Re: Sounds like Smithfield vs. DC Athlon X2.
Smithfield only occupies a couple of price points at the sweet spot of the market ($93 for the 805 and $113 for the 820). Based on AMD's price stack, there are only single cores in this segment, no DC Athlon X2s at all. Intel's weak spots, IMO, are the $133 and $163 price points, where they have Presler 915 and 945 parts, which are up against AMD's 2.0GHz Athlon X2 (3600+ and 3800+). However, I think this will improve when Intel ramps their 2M Allendale processor into these price points (either next quarter, or in Q1 2007).
Re: Smithfield was a brilliant idea, according to you, so I am assuming you would equally enthusiastic about 2 x Athlon FX.
Smithfield's brilliance only goes as far as it enabled Intel to get *something* to market in a very short amount of time. And it actually beat AMD's dual core to market (by a week). It was a monolithic, single socket solution that shared the same infrastructure as its predecessor. While it failed to deliver to AMD's performance or performance/watt, Intel at least priced it competitively, and it improved their position relative to what they could have delivered with single core.
On the other hand, AMD's 4x4 is a completely different platform. It has double the sockets; and hence, double the power and double the platform cost. You can see from AMD's pricing that it's an expensive proposition with only limited returns. If 2.4GHz Kentsfield Q6600 ends up being performance competitive (and simple back-of-the-napkin estimates predict that it will be), then Intel will have something that costs half as much in terms of price - and power - while at or near the same performance. That's not a brilliant idea from AMD. It's just a hobbled monstrocity. A brilliant idea would have been to connect two Opterons in an MCM with Hypertransport in between them, but that's obviously not in the cards.
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