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AMD to Unveil New Line of Chips
To Boost PC Speed
By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 31, 2005

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is introducing its first dual-processor chips for personal computers, a move highlighting differences with Intel Corp. in marketing the highly touted technology.

Such "dual-core" chips, as they are called, combine two electronic brains on a single piece of silicon to boost computing performance. Only a small number of programs have been rewritten to apply both brains to a single task. But dual-core products can improve the way computers do multiple chores at once, such as downloading music while creating a document.

AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., beat Intel to market with dual-core chips for server systems, while its larger rival was first to deliver the technology for PCs. Now, the first AMD dual-core chips for PCs, called Athlon 64 X2, are being unveiled today at the Computex show in Taiwan.

The company, the perennial underdog to Intel in microprocessors, is targeting the chips at sophisticated users tackling chores such as digital photography, graphics design and film editing. In games, a field where few programs have been modified to take advantage of dual-core chips, AMD plans to keep offering high-performance chips with just one processor, said Bob Brewer, a vice president in AMD's desktop-chip group.

Intel, by contrast, in April targeted its first dual-core chip at game players. It followed up last week by announcing a dual-core chip called the Pentium D that is aimed at a mainstream audience of consumers using digital media, also promoting the use of Intel accessory products called chip sets for chores such as distributing streams of audio and video.

AMD, which once followed Intel's technology lead, believes it has big advantages in the latest race. Each processor on its chips can communicate directly with the other, reducing the time each must wait for information needed to get computing chores done. Intel's processors must send data to an external set of chips and back again to communicate with each other.

AMD plans to charge more for the new products than Intel, reversing a pattern of underpricing or matching the market leader. The new Athlon 64 X2 comes in four models with list prices of $537, $581, $803 and $1001. Intel's fastest dual-core chip, the Extreme Edition, is priced at $999, while the Pentium D chips come in models priced at $241, $316 and $530.

In dual-core chips, "Intel could become the valued-oriented player," adopting a moniker AMD has used at times in offering lower prices, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64, a market-research firm in Saratoga, Calif.

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