to buy one.

Seems like it already happened

[Wylfing]

I do my own whiteboxing, and whiteboxing for all the friends and family around (Ubuntu only of course!), and I have always used AMD processors. This has been mainly a price decision. AMD chips and boards have always been much less expensive than Intel. However, I recently did my first Intel box. It was a success, and the price was more or less the same. I was pretty impressed, and I gave up a little of my AMD snobbishness.

Re:Seems like it already happened

[scwizard]

Ya, AMD and Intel seem to have pretty equally priced low end processors these days.

I've always just looked at the reviews and the values and the speed and chosen the one that fits the computer I want to build the best.

AMD is laughing

[popsicle67]

Intel could give the damned things away and I'll still buy AMD. Along with cheaper power the company also has a lot of good board makers behind it. I couldn't believe it when I could build a screamer with second string stuff for nothing darn near. I had been a faithful Intel drone for years and turned my brain off to everybody saying good things about AMD, a bad socket 7 box years ago, so I was surprised at how well low end stuff was doing against intel's best. I got a sempron 3100+ in a biostar Tforce 6100 skt754 1 gig3200 ddr and a nvidia 6600le pcie card. It blows everything away including the dell xps my dad got this year. Intel will have to really blow everybody away to get market share back,cheaper crap is still crap

Re:AMD is laughing

[IGotYourSidekick]

C'mon now... if it was free you'd take the INTEL chip just as we all would. Btw, I've had AMD chips in all my boxes since the k62's, so i'm no Intel fanboi. AMDs are great because of the incredible price vs. performance. It's been taken for granted that AMDs would always be cheaper than INTEL with better performance. If the new INTEL chips are as fast as the street is saying they are, and they're the same price as the AMD chips, then I think AMD is going to have a pretty tough time justifying their value.

Re:AMD is laughing

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Intel could give the damned things away and I'll still buy AMD... I had been a faithful Intel drone for years and turned my brain off to everybody saying good things about AMD

So you used to be an Intel drone and now you're an AMD drone? Have you ever considered not turning your brain off or being any kind of drone? You could actually... you know... evaluate the choices and pick the best product for what you need to do at any given time?

Right now I see Intel winning for most of the laptop space. They are faster, using less power, per dollar than AMDs. For desktops, it is about even. You really need to find your price point and see what fits in it. For servers, AMD seems to be winning on price. Of course all of this changes every month as new products are released and prices change. For reliability, it is a draw as well.

I guess I just don't understand why people get so fanatic about supporting some particular company. If they make the best fit for what you want, use it. If they don't, don't.

Re:AMD is laughing

[Donniedarkness]

No offense, but the Sempron is craptacular no matter how you look at it. Does it beat any of Intels newer P4's? I don't think the issue here is the processor-- your dad's XPS must be a spyware zombie or something (any XPS machines I've seen were pretty good machines...this could have changed in the last several months, though).

I'm not saying that you've not got a good box-- hell, you can probably do anything you want on it-- I'm just saying that I don't see the Sempron beating strong P4's at all.

Disclaimer: The only machine I have is an Athlon64 3500+ and I absolutely love it.

Re:AMD is laughing

[popsicle67]

I would only take one if they would fit in the same boards that my AMD does. Like I said I got that setup and was running FEAR,UT2K4,HALO,GTA SA, and others full speed right away and without any tweaking. I never got that kind wear from any board built for Intel.

Re:AMD is laughing

[popsicle67]

I have the luxury of using an Intel centrino laptop and an AMD powered laptop side by side and I gotta say that If intel is doing so much better how come I don't see it. I am not a drone, I just won't be going back without some serious consideration.

Re:AMD is laughing

[popsicle67]

In the lineup I saw that sempron did end up in the middle of the pack of p4's they had tested for speed and heat and power consumption and it also performed as well as many of the p4's in the lineup and loads better than the celerons and pentium d's. It took no small amount of convincing to get me to switch and finding out that I would spend much less for the same power was just gravy. The XPS I couldn't tell you about but I know it didn't like ut2k4 at all.

Re:AMD is laughing

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I have the luxury of using an Intel centrino laptop and an AMD powered laptop side by side and I gotta say that If intel is doing so much better how come I don't see it.

