Finding a 2400+ is a whole lot easier now than it was when we last looked two weeks ago. It’s safe enough to say that if you want one, you’ll not have much problem finding one.
However, just judging availability by Pricewatch listings is somewhat optimistically misleading.
I checked all the resellers listed in the first two pages of Pricewatch listings, and found that the 2400+ weren’t necessarily there.
I was a bit surprised to see that more than a few resellers had no indication on their website as to whether items were in stock or not. You should avoid ordering from places like that.
Of those resellers whose websites indicated availability, I counted five places that didn’t have them at all, or indicated 7-10 day delivery.
Few of the others had both OEM and retail CPUs in stock. The majority of places tended to have one (usually OEM) or the other but not both.
What This Means
Outside of leaving prices a bit higher than they might otherwise be, this lack of abundance will have little effect on the average buyer.
The area of concern is AMD’s ability to get back to pre-slump levels of production. Layoffs and cost-cutting won’t cure AMD’s problems. AMD is just not a bloated organization with loads of fat to cut.
The only way AMD can get out of the financial sickbed is to get back to pumping out something at least approaching the eight million CPUs per quarter they were getting out regularly not so long ago.
Last quarter, the figure appears to have been more like four million. To cut the losses down to tolerable levels, AMD has to get that number up at least 50%.
The problem is that if you believe what the AMD execs are telling you about inventories being down and market share of AMD boxes not declining too much and all, such a surge should be no big deal at all.
But then they project CPU revenues for next quarter that contradicts what you’d expect from the happy news.
That’s why we’re going to continue to keep a eye on availability.
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