"AMD would have been stuck producing low margin processors on an old process. They could have contracted it out to a foundry but that takes lots of resources to convert it to a new process and you have to share the profits. AMD must have felt they had better use for their Engineering resources. Meanwhile Intel always keeps a process alive so they could just keep cranking out CuMines like jelly beans with essentially no resources consumed. No sharing the profits with a foundry either. Looks like it was a no brainer."

hmm, doesn't that equal the "INTC took it on cost" idea I floated to begin with?

since durons could and were being produced at the other fab (not dresden) AMD had another fab that was underutilized ready to pump out whatever Durons would be needed for xbox for a long time to come.

what's more reliable than millions of chips sitting around unsold?

heh, like the Xbox could ever outsell the supply of Durons that sat around in wharehouses the last few years. Good joke. INTC stole that one on price not on availability.

"Can't these guys do anything original?"

Instead of using sentences I'll just list some names and see if you get my point

CP/M
DOS
MS-DOS
DR-DOS

Xerox PARC
Apple
Microsoft

heh, I'm lazy tonight. Hope maybe you can drop the vitrol and consider a non partisan point of view...

Say, what does that mean in light of the old export restrictions (seems like back in the reagan/bush era you couldn't ship a 486 outside the us). Where is the bar at now (do any INTC or AMD chips exceed the export limit for any country/region)?

Look around. The PIII at 1.2 to 1.4 GHz has a lower FSB than it should for the time period. Sure the infrastructure was there for the PIII to use the higher FSB but the multiplier they locked the higher PIIIs at forced you to use a lower FSB than what the motherboards could support.

Just in case you forgot how they did it, I'll give you this reminder. The PIII core in that time period was called Celeron as in this pricewatch listing:

"Intel Celeron 370 Pin 1.3GHz 256KB 100MHz FSB Processor Retail"

I assumed somebody thought it was true or the story wouldn't make the rounds. I'm not going to worry about assigning a value of true or false to it myself until someone credible repeats it.

If you think its odd to assume you obviously have never written documentation for a complex process.

I read what you said. It's just that the post I originally replied to had an incomplete thought in it. You didn't explicitly say what you thought you were implying. No big deal but you might want to finish the thought next time.

"Ok, so then what's the point of comparing equal ASPs for Intel and AMD? Does Intel need to lower prices below AMD's to starve them out?"

No, You've said it yourself many times that INTC gets a premium for their chips. If the premium is 25% then droping the actual price to even is similar to undercutting AMD's prices. But for that to work AMD has to not lower their prices in response.

edit: heh, I see just a message or two later you post this "No one is suggesting that Intel jettison their other businesses and their marketing budget to starve out AMD. Right now, Intel has >$1B profits every quarter, while AMD has tens of $millions in losses. Intel could starve them out by lowering prices to the break-even point. They don't have to undercut AMD."

Can't make up your mind about what it takes to starve out AMD?

well, I tend to play the games at least a year after their release. I'm still playing the original Baldur's Gate and Morrowind with no expansions. I might get around to Age of Mythology next year. Maybe after that I'll hit something released after age of Mythology.

I'm currently using a 19" monitor and a Geforce 2 card. I might buy a newer video card after christmas when the prices drop again

FWIW a coworker of mine just got a new pc. The old one was a Dell GX 240 with a 1.5 GHz P4 and sdram. The new one is a GX 270 with a 2.8 GHz P4 and DDR. After using it for a day I asked if it was noticably faster and the answer I got was "no". Apparently the usage pattern for that user is not CPU bound.

At home I'm still using a 1700+ that is on a KT133a chipset with PC150 sdram.

Outside of 64 bit thinking I can't see a reason to get a faster than sweet spot CPU right now.

more than I'd like to know about him...

I've read about him several times over the years. It's just that particular statement didn't seem to jive with the logic and tone he uses in general. It also seems totally unenforcable...

"Make large companies justify mass Head Count Reduction plans."

that has to be an oxymoron. Justify layoffs? When isn't a Layoff justifiable?

Boy, if that isn't calling the kettle black...

after all the times INTC has done the same with their chips it should be obvious that this is an example of the old saying "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery".

Did you notice the primo ad on the home page with an Athlon64 2.2?

http://www.go-l.com/home/index.htm

Since I can't find it in the store or elsewhere on the site (other than a press release from 3 months ago) I guess it isn't out yet.

"Actually, I think Pee4, Slopteron and Crashlon are juvenile and/or uninspired.

By contrast, Itanic, P4 "Emergency Edition", and Prescwatt are..."

