Yes, the product is good, but the company is a loser.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00785/

I couldn't have said it better. It is what happened with the A64 at first, and it seems it is happening here again. Yes, AMD dual cores 'pwn' the intel counterparts. But the marketing is killing them. Marketing is the art of convincing people to buy your product. It involves the product itself, advertisement and pricing.

The latter is killing them.

No matter how good it is, it is this pricing that will make people fall back to cheaper alternatives. No, not Pentium D (at least not for awhile), but the A64 and Sempr0n come to mind. Chips that AMD sells alot more of, with alot smaller profit margins.

Instead of the marketing, i hope it is the old tale of "we can make them, just not awhole lot of them", because in that case, AMD isn't all to blame.

AMD cant make them in volumes is the problem.
If they could they would
Look at the amount of modern FABs they have, 1 and one being built.
Compaired to the FABs intel has all over the world.

Also the average person doesnt know who AMD is. So it doesnt matter if they have a better product, they already have had that (P3 recall days), and what did they gain, 3% market share?

Sjaak said:

Instead of the marketing, i hope it is the old tale of "we can make them, just not awhole lot of them"

Click to expand...

IMO, this is almost certainly why they are so expensive.

because in that case, AMD isn't all to blame.

Click to expand...

How is AMD not to blame for not being able to make very many?

I agree with this entirely. The thing that has held AMD back ever since releasing the A64 is simply that they don't have enough manufacuring capacity to meet demand.

So their solution: Price their product much higher so there won't be as much demand.

Sad thing is, this is pretty much all AMD can do until they have more fabs. AMD has 1x FAB whilst Intel has more than 30. Sad, but still a fact.

The thing to remember though is that AMD has agreements with both IBM and National Semi to produce their CPU's should there be enough demand. Thing is, I doubt either could produce enough.

Every time someone (eg nVidia) has used IBM for fabrication the parts have had very low yields and performance.

I wonder if this'll ever change. I kind of doubt that it ever will actually.....

IBM makes CPU's too, so the best fabs for doing so are already in use by IBM for CPU production. You are not going to let the guy you compeat against have 1 up on you now are you?

As for AMD is not to blame for not being able to make very many, well they are a bankrupt company that German brought back to life. So they dont have the funds to just make more FABs. The fact that the German Gov't was willing to take the risk and bring them back well... SO mnaybe they are to blame, but its a reason that is understandable as to WHY they cant make more.

Nah, we have the Germans to thank. If we didn't have a choice then we'd be paying an absolute fortune for a lot less power than we have today.

One day AMD might actually get out of debt. I rather doubt it though.

Gnufsh said:

How is AMD not to blame for not being able to make very many?

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Well, at least not as much, it is a physical limitation, not some PR-lunatic's mindspin

Sjaak said:

Well, at least not as much, it is a physical limitation, not some PR-lunatic's mindspin

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best answer i heard so far to that question, happy its not a PR mindspin this time

I thought everyone assumed that. It's not like everyone out there is doughy or anything now is it????

I must say that Intel is a loser too. They released 915/925 to for the LGA775 CPUs. Now, everyone who owns a socket T board has to get 945/955 in order to use a P4D. Those who are using DDR1 will be hit even harder. New RAMs are needed because 945/955 are all DDR2 boards.

For A64 S939 users, all they need is a BIOS update since AMD did mentioned that all S939 boards will support X2. There are still many out there (including myself) who are still using an A64 AGP board.

Btw, Intel's marketing aren't that great either. Look at what happened to them in Japan.

I asked my broker about AMD or Intel stocks, and what he thought about why Intel had such great market share in the CPU sector.

His answer basically...

People pay a Premium for Intel products, they identify with it, and Intel has better distribution lines to deliver product.

AMD however has always struggled bringing their product to the Market. They just dont have the marketing channels in place that Intel does. Enthusiasts who actually care will buy AMD, where as a casual surfer would naturally identify with Intel.
--------------

He recommended to stay away from tech stocks naturally, as hes kind of conservative. Hes not a "Big Return" guy that sells you on longshots; more of a "sound" portfolio kind of guy. If your serious about putting some money away, give him a call.

The Newport Group, LLC
Thomas H. Thornton
866-542-5400

buttonmash said:

I asked my broker about AMD or Intel stocks, and what he thought about why Intel had such great market share in the CPU sector.

His answer basically...

People pay a Premium for Intel products, they identify with it, and Intel has better distribution lines to deliver product.

AMD however has always struggled bringing their product to the Market. They just dont have the marketing channels in place that Intel does. Enthusiasts who actually care will buy AMD, where as a casual surfer would naturally identify with Intel.
--------------

He recommended to stay away from tech stocks naturally, as hes kind of conservative. Hes not a "Big Return" guy that sells you on longshots; more of a "sound" portfolio kind of guy. If your serious about putting some money away, give him a call.

