I've made this point before. AMD is getting absolutely ZERO premium for thier "64" bit feature. nada. nothing. AMD is trying to change their business model to get premium prices for 64 bits on both AMD64 and Opteron and its not working.
I think that AMD marketed A64 wrong. I seem to recall that intel did something different, when the went with extended 16-32 bit. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that intel marketed it as "A 16 bit processor..... that will be 32 bit ready down the road, when you're ready", sort of de-emphisizing the 32 bitness, and concentrating on the 16 bit performance, until there was sufficient 32 bit software available. Then, they come out with a heavy next generation 32 bit marketing program. You still get all the next generation server wins that you would have gotten anyway, and you schmooze the path for the eventual desktop users.
It appears to me that AMD went with just the opposite. They're marketing strikes me as....... "Here's 64 bit that runs your 32 bit super duper, so pay us more for the chip, even though there's not much software for Win 64 bit right now". I don't think most desktop users are ready to pay that high a price for 64 bit. AMD should have introduced Desktop Opteron at a much lower pricepoint, Of course, that would have meant that AMD would have had to sell Opteron cheaper..... which means they might have sold more A64 chips in the second half of 03, which could have meant more H2/03 revenue and or market share. Which wouldn't have been to good for my intel investment. Soooooooo, JMO, but I LOVE the current AMD Marketing Machine.
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