An update to this article reveals that the initial “Paris,” which is the stripped-down x86-64-less version of Hammer, will have an initial official retail price of $124.
Frankly, I’m underwhelmed by it. It reminds me too much of the video cards being sold for $150 these days: the price point isn’t bad all by itself, nor are the reduced features in-and-of-themselves, but not both at the same time.
Sell this CPU for $124 without the x86-64 crippling, and I have no problem with it. Sell it for $79, maybe $89 with the crippling, and again, I have no problem with it.
Sell it for $124 with the crippling, that I have a problem with.
Is it realistic to expect a $79-89 price for this processor anytime soon? Probably not until 90nm, but that doesn’t make it worth more.
However, it is quite reasonable to expect x86-64 to be turned on when Intel is going to do just that with the Celerons. It may not be a realistic expectation to expect that from the folks in AMD exec fairy-land, though. They’re competitionally-challenged.
In all likelihood, the same old scenario will play out:
That’s exactly what happened with socket 754/939. AMD originally wanted people who wanted dual-channel to pay more for Opterons. Intel went to dual-channel and charged no more for the CPUs. AMD was caught flat-footed with no response, and took nine extra months to come up with one. They’re still recovering from that mistake.
Some people just don’t learn.
Don’t pay for AMD’s mistakes. Wait them out until they get the price and/or features right.
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