I agree. If you call the non x86 product Itanium or Itanic I don't notice the difference. I've seen Itanic used more often than not and don't even think about the origin of the term anymore.

P4 "Emergency Edition" is cute, was funny, and shows in short order that someone thinks that it'll be a low volume part. I'm not confident of the accuracy of the label so I don't plan to use it but I don't think it crosses the line into imaturity.

Prescwatt is more obtuse. I don't think the average invester would know what you mean by that without having read the thread for some time and I doubt they could google up a usage that would enlighten them. Writing like Elmer Phud (the cartoon character not the investor we know and love) isn't going to help with clarity.

"Crashlon" were did this come from and what does it represent? Is it Celeron or something else? Since I don't remember a reliability issue with Celerons it doesn't make sense if that is what it represents.

Keith:AthlonFX (in its current incarnation) is the exact same as the Opteron 1xx. It also costs the same. There is no such problem.

WBMW:If AMD gets no premium for server chips, then that obviously is the problem.

It isn't a problem if the gamers are paying the same premium the server guys pay. Everything is relative. No premium when you compare FX to Opteron 1xx does not equal no premium when you compare FX/1xx vs P4 or FX/1xx vs Athlon XP.

http://www.med-inf.net/Timing4.jpg From: Informatiker on SI moderated

"What if DELL announces a notebook Athlon 64 on 9/23?"

What happens is I finally get to see what heaven looks like shortly after I drop dead from the shock of a surprise like that.

Assuming I somehow survive the shock, my employer might notice a small drop in productivity as I drool over the specs on the Dell website and fill out a hardware request form.

"Current drivers tested for a WHQL logo are only available on Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. New Windows 98 drivers are no longer tested for WHQL logos."

I was disappointed to see this message in dxdiag today. I'm not sure how long it's been there. (was it added in DX8 or DX9?)

"Wouldn't plasma be nice?"

I thought so until I saw specs. I hit pricewatch thinking it'd be nice to have one and the 42" screen is 852X480. That's just the old 640x480 with a wideness add-on to match the new aspect ratio. Yuck, who wants a 42" screen with a single low res?

Looks like a 18 or 19" LCD is much more practical as a monitor with 1280x1024 resolution.

"My 3000+ PC and a 1900+ with 19" monitors each use 300w when the monitors are on, 150w when they are not. (I have a wattage meter.) I turn the PCs off."

So are you looking forward to cheap lcd or plasma to reduce the power usage of those 19 inchers?

AMD-8000™ Series Core Logic (Chipset) Drivers
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9034,00.html

(posted by TigerPaw on SI Moderated AMD thread)



I have to say I was very pleased to see 98se support among many others. While W2K is nice I'm still hesitant to toss out all my 9x knowledge and habits...

AMD Driver Pack, Version 2.00 - (Detects the current operating system(Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP 32-bit and Windows Server 2003 32-bit) and hardware and installs the proper drivers.

The AMD-8000 series core logic (chipset) driver EXE files for the AMD Opteron™ processor listed on this page support the following language versions:

English plus Dutch, Finish, French, French Canadian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish

yes, you can do it with Ghost and Partition magic as well but MSFT puts out the weasel clause that they will not support an OS that has had the partition resized by anything other than sysprep. I can say from experience that the problems aren't predictible. Myself I stick to the sysprep plan just to avoid the issue, it's possible I'm being too conservitive though.

you can do it with sysprep if you want to increase the partition size. It isn't an intuitive process but I could email you some stuff if you need it.

W2K and above can be very unstable if the partition is ever reduced in size or resized in any other way that by way of sysprep. MSFT did this on purpose if you ask me...

hmm I remember demos that timebomb, seems like one or more versions of 98 beta timebombed. The post below says they all are. Maybe it depends on the version/source...

http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=105034415

You don't think it's telling that HP outsold all other itanium vendors 3,178 to 72? (a roughly 44 to 1 ratio)

How robust is an architecture that is only heavily promoted by one vendor?

Don't worry about Madison or Opteron numbers, for both will be out in a few months. We can talk about that then.

heh, free Windows 64.

You do realize that downloading a beta doesn't give you free reign to go installing in on every machine you own? You don't own any licensces to use that copy of windows for business use or even personal use outside of the beta period which can end at any time without warning.

I can assure you that MSFT doesn't give away fully working OSes on a regualar basis (though I've been given a fully functional non beta OS from them at least once it's been a long time and they don't do it at the drop of a hat).

Let me just put it this way: Newisys was on the right track, but their business model backfired, because their implementation was more expensive than what businesses were willing to pay for AMD based hardware. Let's face it, you can't win a reputation overnight, and people were unwilling to trust Newisys enough for them to recoup their R&D costs.