There are dozens of good chip comparisons out there. I'd say it depends upon which two chips you have and what the other specifications are. Intel leapfrogged AMD at the beginning of the year when the released the core duo chips. Centrino is a marketing term for a pairing of chips, motherboards and other miscellany. If your laptop says "Centrino" instead of "Centrino Duo" then your laptop likely precedes the switch, or is one of the low end models OEMs are still trying to get rid of.

I am not a drone, I just won't be going back without some serious consideration.

You said you always went with Intel and then switched and made comments about how you'd never go back to Intel. That says to me, you aren't evaluating chips, you're just blindly going with a brand.

Re:AMD is laughing

[drinkypoo]

I guess I just don't understand why people get so fanatic about supporting some particular company. If they make the best fit for what you want, use it. If they don't, don't.

Two words for you... well, one mnemonic, and one word. Ready: "FDIV Bug"

The problem isn't that there was a bug in an intel processor. Bugs occur in processors all the time. The problem wasn't that the bug couldn't be corrected in microcode - that happens too, albeit less frequently. The problem was originally that intel said that they weren't going to even replace FDIV-bug pentiums, because the error occurred so infrequently. "Check your results" said intel, as if it were a reasonable concept. Intel finally bowed to public pressure and started a chip exchange program - literally weeks after it became public.

Then of course there was the issue that intel was supporting RAMBUS, and picked RDRAM even though it was abundantly clear that RDRAM is pure crap when you're talking about more than a few chips of it. Filling up RIMMs with it (whan an excellent name for a new technology, BTW) produced seriously high memory latency.

Basically, those of us who do not forget when we are burned, or when others are burned, have more or less sworn off intel. I buy their stuff on sale sometimes, and they do have the lowest mobile power consumption right now, but if I'm going to build a system from scratch, I'm not even considering an intel processor, or anything else they make, because I like my asshole the way it is, and don't need to get fucked.

Re:AMD is laughing

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably also pays $100+ for Nike shoes, since they are sooo much better....

Re:AMD is laughing

[Anonymous Coward]

sempron 3100+ in a biostar Tforce 6100 skt754 1 gig3200 ddr and a nvidia 6600le pcie

With that kind of machine, I assume, you aren't doing much else than browsing, listening mp3s, watching videos, play flash games and occasional older 3d game.. It may seem fast but it isn't if you'd do rendering, encoding media, play games with 19"+ LCD panel using its native resolution and AA+AF, etc. It's good and gets the jobs done I'm sure but it won't blow everything away.

Re:AMD is laughing

[geekoid]

Gee, your computer blow a year old one built by Dell away. that means..nothing.

So instead of learning to think for yourself you learned to turn your brain off about Intel instead of AMD. Way to learn...nothing.

Re:AMD is laughing

[popsicle67]

to any god or government well well I get more hate mail from little pussies who just can't let a person talk without proving their inferiority. Go back to blowing your boyfriend

costly gamble?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like Intel is killing two birds with one stone: getting rid of old stock and garnering market share. The latter is particularly significant because Intel's move forces the Pentium 4 and Pentium Ds into the budget segment while the Core 2 hits the mainstream and enthusiasts.

Of course, all at a cost.

But it must have shocked them to see their market share fall so much since AMD's 64 arose. Perhaps now it is AMD's turn to tremble as their Socket 940 brings little improvement and K8L is still on way beyond the horizon.

Re:How can you talk about price discounts today...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when the mastermind of al Qaeda in Iraq has been eliminated from the Earth? Where's this nation's priorities?

You misspelled - it's "quesadilla." Hmm... quesadilla...

(con carne ;-)

And the price of fish stays the same...

[Darklingza]

This is either fantastic news or the start of something truly terrible. For the last couple of years, I have encouraged everyone I know who was upgrading to go the AMD route for this very reason. Out of pure curiosity, I would really like to know where we would be if AMD wasnt on the scene, still dragging along at 2Ghz perhaps? Now my concern is that at some point the two companies decide to stop competing, Intel goes off and corners the ultra high-end server processor market, and AMD sticks to standard desktop processors, and we are all left we were before AMD came along. Then Cyrix will come back into the picture with an Athlon killer processor, now I dont know about you, but im not really interested in going through this whole cycle again. Im buying a Mac just in case. Disclaimer: This post may contain traces of nuts.

