Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[pgerassi]

Wbmw:

Where have you been? Stuck your head in the sand? Opteron is on a tested tried and true platform. Woodcrest just started the needed testing. It'll be done in 12 months. Till it happens, only samples will be bought. So far though, Woodcrest failed to get GAO certification. That typically means going back to the drawing board. So the only Xeon servers that went through the vigorous testing are having theirt chronometers cleaned by Opteron. Only IBM's Hurricane glue gives them any chance. When similar glue is given Opteron, even Hurricane boosted Xeons get creamed.

And Woodcrest only is good for 2S. It just doesn't scale. Opteron is good up to 8S and soon will go to 32S glueless. With glue, 40KS isn't out of the question. So Opteron has the high ground in AMD64 wrt Woodcrest.

As to the benchmarks, here is what Intel would like you to use, price/performance (lower is better): http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=262&chart=118&model2=214

Sempron 3400+, at the time of testing, gets 11.22, while P4 550 gets 31.34., almost three times as much on a 50/50 games applications mix heavily weighted towards encode/decode and games that P4 does better in. The highest available Celeron, the 3.06GHz 256KB 346D is much slower than a P4 550 justifying its lower price. Of course the best one on that list is the Sempron 2600+ at 7.60. The best 939 A64 is the 3000+ Venice (1.8GHz 512KB) at 10.71. Another thing to notice is that while a Thunderbird and some AXPs were tested, no Celerons appear on that list. That must tell you how undesirable they are.

And you have nothing on what the total volume Intel will sell in Q3 and Q4. 10-15% of that will not be 4-6 million, but considerably less. While K8 DC is already above 15% of AMD's production. What NGA can't afford is needing another spin (B-3). A three month delay would about do Intel management in (otellini's head would roll).

Pete