Morrowinder, re: I highly doubt AMD will have the volume [for Turion X2] to impact Intel's [mobile] ASP's.
I don't. Fab 30 doesn't need to be converted and can focus on simply producing at max level. Fab 36 has been added, and estimates by knowledgeable but not directly related people are that it started at around 1500W/W, which will ramp higher during the year. This allows AMD to keep max units close to Q4 production while aggressively ramping % of DCs. Fab 7 (Chartered) is due to be added to the mix in Q4. This allows AMD to ramp both volume and % of DC. After this fab 36 ramps 65nm to high volume. Let's say for discussion purposes that I think Turion X2 will be 15-20% of Q3 AMD mobile unit sales, and that it - even when it pales to Yonah volume - it will suffice to affect Intel's mobile ASPs by say a low single digit percentage.
re: Remember the original Turion took forever to go high volume.
For the original Turion OEM's had to design new notebooks. Turion X2 is fafaik drop in replacement. I think it's safe to assume it'll ramp a heck of a lot faster than original Turion.
re: And in fact Turion is competing on price in US retail since is an unknown brand and relatively worse than Centrino at the same frequency(perfomance and battery life) but Centrino's asps have held up fine so far. So you think an x2 will reverse this? I find it hard to believe that the x2s will be better on either performance or battery life than Yonah...
Yes Turion is competing on price because performance is worse. That's current situation. I'm pretty sure that Turion X2 ML will slightly outperform Yonah in most benchmarks provided AMD can launch them at stated frequencies. Let's say they'll be on par for this discussion. Much more importantly however is that Turion X2 is 64b which is a feature customers want in order not to miss out on full Vista performance. Even when not that well informed customers buy features and Turion X2 will have them all, while Centrino simply won't until Merom. Turion X2 will provide somewhat unprecedented competition to Centrino because of: 1) on par performance and 2) better features. This will allow AMD to take a bit more market share in Q3/4 when compared to Q2. Not too much because AMD hasn't been able to attracked Dell, Sony, and the like.
re: Never heard of that german site? Are they reliable or are they like digitimes...
PC Welt is a major German IT newsmagazine. It's ok. Definitely better than Digitimes. I think it's unlikely that they published this without *some* form of confirmation. Still they're obviously not exactly 100% reliable... I'd say they're ok.
Regards,
Rink