Re:And the price of fish stays the same...

[freeweed]

Im buying a Mac just in case

You know Macs these days come with Intel CPUs, right?

Re:And the price of fish stays the same...

[the_humeister]

That's collusion, and it's illegal.

Re:And the price of fish stays the same...

[Darklingza]

Perhaps I was a bit too subtles, but yes, I know Macs have Intel processors.
Perhaps I am a bit jaded, but then again, I live in a country where HSPDA broadband easily competes with ADSL. Why? Because the only provider of landlines and international bandwidth owns the cell phone company.

OK, that's nice

[La Camiseta]

But can they also slash the energy requirements and the heat produced by their CPUs? Seriously, between choosing an Intel CPU, or an AMD one that runs cooler and uses less energy, I'll go with the AMD.

Re:OK, that's nice

[Sebastopol]

Yes. There's something called google.com, you can look up current websites discussing hot trends. Maybe you're new to this interweb thingy. So, look anywhere, or on any techie website (anandtech, tomshardware, cnet) and see that Core 2 Duo power requirements (to be released this month) is way below anything AMD has for then next 1~2 years.

Re:OK, that's nice

[gerilart]

Profve it. Show the link which Conroe has lower power requirement that AMD AM2 x2 3800, 35W. As far as I know Conroe TPD is 65W.

Re:OK, that's nice

[drinkypoo]

In order to be useful we need power consumption estimates that couple CPU and chipset. Of course the intel chip is lower-power than the AMD chip, it doesn't have the memory controller onboard. Any idea how the complete solution stacks up?

Re:OK, that's nice

[Sebastopol]

That's a good question, I don't know, but I don't think it makes up the gap. I can google for some tech docs, but it will still be hard as the intel northbridge (or whatever they call it today) still has more circuitry to it other than the memory controller. Based on what we've heard from the press and tech sites, the Wattage of the Intel memory controller would have to be equal to one Core 2 Duo to match AMD's wattage (I see quotes of 40% LESS power, however real that may be).

Also, sharing a memory controller on the same die means you limit the frequency due to thermal or power delivery constraints. Putting the memory controller on a completely different package means more frequency headroom for the CPU. This is one argument for off-die mem controller.

Re:OK, that's nice

[drinkypoo]

The whole CPU doesn't have to run at the same clock. You have to deal with bus synchronization issues whether the memory controller is in the north bridge, or it's in the CPU.

Re:OK, that's nice

[RightSaidFred99]

Umm, the 3800+ will perform about half as well in most tasks as the Conroe at 65W. Intel has (and will release more) sub-35W processors including the 1 watt Core Duo running at 1.6GHz they just announced.

Re:OK, that's nice

[geekoid]

I believe it is 1.06 GHz and .75Watts.

Re:This should have hurt Intel's stock more than A

[Frenchy_2001]

The price of Intel's stock was already reflecting this. The stock has been beaten down with poor results and poor expectations.

Cutting down price was expected and is actually supposed to be a good move for intel: back in competition and on the war path to regain their market share.

AMD stock has been going down since the previews of Conroe and showing that intel will not only compete technically, but also on price lowers their results' expectations.

Intel certainly has been beaten down.

[attemptedgoalie]

My point was just that there should not be a reason for Intel's stock to do better on the prospect of a loss of profit.

The new corporate servers and workstations based on AMD's latest rev chips haven't really been released yet. That will be a good sign of how good Intel's new chips are.

Intel was the gold standard. Now they're the old standard. They have some work to do to make the stock worth picking up based on potential gains.

Price correction? How about old-model clearout!

[Mr.Fork]

This is NOT a price drop but a price correction for Intel since they've introducted a new product line. Sort of like when Chevy does for their 2007 models arrive this fall with their 2006 still on the floor. It's NOT a 'let's get our marketshare back from AMD' but a 'oh crap, we still have a tonne of P4 chips left. Sheesh!

Re:Price correction? How about old-model clearout!

[evilviper]

It's NOT a 'let's get our marketshare back from AMD' but a 'oh crap, we still have a tonne of P4 chips left. Sheesh!

