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Intel to Cut Pentium III Prices
nemoest writes "Intel is planning on slashing the price on Pentium III's by as much as 15% on Sunday. After which, they also plan to also cut the prices on the Xeon, Pentium II and III, and Celron on August 22nd. It looks like they want to try to run AMD even further into the ground with convenient price slashing just as they gear up to release the Athlon. You can read the complete story here on Cnet's news.com. "
I can't quite put my finger on it but there's something about all these Roblimo posts that's just.... disturbing, out of place.
Maybe it's just his different style. This Roblimo just suddenly appeared one day with little in the way of introduction. Who is he exactly? Has he written free software? What projects does he participate in? Maybe the target audience has changed or something.
I'm really not trying to be a jerk.
Lower prices? The prices I've seen for the K7 are anything but "low prices." I could get a comparable Pentium III for less, which removes AMD's main selling point.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That's funny. My mom is in her late 50's and I installed Linux+KDE on her machine, and she's had no trouble using it for E-mail and for other things.
:-)
She didn't know anything about computers, so she had nothing to unlearn. It starts up in KDE for her, she logs in, checks her email, goes on the web maybe, and then logs off, and shuts down the comp.
No crashes to worry about. No DLL hell. None of that crap.
To each his own, I suppose. Once Linux is installed, it's not any harder than Windows IMO.
We used to run our entire house (lighting and computer) off of a 12volt deep cycle battery and power inverter. The inverter was a nice StatPower model, 800W, and had a watt meter on the front. The meter was just LED segments, so not too accurate. However, by looking at the meter and judging how long the battery lasted, it was possible to compare devices.
My computer used somewhere between a 100W bulb and 120W. (K6 266, 64MB, IDE drive, 17in monitor)
Our 20in TV/VCR used about 60W, i think.
A 120amp/hour battery lasted around 5 hours with the computer.
+LoppEar
now AMD dosent have any cash to ride out a rough year.
Let's say a year from now AMD is about to release the K8, which is fast enough to blow Intel out of the water, but they're on the verge of bankruptcy. Do you seriously think they would have any trouble getting the capital they need to stay in business? They can go to any investor on Wall Street and say "how would you like to get in on the ground floor of the soon-to-be industry leader in the processor market." Lots of invstors will be willing to take that gamble. If they have a better product, then Intel will have to work hard to compete. If the K7 ends up being a flop, then I'm not gonna shed too many tears if they go under. But in any event, simply cutting prices and hoping AMD goes under isn't gonna cut it.
Also, keep in mind that AMD is not Intel's only competitor. There are lots of other chip makers. none of them make a competitive x86 clone right now, but if AMD stumbles you can bet somebody else will want to take a shot at it. Nothing Intel could do would give them a monopoly for more than a year or two. Then someone will see the opportunity to make a profit and will enter the market. If AMD ever does beat Intel, they will reap substantial profits from being the industry leader. So you can bet they're willing to take some heavy losses on the gamble that they can come out on top.
These low prices may not even bring Burger Heaven a profit, but they serve the purpose of squashing the weak competition.
It's called competition. Companies compete to have the best product at the lowest price. Whoever does the best job gets a larger market share. That's just the way the free market works.
I don't know anywhere in the constitution where is it says that "mom and pop" stores have an absolute right to keep their market share. If Burger Heaven can produce a better product at a lower price, why should the government stop them?
Now it may be that Burger Heaven is actually trying to drive the mom-and-pop place out of business, but there are lots of ways to combat that. They can borrow money, sell shares in the business to friends, sell their store to McBurgers, Merge with McBurgers, shift to a different market, etc. Remember also that most of the customers in the area probably prefer their superior survice and hometown feel, and will stick with them even if the prices are a little higher.
The point is that it is not usually possible to waltz into a market with a bunch of money, drive out the competition, and then recoup those losses in monopoly rents. If they don't have a product as good as the smaller businesses, those businesses will be able to survive.
It is particularly ludicrous to argue that Intel is going to drive AMD out of business by cutting their chip prices if AMD has a superior product. AMD now has substantial industry credibility, and if it needed more capital, it could sell bonds or float more stock without more trouble. Lot's of investors will be happy to put up the money, in the hope that AMD will be the next Intel.
I get tired of seeing every move by Intel or Microsoft interpreted as further proof that they are evil, while AMD, Apple, Netscape, Motorolla can do the exact same things and no one cares. All companies cut their prices when competitors come out with a better product. That's life. Get over it.
What I've heard from a reliable little birdie:
Intel wants out of the consumer chip business. They want to focus on server machines and turn to Xeon and then Merced and leave the consumer out of their hands.
These price cuts could just mean that they want to get rid of chips they already have, and other obligations.
May be true, maybe not. Makes for an interesting story never the less. (^_^)
Frankly, I think this doesn't bode well for the average consumer.
If AMD's competition prompted these cuts (and not many people would deny that) what will happen in a world where AMD exerts little or no influence on the chip market. Intel certainly wouldn't be as prone to cut prices as it is today.
What's more, AMD's presence speeds up innovation and reductions in chip size. Without AMD exerting a strong presence there exists a very real threat of Intel slowing down its production schedule and keeping prices relatively high.
Motorola is already in the CPU production market. Who do you htink Apple gets it's CPU's from? Not all CPU's begin and end with x86.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I really hated the way the PIII was marketed to "Inhance the internet experience". This is obviously bullshit, since the cpu can't increase the bandwidth. It seems like intel is making their chips ever larger and piling on proprietary multimedia extentions for windows gaming. Sorta like the windows 98 of chips. AMD seems to be better suited for people that really know computers but also have a tight, limited budget.
