AMD's marketshare did still manage to go up

Despite the onset of the major price war, and Intel sabotaging its own
sales and inventory levels, along with those of AMD's by pre-hyping the
Core 2 processors, AMD still managed to get a 1% point increase in
marketshare in this past quarter. That's according to Mercury Research.
There are other research firms that will report later too, which will
have their own data.

International Business Times - AMD Market Share Increases in Midst of
Competition
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/2006...arketshare.htm

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:46:47 GMT, "Pete" wrote:
True. However, Intel's new chips are more powerful, run cooler, use less
power, do more work per cycle, than AMD's line.

More work per clock cycle, yes. They are more powerful at the
high-end too. However they don't really run cooler/use less power
(same thing), and on a price/performance basis it's pretty much a
wash. Currently Intel's cheapest Core 2 Duo chip, the E6300, is
supposed to cost somewhat more than an AMD Athlon64 X2 4200 and less
than an X2 4600. The performance of the chip? Somewhat more than an
X2 4200 and less than an X2 4600. Also, I say it's "supposed to cost"
that much because the chips are damned near impossible to find unless
you buy a Dell.

Where Intel has the upper hand is in the high-end. AMD's top chips,
the X2 5000+, slots in somewhere ahead of an Intel E6400 but behind
the E6600, and it's priced as such. However beyond that point AMD
doesn't really have anything to compete. Intel's E6600, E6700 and
X6800 all beat out the fastest AMD has to offer and their FX-62 is
rather stupidly priced. However at this stage we're really reaching
the outside edge. Profits might be high here, but the volumes are
very slim.

AMD has nothing new planned
as far as I know (in the short term). As far as I can see, Intel will
clobber AMD in the coming quarters. This should make INTC a good buy. Any
thoughts??

Intel just announced their worst quarter in years and they don't
expect any big improvements for the next quarter either. Unit
shipments of Core 2 Duo chips are going to be sufficiently low this
quarter that they won't have much affect. The 4P server version of
the chip is still not available and AMD seems to still being doing
fine in this area.

Long story short, don't look for anything too grandiose from Intel
before the end of the year. Now next year could be tough for AMD. By
that time Intel will have their 4P server chips available, they'll
have their 4-core processors (dual-dual core? they aren't really
quad-core) out and, most importantly, they'll finally be shipping
decent quantities of their Core 2 Duo chips for desktops and laptops.
However through to the end of this year AMD has a bit of breathing
room.

In any case, as far as stock prices are concerned, I'm not expert
there. However I certainly wouldn't bet my fortunes (slim though they
may be) on INTC (or AMD for that matter!). When it comes to PC
processors, this year things look good for consumers and bad for
investors.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

Tony Hill wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:46:47 GMT, "Pete" wrote:
True. However, Intel's new chips are more powerful, run cooler, use less
power, do more work per cycle, than AMD's line.

More work per clock cycle, yes. They are more powerful at the
high-end too. However they don't really run cooler/use less power
(same thing), and on a price/performance basis it's pretty much a
wash. Currently Intel's cheapest Core 2 Duo chip, the E6300, is
supposed to cost somewhat more than an AMD Athlon64 X2 4200 and less
than an X2 4600. The performance of the chip? Somewhat more than an
X2 4200 and less than an X2 4600. Also, I say it's "supposed to cost"
that much because the chips are damned near impossible to find unless
you buy a Dell.

Even with Dell, you might have trouble finding them. If you go configure
any of their Core 2 desktops, you'll find that delivery dates are
expected to be in October, but that it could slip further than that too.
Same thing at HP.

Where Intel has the upper hand is in the high-end. AMD's top chips,
the X2 5000+, slots in somewhere ahead of an Intel E6400 but behind
the E6600, and it's priced as such. However beyond that point AMD
doesn't really have anything to compete. Intel's E6600, E6700 and
X6800 all beat out the fastest AMD has to offer and their FX-62 is
rather stupidly priced. However at this stage we're really reaching
the outside edge. Profits might be high here, but the volumes are
very slim.

It looks like of the Conroes getting out, most of them are of the 2MB
cache variety. E6400 and below. The 4MB upper end variety are not very
easy to find. This is based on looking at pricewatch.

Intel just announced their worst quarter in years and they don't
expect any big improvements for the next quarter either. Unit
shipments of Core 2 Duo chips are going to be sufficiently low this
quarter that they won't have much affect. The 4P server version of
the chip is still not available and AMD seems to still being doing
fine in this area.

The introduction of Core 2 seems to be making AMD stronger, ironically.
IBM of course just announced an expanded Opteron lineup, this time with
Xccelerated Memory Technology! ;-)

But also it seems like Dell is getting ready to put AMD and Nvidia into
upto 20% of its desktops, by Sept 2006. Then in 2007, introduction of a
whole bunch of Turion & Sempron laptops.

The message seems to be that OEMs are more confident than ever about AMD.

Yousuf Khan