No, actually it's a "we still have a ton of P4 chips left, because of AMD eating our market share."

Re:Price correction? How about old-model clearout!

[MamiyaOtaru]

Bought my current machine in Sep '01 and it runs Quake4 acceptably *. Which only means I agree with you ;) Desktop boxes seem to have longer legs nowadays. That's what I was hoping for when I bought it.

Right around then computers shot up in speed. Just a couple years before that I had a pII 300 mhz, so the 1.4 ghz athlon was amazing, and seemed like it would be able to stay ahead of games for quite some time. Up until doom3 and half life 2 or so it did. It lags a bit now, but still runs things.

I've almost made it to the five years I thought it would be good for. I'm hoping if I buy a new machine now it can last even longer. The diminishing of Moore's law (as it is misunderstood re: doubling processing speed) is doing wonders for not obsoleting my investments so fast.

*granted, I've upgraded/replaced the RAM, PSU, GPU and HDs.

Software price-drop

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it's obvious how bad is the Microsoft virtual monopoly.
When was the last time something similar happened?

Re:Software price-drop

[jejones]

Some would argue that the various instances of companies/countries threatening to switch to Linux and then getting hefty discounts from MS would be something similar. I wouldn't be among those, though; the price drops under discussion here will benefit anyone buying a computer, while I as an individual would be laughed out of the room were I to go to a store, stamp my foot, and say "Give me Windows XP for cheap or I'm switching to Linux!"

those are non-dualies

[YesIAmAScript]

AMD is only putting rebates on single core chips.

If you've seen the info on the Intel cuts, they will be cutting all current products, including Pentium Ds.

Me, I'm getting a Core 2 Duo, so I guess I won't benefit.

Re:Nah

[crazyjimmy]

Us AMD Zealots are doing just fine :D.

Re:Price is reason? Stuff it,

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod this idiot down to the scum level he belongs at.

For the first time

[PingXao]

For the first time I can ever remember I have a PC that's about to turn 2 years old and it's not obsolete. They have no choice but to cut prices. Maybe I'll jump in and spring for a replacement motherboard for my Dell 8400 which I saw surplused last week for $50. If the P4 3.2 GHz - I think it's a Prescott - drops low enough it will make a nice system-in-waiting for when this one croaks. I'll be able to fend off the DMA nasties a while longer.

Re:For the first time

[smash]

Well hows this... I have a PC that is now just over 4 years old (pentium4, non-ht 2.4ghz), and runs everything i throw at it well enough to play quite happily.

All i've upgraded is the video card (Geforce 6600GT currently) and disk space (not required really, but I dual boot).

Sure, it's not top of the line any more, but I have yet to try running something that was not playable to force me to upgrade...

If nobody's buying them anyway, drop the price

[doodlebumm]

Intel's current CPU strategy:
Nobody want them. The new CPUs are coming, so that gets rid of your loyal customers. AMD is kicking your butt, so you don't get the loyal AMD customers to buy your CPUs. So drop the prices so that you can clear off your shelves of the CPUs nobody is buying anyway, and you can force AMD to lower their prices. You loose profits yourself, but you leverage your action to hurt your competitor.

So, what should AMD do?

Re:If nobody's buying them anyway, drop the price

[waferhead]

Give Intel "The Finger?"

(AMD fanboy here, previously bitten by Intel motherboard shittyness)

Re:If nobody's buying them anyway, drop the price

[RightSaidFred99]

You seem to think SlashDot nerds and AMD Fanboys make up the vast computer buying market. You are sadly mistaken, Intel sells many multiples of the number of processors (including P4's) that AMD does. Please try to stay with us here in the "Real World".

Bear

[soloport]

No, you were paying the price that the market could bare.

So... Sould they keep that price up, the market would be completely exposed ?




Me thinks you mean "bear" ;-)

Re:Intel Slashing Prices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead

(sings) meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

Proof, Maybe?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd be so kind, please direct us to some benchmarks that back your grand assertion.

Re:Proof, Maybe?

[Gadzinka]

You gotta love vendor fanboys. They're gonna defend the bastard child of a processor architecture even after the vendor aborts it and restarts development from >10 year old architecture again, trying to forget this mutant child on a side...

