Opteron low end. Why?

[whatever2003]

This isn't a thread to bash AMD or opterons as a whole. Don't post those types of things in my thread. And they ARE selling many opterons. Who bought 10000 for their new supercomputer? Who just bought 2000 for their new supercomputer?

Yes, that is pretty much all there is. They sold some to supercomputers. It is estimated that all other purchases, supercomputers excluded, amount to less than 5,000. There was an article recently about that, I cannot find link now.
Think about this - Intel sells about 150,000 Xeons quarterly. For the Q2 of 2003 Intel reported a net income of $850 millions, AMD reported some $140 million loss. Good enough?
In fact a total AMD sales/revenue are $645 million for Q2 of 2003, which is less than Intel's profit.
More, in the whole 30-year history AMD amounted to less profit than Intel does in two-week period now.
Let's be serious, Opteron is nothing but hype, and in the sales, where it counts, it is no better than Itanium, meaning nothing really.

 

[Tyranos]

This isn't a thread to bash AMD or opterons as a whole. Don't post those types of things in my thread.

Whatever the financial situations of each company are, read above, and read the thread subject and body.

 

[whatever2003]

I just answered about the existence of Opteron 140 and 142, as you said rightfully. The existence of these processors is absurd, it is certainly for no other purpose than hype, since they are useless waste of money.
To understand why you simply need to examine what AMD does regularly:
1. Paper release of processors.
2. Hype of Hammer than goes for years already.
3. Disastrous business model.
Once you realize that then the marketing of useless hardware like Opteron 140, 142 does not seem that strange.

 

[Tyranos]

Although, the 240's and 242's weren't as useless when they came out. To my knowledge, the mp bartons weren't out yet. So, an opteron 242 took the place of an mp2800 barton for large servers.

 

[whatever2003]

Yes, 2xx series make sense because at least you can expect the price to go down and being able to scale them on dual board, though frankly with these prices I rather not.
I mean the best bet is simply to wait the release of Athlon 64 and get 64-bit CPU for less money. Hopefully.

 

[Hua Luo Han]

useless waste of money ?

if u have enuff $$$ to spend, nothing is considered useless waste of money.

 

[whatever2003]

if u have enuff $$$ to spend, nothing is considered useless waste of money.

?

With that logic one can burn it as well. The fact is that Barton XP 2500 @3200 will beat Opteron 140 and it is for a third of the price of Opteron 140. Motherboards for Opteron are all in excess of $200. Why would anybody spend that much money, $260+, for a processor that is not any better than the current XP line? To burn money? For a 64-bit hype? That is the only reason as far as I can see.

 

[Tyranos]

Yuck, ebay has turned into one big extention for little greedy businesses. The prices for opterons are insanely idiotic, far worse than newegg. One person had an opteron 240 for 380usd (on their business website as well). I asked if they knew oems were going for 250 (supposed to be 220). The reason for the $130 premium? "its retail boxed version". I wonder if they comprehend that their prices are a "tiny" bit optimistic. I wonder if they have a clue why their processors don't sell. It makes me want to puke in a bag and send it to their doorstep.

 

[whatever2003]

Well, I laugh at that. I invite anybody who has Opteron 240 or 242 to show me "everyday" benchmarks and I'll display my $90 Barton at 2.2 GHz benchmarks. Let's laugh together.

 

[Mark Larson]

So a company with better sales is inherently better?

I don't make the connection.

 

[dropadrop]

Well, I laugh at that. I invite anybody who has Opteron 240 or 242 to show me "everyday" benchmarks and I'll display my $90 Barton at 2.2 GHz benchmarks. Let's laugh together.

Just out of curiosity, what is your problem with opterons? Seems you are bashing them as much as you can...

Not that you don't have your right for an opinion, but it almost seems like an obsession. It's a complete new architechture, so you could give it a moment to mature. We allready saw benchmarks with an opteron at 2.2ghz beating a 3.2ghz P4, so if amd manages to scale the speeds the architecture definatly seems promising.

The prices are very high for now, but that's normal for a new design. For some purposes the prices are allready cheap.

 

[whatever2003]

We allready saw benchmarks with an opteron at 2.2ghz beating a 3.2ghz P4

In your dream since that kind of Opteron does not exist yet. Beside if we are talking about overclocking then 3.2C can be overclocked to well over 3.2 GHz as well.
And 3.2C is readily available to you if you have money to buy it, 2.2 GHz Opteron or FX-51/53 might be available on Sept 23 or later, nobody knows for sure. Nobody has benchmarks on that one, or if there are some, these are benchmarks of the paper processor, meaning nobody can really verify them, so anything can be claimed.
Opterons that are on the market at this point, and of some interest, are 244 and 246. Whether they can beat Pentium 3.2 or Barton 3200 on a desktop use, I don't know since not many of you have it and benchmarks are extremely rare. There are some but they are made in completely uneven setups where Opteron setups cost many thousands of $s.

 

[azns_kickass]

I agree with the views of the thread creater. Frankly, I think Opterons, for 32bit applications, have woeful price/performance. Why any desktop user will consider one over an AXP or P4-C, I really don't know. 64bit server applications, I can understand companies using Opterons for that purpose, but as a desktop chip? At those prices? No thank you!

Ditto to Athlon 64s. Until the prices will drop down to humane levels, I ain't going anywhere near them.

 

[]-[itman]

First off, according to AMDZone benchmarks, the Opteron at 2ghz(3200+) was able to beat the P4 at 3.2ghz in 14/16 tests. Even at 1.8ghz the chip was able to hold it's own quite well against the p4 and was able to beat it in a few tests. Also, you have to keep in mind that those prices are for the server version of the 64-bit chip, they're not meant for the desktop user. Lastly, the new chips coming out are a new technology, the main draw of the chips is not neccisarily of their first offerings, though many will go for those, but for what will come from the technology maturing. What was the benefit of the P4 when it first came out? Nothing, but look where's it's gone to now. You can't look at the first few chips processor and judge the entire line by it.