So are you saying that they did offer all the individual RAS features just not at the right price?

Of course, there is also another problem with AMD's architecture. A lot of the newer RAS features that you will find in systems over the next few years may not be possible using an AMD based system, since the features themselves are built into the memory controller of a new chipset.

ok, now you are jumping to a forward view when the question asked is how does the product available today compare.


So here is the reminder question "WBMW when you got time can you describe the RAS features that an Itanium based server would have and an Opteron based server would not."

Your previous reply was links to entire articles/documents. Are you saying every feature in those links is not available in an Opteron based server?

wbmw, he asked for a comparison. How is INTC product more reliable. Give us a simple overview and comparison so we don't have to read 500 pages of technobabble to know where you are coming from.

"Sorry, I thought you were trying to be accurate. Silly me...

But for those who want to cost model real silicon, you will need to use different yield percentages for different die sizes."

Touche! and I'd even add thanks for helping to keep the discussion in check. There is no sense in reading multipage posts if the numbers aren't accurate.

"So, overall, there is still about 45% capacity unaccounted for."

"I disagree with this number but why can't you just chock this up to excess capacity? Who said Intel is capacity constrained?"

My thoughts exactly. INTC spouted throught the entire downcycle that they would spend through the weakness not cut back. That strongly suggests that they would have an major overcapacity situation until the demand catches back up.

Honestly I'm no less impressed than by the ugly brown boxes my Dell and Cisco items show up in. In all cases I remove the packaging and toss it in the trash or use it to ship/store something else. So who cares what it looks like?

"But think of this: Microsoft gets to sell two operating systems to these people. Don't you think Microsoft likes that idea? What better opportunity for Microsoft to force people off Windows 2000, NT, 98, even 95!"

It's probably the only thing that would get me off of 98se at home. I have to say it was nice knowing that blaster wouldn't affect me at all because I didn't use a 2000 or newer Microsoft OS.

"UND, are you familiar with Microsoft's policy with virtual memory on a 32-bit platform? I believe you might be the one with the confusion."

maybe you forgot that the conversation included statements like 'wanting to use a computer for several years' and 'upgrade later'.

Just because you don't have more than 4GB now doesn't mean you won't later. Also just because you don't have 4GB ram later doesn't mean you won't be taking advantage of a 64 bit OS later. If both high capacity dimms and 64 bit OSs exist then you have the choice to mix and match at your own pace.

Beleive it or not there may be new products out next year that will give users options. And the 'don't upgrade until the perfect time' mentality only works for the good of the end user at random intervals. The end user doesn't have enough information as to when the best time to upgrade is because AMD and INTC compete too heavily to make plans open or static.

Please don't pooh pooh other posters ideas and discourse just because it doesn't match your view of the proper upgrade path for all users on the planet.

I think AMD is pinning its hopes on flash and server chips to finance the next round of R&D. Mobile chips are in seat 3 (desktop is in seat 4 but doesn't need any work right now that isn't covered by the fallout of the server chip R&D).

Arth Anderson got a bad rep after Enron, no bid deal there. If they feel like a chump they should but not because AMD dropped them.

Duron used the same socket at Athlon so there is not problem there. Those duron supporters can still get cheap Athlon XPs for the price duron used to be so I doubt they feal slighted and if they did that URL is for an article from spring 2002 so they've had plenty of time to get over it.

The 300 amd employees article is from 1999. Why do you feel the need to dig up 4 year old articles to discuss people feeling like a chump.

The whole chump vs bonefish attitude seems very childish to me.

While that post was entirely amusing it is totally inappropriate*. If you didn't drag the conspiracy theories out to lambaste other users those items wouldn't be more than a fleeting blip on the radar.

*by inapproriate I do not mean to imply that it violated TOS or was rude or demeaning to any individual. I'm just suggesting it doesn't promote levelheaded logical discussions.

sorry, maybe I'm just more forgiving that most. I don't care if it's petz or elmer or a name I've never seen before. If someone posts a thought that might get me to think about an issue I tend to run the thought to its natural conclusion. Of course I don't know everything so I tend to have to rethink these things each time I get new data. Uggh reality is I think to much, I conciously and unconsiously overanalyze every concept that passes by.

What bothers me is when people take sides and stay there. The only sides I care about are truth and profit. It's hard enough to find the truth and without it finding profit is just a crap shoot.

Do I like AMD more than INTC? Yes, I do. Will AMD ever get out of the rut they've been in? I don't know, I've guessed wrong on that one before so I'm more open to reconsider others point of view so long as it isn't dripping with venom...