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AMD Slashing Prices Still Not Enough?
PeterN writes to tell us that after hearing the announcement that AMD was slashing prices on their processors by 47%, TG Daily looked a bit deeper and found that it still might not be enough. From the article: "For AMD's planned price drop for its dual-core processors to enable the company to regain its aggressive price/performance competitive position against Intel as it has promised, the company would have to reduce its existing Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX prices by between 38% and 56% for its various models, with cuts averaging about 51%. This estimate is based on a comprehensive price/performance review of Intel's soon-to-be-released Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo processors, along with its existing Pentium D dual-core line, pitted against AMD's FX-62, FX-60, and Athlon 64 X2 processors in Tom's Hardware Guide tests."
If you're thinking of buying an AMD64 X2 for gaming and intend to put the chip in a motherboard with the Nvidia N4 chipset beware...
Myself and several others have had problems with both Battlefield 2 and Source games (CS:S, day of defeat etc)
Very annoying.
Now i'll get lot's of replies from folks with this setup telling me otherwise....
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Am I reading the article wrong..? It seems to me AMD is doing a pretty fine job, most lines are black, and only a few processors have a better Intel equivelent.
Anyway, I was looking at a 4800 X2, and it seems its still the best option to buy atm, cheaper then the Intel (?).
Still I think AMD has a group of active followers and Intel-haters, they won't stop buying those chips soon. And only in the very high end systems Intel is much cheaper, but thats not what most people will buy.
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I'm surprised there's nothing regarding that deal on Slashdot yet, as it appears to be as good as done.
... the announcement that AMD was slashing prices on their processors by 47% ...
:( Sheesh, welcome to journalism in the internet age.
the company would have to reduce its existing Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX prices by between 38% and 56% for its various models, with cuts averaging about 51%
OK, so they're saying that AMD missed the mark by 4%? And that this is worthy of writing an entire article about (a very short article by the way. Your welcome for the additional ad revenue
AMD have taken a large part of the market that Itanium was meant to take, the 64-bit multicore server market. It's a market that pays for commodity performance above all, and AMD seem to have become the dominant CPU supplier for high-end X86 systems like the HP ProLiant DL585. These are the kinds of server that run Wall Street.
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For example, the 4200+ model would have to be priced below $213, but is indicated to sell for $225.
I'd buy one if it was $213, but $225 is just too damn expensive!
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Whenever Intel slashes their prices it is trumpeted as a testament to their deep pockets and what joyous fact that is for everyone.
When AMD slashes prices it's....bad???
Sure it's tinfoil hat material, but I am starting to think this past year Intel didn't do the usual passing around of marketing money but have flooded the Net with cash to generate positive PR.
And to think I use to be sickened by simple things like Intel's bogus marketing compiler generated SPEC scores...
how I miss the days when you'd replace a 80386 with a 80486 ... what are these FX thingies? the 80886 series?
The current crop of AMD parts are marketed with a similar scheme showing the speed of an equivalent Pentium 4. Intel have pretty much discontinued the P4 now, and an Athlon 4200 is definitely not twice the speed of a 2.1 GHz Core 2. Are these performance rating numbers going to make AMD look silly?
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Have you checked Core 2 Duo compatible motherboard prices?
They are around 200 euros. You can get a pretty good NForce4 board for 939 X2 for under 100 euros, and even AM2 boards are in 100-140 euro range.
So total price, board+cpu, AMD still wins by a clear margin (price/performance), because intel chipsets are as overpriced as ever...
And certainly that 2.1GHZ conroe is sold as Core II 6600, which means intel is cheating, because its only as fast as an A64 5000.
Do you get the point?
Clockspeed is so yesterday. Just forget it.
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AMD judged and found wanting compared to intel price/performance numbers.
And solid numbers they are too, given that the intel parts aren't even
released yet. I'd call astroturfing, but since that is apparently the
software industry standard, I don't see why the biggest on the peecee
hardware block can't do it also. Carry on then.
The top hobbyist end of the market isn't really a big deal. Splurging more than the cost of a console on a CPU that'll be out of date in two months isn't a rational decision to begin with, and dateless nerds with nothing better to spend their money on (hello!) will make their decisions based on the latest review in Game Wanker Monthly anyway, not on a few dollars price difference. What really matters to AMD and Intel is how they do in the bread-and-butter low and mid end consumer and server setups. Looking at CPU prices in isolation from motherboards and even heat output doesn't really tell you much about that.
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When your processors are significantly slower than the opposition's, then no discount can be enough. These Intel processors appear to rock, and AMD may have to go back to being the budget basement choice unless they have something up their sleeves and soon. I'm neither an AMD nor Intel fan boy. My computer is now AMD, the previous was Intel. My next will probably be Intel by the looks of this.
the next AMD one is loads more important, no time to explain, just click here!