Robert

"stick with AMD"

[YesIAmAScript]

Have you see the market share numbers?

AMD is looking for switchers, not stickers. "sticking" is on the side of Intel with 80% of the market share.

Re:How can you talk about price discounts today...

[Dunbal]

when the mastermind of al Qaeda in Iraq has been eliminated from the Earth? Where's this nation's priorities?

      You are correct, citizen. The Two Minutes' Hate is far more important. Baaaaa

Processor lock-in more important anyway

[WillAffleckUW]

as an Intel shareholder, I'm glad to hear this. Now if Sony would just announce a price drop for the PS3 to get Blu-Ray lock-in, I might invest in them.

For the longest time, Intel shares have been based on the projection of 90+ percent market share - while Motorola has been knocked out now that Apple is using Intel chips, the rapid adoption of AMD by Dell and other suppliers has meant the market dominance model was in danger.

The geek in me, of course, loves AMD - I have one in my home laptop, and most of our lab's computers are dual core dual processor AMD Linux boxen with dual hard drives.

But looked at from the market perspective, this makes a lot of sense.

I predict, however, that this news will cause the non-techie investors to bail out of Intel - more cheap shares for techies like me, I guess.

Re:Processor lock-in more important anyway

[MemoryDragon]

Motorola has not been in the game for a long time, in fact Apple brought Motorola into the PPC game, and then Motorola has spun off their PPC division (now a different company name), leaving apple with IBM in the end. The former Motorola PPC division now basically does G4s for the embedded market and do not have any interest into anything remotely desktop wise. Their reasoning is, that those markets have higher margins and are less interested into a speed gaim but more interested into stability and power consumption, it seems to pay off, but not for Apple, now having no Motorola or whatever having any interest remotely in the pc market, and having an IBM which would have a G6 (Power5) but who are not interested to push that one into the desktop due to high server margins left them standing in the dust.

Re:Processor lock-in more important anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

the rapid adoption of AMD by Dell

If by rapid you mean slowly dragging their feet.

connect[s] electronic parts in computers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's got to be the least technical way to describe it.

Right up there with "Does computery stuff in the internet."

Apple relationship implications

[geemon]

I wonder what announcements such as this will do to the relationship with Apple over the short and long term. When news like this is broadcast to a wide audience, people begin to question their vendors. "Hey, will I get a price break now on the products with Intel processors?"

Yet Apple's pricing model has always been pretty strict - normally you can count on paying the same price for a MacBook or MacBook Pro in another couple weeks or a month barring any product line updates. But this type of news may have more people asking why that needs to continue to be the case - if suddenly that Core Duo chip is x% cheaper, why can't my MacBook Pro drop in price a bit to reflect the component cost?

Go AMD, Intel you cost wayy too much (by by)

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember back in 87 when intel 15mhz 386 cpu chips cost $1500 each and intel wiped out any 386 competition, so you were forced to buy their crap and they took their sweet time bringing out faster chips because they said that people did not need faster chips...of course, some big-wig at intel said that intel was not going to re-design the 386, so eliminate that annoying re-boot problem of the 386 architecture because it would cost intel 4 million to do so.. (cheap bastards, and they were rolling in cash because if you wanted a PC, it was just intel)...same for the memory chip manufacturers at the time, they said no body wanted 4 meg chips because, like intel, there was no competition in the market and they wanted to suck as much money out of thier captive markets before bringing out any faster, bigger chips, as far as I am concerned, competition works, monopolies don't!

does that mean

[ElephanTS]

cheaper iMacs, Mac books?

I sure hope so.

Re:This should have hurt Intel's stock more than A

[bagsc]

Getting 40% of list on an obsolete product you can't sell gives you a higher margin than 0% of list.

The key issue for Intel (and AMD) is covering their fixed costs. A $5 billion fab is extremely expensive to have not producing. The marginal costs are actually shockingly small.

From a strategic standpoint, Intel needs to get more aggressive with AMD now. If AMD can afford to open new fabs, that's a long run bad thing for Intel. Capacity drives this industry.