Chip speeds nowadays are plenty fast for normal stuff. For a geek, speed matters for (besides games) compiling large programs and libraries, and (this is the big one for me) running large complicated simulations. BTW, I don't know much about chips, this is just my impression. If I am wrong about something here, I implore you to correct me.
And now for a nitpick:
The K7 is called "Athlon", not "Avalon".
Avalon is the name of a large linux cluster of alpha systems at a research facility whose name escapes me.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Intel cuts prices all the time. It used to be a quarterly event, and a year or two ago, they started doing it more frequently; the PC makers wanted smaller but more frequent cuts to help avoid huge overnight price changes.
Now this isn't to say that Intel is being more agressive just because AMD is looking like serious competition; I only want to give some perspective.
Disclaimer: I own stock in INTC, and not AMD.
Does a 200W power supply really consume 200W? I thought that that just meant that it was capable of providing upto 200W of power, but usually consumed less, based on demand by the motherboard, drives, and such. If so, then using APM features to reduce power consumption on desktops makes a lot of sense.
I've always thought it would be nice to have my own power meter--one that I could plug into an outlet, and then plug a power strip into it. Then I would really know how much power I used for my computer (or how much power the VCR uses when it is "off" but updating the clock and listening for remote control power on).
No, I have to disagree with you on this. There are certain actions/circumstances in a free market that can prevent that market from working properly. These include monopolies, monopsonies (supply-side monopolies, such as unions), ologopolies (is ologopsonies even a word?), and dumping. Dumping involves a company running at a short-term loss (otherwise an irrational behavior, something else that hurts a free market) in the hopes that they can eventually become a monopoly. If this succeeds, the market suffers.
The dynamics of this market aren't as rosy as you paint them to be. AMD can no longer just pump out a few Intel clones. It takes massive resources. That's why they're building a fab in Dresden. Also, Intel has a lot of money--in the billions. AMD has 0. They have less than 0. They can operate at a loss until their investors/creditors stop giving them money. Intel can do this until the above are met and they run out of cash.
Perfect markets change, not all markets. x86 chip production is nowhere near a perfect market, especially if one sells below cost. This is not to say that Intel is doing that (I doubt they are). Just giving my argument in general.
I am not buying K7 until I know for sure that there is a STABLE motherboard and chipset, when I know for sure that 3D games don't freze because of their hardware problems (When the first Super 7 motherboatd came out they came with AGP but not AGP card would work on them right) I also want to wait because the first K7 systems will be using PC100/133 RAM, not the 200mhz RAM as promissed.
they both suck. all companies suck. at this point AMD sucks less. i vote for AMD.
Assuming AMD is able to produce K7s in bulk, though, I don't see Intel's drops making that big a bite into AMD's sales, (at least not at the high end). I mean, there's still 90$ difference for the 500Mhz models and $170 for the 550Mhz.
'course, they didn't say enough about the respective prices on the lower-end chips to make a reasoned guess about how things will turn out there; I thought that's where AMD had hurt Intel's profits the most.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
It's always nice to see price cuts; however, I'm a little conserned about the motivation. Competition is a good thing and it's nice to see that despite terible losses last quarter AMD is giving Intel a run for it's money. Intel knows that despite AMD's exageration the Avalon is still far better than the PIII. They also know that people will lose brand loyalty when faced with more perfomance for less cash.
The problem is this. Intel's motivation is not to sell more PIIIs because they cost less. Instead Intel plans to run AMD into the ground. Sound familliar? It should. This was exactly Microsoft's motivation for giving away IE -- run Netscape into the ground. Intel knows they have more capital and will win a war of atrition. When AMD goes under you can sure bet that Merced prices will start going way up.
AMD is Intel's last major competitor in the PC market. We might even see a reversal of sorts. If Intel continues this trend and AMD starts to put out CPUs that are a full generation (not a half gen.) ahead of Intel's. We might see that Intel remains the standard for OEM orders and AMD becomes the company that crazy people (like me) who live on the fringes of the net use for high power desktops/workstations. wouldn't Intel love it if it could push AMD into the maket of say Alpha?
um, the only reason that the american car companies survived is because they had some serious cash that they had built up in the 60s, and earliy 70s. without that cash, they would have gone under. now AMD dosent have any cash to ride out a rough year. they just build a new fab in Germany, and they just lost $130 million. if there were another serious competator in the x86 CPU business, I would write this off as just evolution, but there aren't. Do you remember the mid 90s when Intel charged $600 for a pentium CPU. There cheepest CPU's came in at around $250. now you can get a decent intel CPU for just over $80. This is more like Intel kicking AMD while they are down. they are trying to kill off there only competition. Just look at what intel does with the Xeon processor. thee is no real competator for the Xeon (untill the AMD K7 SMP boards are out). They price these things at well above $900. They did the same thing with the PPros when they were out. Do you realy want to start paying $450 for a decent CPU again with the cuting edge CPUs comming in at over $900 (not including server chips). AMD has forced Intel to stay in check for the past 2 years with the K6. you can now get a PII 400 for $160. if the pricing of the mid 90s had continued, this processor would easly cost in excess of $350-$400. if AMD dies, prices will start to creap up again. This is in no way like the auto industry where there were three seperate compinies that compeated with each other, and several new commers came in with better products. This is a former monopilist trying to re-gain ground that it has lost by killing its only competition.
Should we not save the whales because they cant compeate with the fissing boats ?? it dosent always boil down to Darwinian evolution, it boils down to what is better for the population of the world as a whole.
I remember a couple years ago when the media and internet news where saying how good Intel was doing and that didn't see anyway it could change. They even laughed at AMD when it had some construction problems. Where is gone Wintel.
A year ago AMD was an alternative. It's now mainstream. A year ago Linux became the alternative to Windows...
The same thing will happen to Micro$oft, but the news will not see that until the last minute, when finally Micro$oft lower the price of NT to stay in the race with Linux.