Summation 2
The real news for many of us about the AMD price cuts is extremely cheap CPU upgrades for our 939 socket systems. I have an AMD 3800+ and 3400+. Both are 939 and both mobos allow me to move up to one of the spiffy new dual core chips. With the new price cuts, I can upgrade my system to a dual core chip--each seperate core faster than my current single core CPU---for the price of a cheap-to-average video card. And there are a lot of AMD 939 users out there.
That's the real news, not AMD missing the pricemark by 4%.
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I just built a New media center PC for the living room. I am testing the XP based MediaPortal project that is turning out to be far superior to Microsoft's XPMedia Center 2005 and it's running on less than $150.oo in parts. Old Celeron 1.8 and horribly old ATX/AGP motherboard bought together from newegg for less than $50.00.
There is no reason at all to buy a new generation processor outside of extreme gaming or science. Hell I still edit video on a 3 year old 2.8 P4 and it works great.
The processor industry is suffering from stagnation. the new stuff is not fast enough to entice someone to throw away their current PC and buy the new performance stuff. and 64 bit has ZERO attraction to consumers and most people as there is no benefit or erason to switch to the 64 bit processors (unless you rtun linux and are a tinkerer.)
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Entirely depends on what you're looking for.
AMD cannot compete with Conroe in pure performance and yeah, the price cuts aren't enough to make the purchase of a high-end AMD CPU a good deal.
But, the price cuts have made the 3800+ and 4200+ really great options for those with slightly older CPUs looking for a cheap upgrade path. The low-end AMD X2 CPUS will provide a great deal of horsepower for a much lower cost than the Intel E6300.
It's like a Cyrix that doesn't suck.
The E6300 will still be faster, but I think it's easy to forget just how insanely fast a X2 4200+ really is.
(All this said, I'm still looking at getting an Intel CPU later this fall)
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The first has been mentioned, the most recent Dual Core Processor Driver from AMD's web site.
The second (if that does not work) is to explicitly bind your game to a single core. Start the game and right away hit control-alt-delete. Select the game in the "processes" tab, right-click and select "set affinity" and check only 1 processor.
I too have an x2, nVidia video card and nVidia chipset. I had problems with Everquest2 until I installed the first, and regular Everquest until I did the second (every time you play). My wife has never had a problem with WoW.
That claim assumes that Core 2 chips would be as easily available as the AMD counterparts, which won't be true until at least Q1 if not Q2 of 2007. Would you like fries with that?
tIME to upgrade. I was planning on upgrading my athlonXP +2400 to a +2900. However if these price drops occur I think I am just going to upgrade with a whole new motherboard and cpu. It would only be $150 more. But get them while they are hot!
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There it goes again. What was a really nice computer a couple months ago... worthless. My 3800+ X2 is dirt. Fast dirt.
See from what I can guess from it all is that I can remember when Intel was forced to drop its prices because of amd, and it was huge like that too. Not that Amd was any better, bu, If I am right, but they were at least half the price. Everybody went AMD, 90% for half the price, sounds good.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
AMD has done very little, marketing-wise, to strengthen its brand, which makes it very vulnerable to being marginalized when it starts being outperformed by the competition. Intel has their name everywhere and they have the little dun! dun! dun! dun! noise; they've also been a tough competitor even when AMD had the better performing chips. What does AMD have? A dull logo.
In a world where you were running true CISC chips and every instruction took at least one clock cycle, and most took several, clock speed was everything. Now you have superscalar instructions, dual cores, special optimizations for multimedia, 3D graphics, etc., and well, clock speed doesn't seem to mean much anymore, except perhaps to distinguish between different generations of one particular line of chips.
Benchmarking with real-world apps is where it's at. How does this chip perform for gaming, vs. how does that chip perform for video editing and playback? It's all about your application, and you need to decide what chip you need based on what you're going to do with it -- and that's the same for any piece of hardware these days, and has been for many years. It's just that it used to be that usually what you needed was the bleeding edge high-performance CPU, and now things are a lot more diverse. AMD and Intel make different lines of chips aimed at different sets of users. Add to that the fact that systems makers are making machines optimized and targeted at different users and it's a different world than it was even just a few years ago.
I see CPUs and systems become more and more specialized -- while many gamers have one machine they use for games and another for e-mail and Web, you'll start to see people buying "video editing" computers and "PVR" computers, and mobile devices for e-mail, and another machine for office apps. It's already starting to happen and the trend seems to be continuing.
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What the Slashdot crowd think about this?