Motherboards explained

[innocence18]

Taiwan's third-largest maker of motherboards, which connect electronic parts in computers

I'm glad this second half of that statement was in there because I know, like many /. readers, I've always wondered about what a motherboard is actually for.

Re:Motherboards explained

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that how they connect electrical components! Amazing!

Re:Motherboards explained

[chawly]

To each his own - I've always interested myself in daughter boards.

Macs don't use Pentiums. 1 faster Core Duo coming.

[MojoStan]

From TFA:

the world's biggest computer-chip maker plans to reduce prices on Pentium processors by as much as 60 percent...

Intel officials told them the price cuts will start July 23...

Intel said it will reduce prices of faster dual-core chips by about 15 percent... Intel also told him that it plans to lower Pentium prices by 60 percent.

TFA doesn't say specifically which Intel CPUs will get the big price cuts ("as much as 60 percent"), but I think it's pretty obvious that they're talking about the Pentium D and Pentium 4 processors, which Apple does not and will not use in their Macs. The smaller price cuts ("about 15 percent") is probably Core Duo because Intel plans to introduce a faster model (2.33GHz) on June 25.

The big price cuts will supposedly start on July 23, which is also the day Conroe (LGA775 Core 2 Duo for desktops) will be introduced. Conroe will be replacing the current Pentium D and Pentium 4 processors, and eventually Celeron D (Apple will not use any of these CPUs). Compared to Conroe, the current high-end Pentium D will look like a mid range CPU. The mid-range Pentium 4 will look like a low-end CPU. The big price cuts will look appropriate. Note that Pentium D, Pentium 4, and Celeron D will work in Core 2 Duo desktop motherboards.

Apple so far has only used Yonah-based Core Duo and Core Solo, which don't use the same chipsets and sockets as Core 2 Duo for desktops. Core 2 Duo for notebooks will not be introduced until late August at the earliest, so I'm sure the big price cuts will not apply to Yonah CPUs. The smaller price cut mentioned in TFA (15 percent) makes sense because a 2.33GHz Core Duo will be introduced on June 25. This new fastest Core Duo should be priced about the same as the current fastest model (2.16GHz) and the second-fastest model is usually about 15 percent cheaper than the fastest.

ummm wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we getting an announcement on a major Intel price shift from someone who is NOT INTEL???

Something isn't right here.

Apple doesnt pay retail

[a_greer2005]

This story referances the MSRP...Apples (and dell, sony...) deals are set on a bulk rate basis, think price/1000, they already sell at a much lower markup to OEMs.

Good news

[obnoxiousbastard]

I'm pleased. Intel's price move may not have much of an overall effect on systems prices but if it spurs competetion, then its a good thing.

This didn't come from Intel

[corngrower]

It's just some Wall Street Anal-
hole predicting what intel might
find it necessary to do in order
to sell chips.

Welcome to the x86 duopoly.

[WoTG]

That's it, Intel chips have now more or less reached price-performance parity with AMD. They can no longer receive monopoly profits. Is this going to hurt AMD, oh yes. Will AMD break? Nope. It's too late. AMD is well entrenched in the server space, and that's what counts. It gets their foot in the door with every Tier-1 OEM and the vast majority of Fortune 500 enterprises. And it will take a LOT more than cut-rate prices to regain monopoly power. Never mind the huge damage to Intel's bottom line that will occur. Long live AMD.

Market competition...

[Money for Nothin']

Yaaarr! Those greedy capitalists! We need more government regulation to reign in the horrors of those slave-driving, monopolistic scoundrel dirtba--...

Wait, you say competition between Intel and AMD is cutting the price of my Intel mobo and CPU by up to 60%?

Wohoo! Free markets, rah rah rah!

not just Smith

[barutanseijin]

Ricardo refined Smith's LTV. There were also other folks, critics of Smith and Ricardo whom you probably haven't heard of who subscribed to some sort of LTV. Samuel Bailey comes to mind. Also, some of the utopian socialists argued for something like an LTV some of the time, but not consistently.

Marx was not an idiot

[barutanseijin]

Marx was perfectly aware that commodities needed to be exchanged in order for their value to be realised. I think if you crack open the Grundrisse or Capital and start reading at any random page you'll find him making some sort of reference to that fact. All that stuff about MCM and CMC in the first chapter of Capital is a good example.