The Newport Group, LLC
Thomas H. Thornton
866-542-5400

Click to expand...

Funny thing is he's got a better grasp of why AMD doesn't do well than all the IT crowd does. Go figure. But then again, I guess his specialty is business. Intel is good at doing business as business is all about making money. AMD is good at making good CPU's but bad at making money. Go figure.

The reason for AMDs pricing is mainly out of their control, because the market is mainly a monopoly, Intel's, AMD is just a minor contender with no substantial market power. Intel doesn’t have a true monopoly yes, because as we know the market is contestable, by AMD,

Now consider the supply and demand graph shown, if you lower the quantity available, that moves the supply line in, more available, supply line moves out. Same for demand, more demand, and the red demand line moves out, less and it moves in. The companies will produce where those two lines cross, the blue dot. This model works for competitive markets, and where AMD is concerned, it is a competitive market. for Intel that demand line doesn’t exist, monopolies have a different set of rules, but suffice it to say they produce where they maximize profit, but can set whatever price they want to achieve that, AMD won't have that luxury.

Intrepid thier are 2 points on graph that will make the company the most money
1st is the High price, low sales, and the 2nd is the High Sales, low price option.

AMD used to go the High Sales low price route, but with Hammer have hanged to the high price low sales....
And as we slowly see the pricing dropping, the sales keep going up...
Now AMD is at it again with Dual Core, the high price and low sales

Yeah, and to get the profit you take the area of the rectangle made by the origin and the price point, and the company usually has to price and produce along the demand curve, but in AMDs case, they are the minor contender in a market monopolized by Intel, I guess since they only have one competitor they get some freedom. And realistically, the demand and supply curves may not be so straight and perfect like that, they are probably drawn by the accumulation of data obtained by studies and statistical analysis. And, I also think upon more consideration that AMD might also not have a supply curve, like Intel, for this particular market structure.

AMD has to have a supply curve...
but i see were you are coming from, good point to bring up

Well they will have points of production, because at best they are a duopoly, and those work kinda funny. All markets have demand curves, and for Intel it will be way higher then for AMD because Intel has better advertising, this means they can raise their supply curve much higher along that demand line, aka produce more to get the maximum revenue. AMD will have a lower demand curve, and thus they will want to put their production lower to fit themselves on a point on the demand curve that allows them their maximum profitability. Thats the best I can think of, having taken economics a while ago.

This all skirts the real issues. To understand the PC market, you must accept three things:

1) Everyone is a rank amateur at silicon semiconductor mass production (and to an extent, with the technology, period) compared to Intel. Want to play Intel's game? Should have started 30 years ago like they did.

2) Intel chipsets are uniformly excellent. All others are at best intermittently usable.

3) Marketing doesn't sell processors, and neither does outright speed. What sells processors is the cost/hassle ratio, and as long as the performance is good enough for the job, little else matters. See #2.

Until people stop expecting to market processors in a vacuum, they will not capture the lion's share of Intel's market share. All AMD has to do to get my business, and the business of many others, is provide real chipsets to support their processor as Intel does for theirs. Anybody that has built PCs for a living and had to satisfy the support and warranty obligations that go with them is either marking the stuff waaaaay up to cover their asses or using Intel.

AMD designs a great processor. I have recognized that since the day of the TBird. I even took one home. The crap Via chipset's lack of comparison to BX nixed that decision, and this same factor continues to penalize the marketability of AMD processors. And yeah, I know NF4 isn't unworkable, but if you keep the Intel stuff above water it's going to work, and nothing else is that compatible and dependable. There are no marketing measures you can take that obviate this concern.

larva said:

2) Intel chipsets are uniformly excellent. All others are at best intermittently usable..

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well i wouldnt call the 810 or 820/840 realy exclent thanks to the mth problems

the amd mpx chipset is old and provides a stable platform so i prosume the chipsets for the opteron would be equaly usable/stable

The ill-fated memory translation hub (MTH) was a device to allow i820 to operate with PC133 SDRAM memory. 810 had (excellent) built-in PC133 support and 840 was RDRAM-only (dual channel, at that), and as such MTH is not a pertinent issue.

This is a great example of an actual marketing shortcoming. Intel decided RDRAM was the way to go long before it offered its users any advantage. For this they expected users to pay money. Not surprisingly, customer revolt led to the MTH band-aid. This is symptom, not problem. Choose DDR SDRAM in the first place (or even PC133), and it never happens.

It would later prove that RDRAM was the performance leader, but never offered the user enough advantage to offset cost. Intel's attempt to bend the market to its will was a well known disaster, and serves as an example of just how badly you must botch product planning and marketing in order for it to be the real issue. AMD's situation is not that it is putting its eggs in the wrong basket, but rather that it can neither afford nor construct a basket that holds the the wealth of platform-enabling goodies that Intel's does. When you don't sell the same product, you shouldn't expect the same consumer reaction.