Does the fact that Intel Core 2 Duo is the first CPU to have a built in TCPA module (AKA LaGrande Technology) makes any difference in your purchasing decisions?
wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2_Duo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaGrande_Technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing
Call me a fan-boy but personaly I would go for an AMD solution until this "trusted-thing" reveals itself fully (good thing? bad thing?)
A quick look at price watch confirms this. http://www.pricewatch.com/cpu/ It is interesting to see the Xeon dual-core chips going up.
BTW. The grammar natzi that thinks I'm an illiterate AMD fanboy is right. I AM illiterate. Ignorance is bliss.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
AMD have to do it to stay in market and gain more market share :)
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It's Monday on the fateful day of price cuts, and I have yet to see a place online that's presenting the chips at the post cut price. I know it's super early but we all knew it was coming, even the retailers.
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My stock reply to people who don't think they need a processor upgrade because old stuff was fast enough: install gentoo.
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High mobo prices really hurt the Athlon in the early early days.
But Intel hasn't even truly introed Core 2 Duo yet. When the chip is announced and available, prices will drop.
Right now, these mobos are all in short support, so of course the prices are high.
This point, although true, will be moot in under 6 weeks.
Also, I wouldn't buy a 939 mobo right now. AMD is killing off 939 rapidly. AM2 is a smarter idea. You can buy a 939 mobo on fire sale, but better get it quick or you might find yourself unable to get an X2 chip for it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
anantech's price engine lists mwave and monarch as reflecting the price drop already. Newegg has not. Mwave is very close to the listings ive seen from AMD, but monarch has cheaper shipping and seems to have a higher reputation.
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Not all the processors have dropped on MWave. I looked up the x2 4800+ and it's still showing as more than $600.
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Only on the AM2 X2 3800+ it seems ATM. Not the old 939 X2 3800+ http://www.cty.ca/details.asp?pid=231
$185 Canadian for the AM2 X2 3800+ is pretty good (considering I paid $350 for the 939 X2 3800+ 2-3 months ago...*grumbles*)
Duh.. I can buy a $70 Socket F board with Video + Athlon64x2 3800+ @ 35 Watts for $160... let's see, that's $230, about the cost of just a motherboard for those danged intel chips.
The price cuts will be enough for you if you have an AMD-compatible motherboard. I do. So long as, at the next upgrade date, the price of a new AMD CPU is less than the combined price of an Intel CPU and a new motherboard.... guess what.
Of course, this says nothing about their commercial viability...
Why are we biting the hand that feeds us. Sure, AMD is a business. It needs to profit. But which chip maker actually CARES about computing? Who brought us dual core. Check that, REAL dual core? I've got Pentium machines, who doesn't, but my love is AMD. Linux/AMD, all the way. FTPTB.... period
I thought that was "Suck me sideways." That was a great movie. A little cheesy, but I love it.
The chips are made hidiously cheaper than they're sold. AMD, Intel, etc. all do the same thing-- they charge a high dollar value because, in their arrogance, believe they should be paid commensurate for their new technology.
What AMD needs to do is pick a price point that makes it affordable, even if the return is low. In mass sales quantity, ADM will still come out ahead. Be realistic: pick any resonably priced "fad" item being sold, and you'll see the quantity sold is high. They'll still make a comfortable sum of cash.
MWave's motherboard bundle page also shows the price cuts. Which is nice because I order a lot of bundles through them. (Now I can take the same amount of money that I was using to buy a single-core Athlon64 and purchase an X2 instead.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
First, I wrote that article right after I posted to another forum, where people have a tendency to buy parts and then wait for deals on other parts to complete the system, instead of buying them both at once. I posted a warning to there that if you didn't already have a 939 in hand or ordered/shipped, don't buy a 939 mobo because AMD is killing the 939s. If you buy a 939 mobo today and expect to buy a 939 chip tomorrow, you might find yourself unable to find a 939 chip worth having (only the low-end 939s will remain). So I was partially warning about that.
Second, AM2 allows you to use DDR2. 939 only does DDR. DDR is over with now. All the CPU/chipset vendors support DDR2. DDR2 is faster and uses less power so consumers prefer it. DDR2 requires the RAM vendor to pay less in license fees, so they prefer it too. Put these two together and DDR will rapidly become a specialty item. So if you ever upgrade your RAM you will pay noticeable more for DDR than for DDR2. How much more? Well, I just can't say. It could be very little.
I do agree that upgrading CPUs is rare. There's rarely a point to it. I've done it before, but given how little motherboards cost now, I can't imagine I'd ever do it again.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Look up the meaning of "and" someday.
If it becomes available in two days, then it isn't really announced and available, is it?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95