Lower prices are not the answer. Proposal.

[Futurepower(R)]

More Intel employees should say in public what they have told me in private: Intel CEO Paul Otellini is not a competent leader. He lacks social ability. He has added to the adversarial management style in which employees are pitted against other employees, rather than encouraged to do their best.

It's very, very sad to see Intel on the way down. Intel processors have literally helped the world become a better place.

Self-destructive behavior at Intel did not start with Otellini. Long ago, Intel closed its consumer division because it could not manage it effectively.

Do I think I could be a better CEO of Intel than Otellini? Yes, I do. I told one Intel employee that I thought of applying for Otellini's job, not because I thought I could get hired, but because I might possibly be able to educate the Intel board of directors about what needs to be done to pull Intel out of its long-term slump.

First, I would re-organize Intel's marketing, which has become Zombie-like in that it has been minimally connected with reality. Last year Intel sent me several email messages offering an "Intel BunnyPeople(TM)" doll if I would be involved with one of their marketing efforts. Possibly there were those who make purchasing decisions who were not offended by an offer of a free doll. However, I've never known one who would be influenced by such an offer. There are plenty of other examples of the scary disconnection of Intel marketing from Intel's needs.

For example, I would re-organize Intel's web site. I haven't checked recently, because we stopped buying Intel motherboards. But before, the part numbers for Intel motherboards were not immediately available. To get the part numbers necessary to place an order, it was necessary to jump through hoops with an online registration, and then have an Intel employee direct you to the proper web page. The result was that it was difficult to call a distributor and order Intel motherboards. The salesman at the distributor would offer plenty of choices, but there was no way to know which one to choose unless you had done Intel's hoop jumping.

Second, I would change the culture at Intel. Business is NOT a place for top executives to act out their anger. Top managers should go into therapy if they need to deal with their anger. They should NOT make their anger a problem for the corporation. But that's what has been happening. I think it was perhaps 15 years ago that I became acutely aware of this. I could give several examples, and I've heard others from Intel employees.

Third, very important, I would take good care of the technical staff. At present they are not treated sufficiently well. If I were Intel CEO and I saw a floor that needed to be sweeped to give the technical staff a better work environment, I would sweep it myself if necessary. Intel's business DEPENDS on creativity. It's difficult to be creative in a poor social environment.

There's more, but this is is not a complete proposal, of course. It is just a Slashdot comment.

Because...

[Slur]

... AMD=AMD ?

We're laughing...

[Anonymous Coward]

at you!

Only an idiot would not consider both companies' offerings, and pick the best (better performance/price being part of it, as well as power consumption and all).

So you wouldn't take a free Core 2 Duo (a ~$300 CPU) - which slays AMD's top-of-the-line 1500$ CPU? (considering the architecture*, power used and heat dissipation and all is as good or better in some cases).

You sir, are a moron.

And that's coming from someone with 4 AMD boxes (2 Athlon XPs, 1 Sempron s754 and an Athlon64). The only Intel I have is my laptop (a centrino - cost me nothing, thanks boss!)

* The only thing left that isn't superior to AMD's offerings yet is the FSB bus, which isn't seemingly affecting performance too much (and regardless performance is better than AMD's best chips), which will be replaced with CSI soon (it'll help mainly with CPUs having more and faster cores, where the FSB couldn't keep up) And BTW, Intel makes great chipsets/motherboards too. They're VERY stable... Better than many VIA/nvidia things I've tried (KT133 was a total joke - still pissed at VIA for that one, and nforceX chipsets tend to be problematic sometimes)

Only temporary

[HalAtWork]

This cost reduction would obviously only be temporary. Intel didn't lower their prices until AMD's presence forced them to, so if we give that market share back to Intel, obviously they will raise their prices again. On the other hand, if Intel actually can't afford to reduce prices and are just temporarily absorbing the cost until AMD disappears, they will just pass the cost onto the future customer, so they'd raise their prices even more. In both cases, buying intel will only make them raise their prices, so where is the incentive to buy intel again after they've proven they won't lower their prices without significant competition (it took years for AMD to have this much effect on intel).

AMD produces faster chips cheaper than intel. We'd just be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn't support this.