Replies to post #6511 on AMD strictly moderated (AMD)

[BUGGI1000]

@WBMW - notebooks
I don't think, that your arguments are so strong, that they
support Intels 85% share or more in some sub-segments. Alone
the fact that nearly or all OEMs sell AMD books now is one "hint",
that the share will further rise without doing drastic new
technical things. Your also well aware, that AMD was mainly
locked out from the business segment. Its clear too, that they
could only gain here and they will - the only question is how
fast. I think performance is one aspect for a buyer but there
are many many more. When we look at the past, you couldn't
buy a 15' book with a AMD CPU, the buyers had to buy Intel -
it was that easy. Or if the buyer wanted XP Pro, he/she
couldn't buy AMD - the only choice was Intel. I could go on
and on, what I want to say here is, that VERY KEY features
were missed mostly in the past because the OEMs shipped no
modells. Its clear, that these KEY features are the same now
and I don't believe, that Intel has any 11n advantage as one
example. The biggest argument for me is the given base. We
are all well aware, that AMDs share is relativly small. When
you start from a small base, its "easy" to gain and thats the
main reason why AMD will gain share. Add technical aspects
and you have a second strong point for gaining share. So, the
question for me is not whether AMD will gain share this year,
the question is how much and I'm expecting now minimum 5%,
probably more.

[mmoy]

As an actual consumer of these products, I feel that AMD has
dropped the ball bigtime in notebooks. But that's pretty obvious
if you look at what they've done in the notebook space in the
last year - not much. Realistically, Intel has the better choices
in the midrange and performance categories and I still maintain
that you need 400 Mhz to get parity between Core 2 and X2
processors.

There used to be a DTR market which would use up to 89 watt processors but I don't see these anymore except for the boutique
notebook makers. I'd be happy to buy a 5600+ notebook but no one
is going to build one. As they could just build a 2.33 Merom
notebook that would perform comparably at much lower power.

When AMD comes out with their new architecture, what are they going to deliver first? If the past is a guide, then we should see server, desktop and then notebook. Intel's releases last
year could be considered brutal. Launching three product lines
in a short period of time is tough. And they took from May to
September to do it. If AMD introduces server chips, say in
August, we might not see notebook chips until the end of the
year.

I will be shopping for a notebook in the fall. I would be happy
to buy an AMD notebook if the price/performance is comparable
with Intel to 10%. But AMD is going to have to prove to me that
they can do it as the recent past has me doubting.

As far as Wireless N goes, I don't really care about it. The
cafes that I go to are still on Wireless B. My house is on Wireless G and a few places that I go have G. The Robson stuff
does sound interesting. Another layer in the storage hierarchy.

[The Duke of URL]

"Actually, the current reviews have shown Intel's integrated graphics to be on par with ATI's and nVidia's. Many are also expecting Intel to improve performance through driver upgrades to enable features that have been turned off due to late validation issues. I don't think Intel will have a problem competing in integrated graphics."

W, are you saying that some of Intel's INTEGRATED graphics is as powerful as the best of ATI and nVidia's big cards?

THAT would really be something.

For the last 10 or so years, Intel was very happy simply crating a useful floor for built in graphics, just to save the time of the customer.