Intel seriously undercuttign AMD's prices in Dual Core arena

[Bigjakkstaffa]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1820856,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

Intel cheaper than AMD - even a couple of years ago no one would have believed it

--Jakk:t

[Midknyte]

It's been known for a while. Intel will scoop on this because money is made on the low-middle market, not on the high end. AMD needs to seriously look at their marketing strategy. Kudos to the chip engineers, a razzie to the ad men.

[BadDriver]

There are pros and cons to both. With the Intel you'll need a board and that offsets some of the cost of the AMD for a person already running a 939 pin board.

Then according to Tom's AMD is the better performer. The people that jump on the dual core early aren't going to care about price, new tech heads never worry about price. ( That must be nice. :rolleyes: ).

Brand loyalty is also going to play a big role. I buy AMD and always have so given the fact that the AMD chip is going to cost more would only mean I would have to wait a little longer to buy one.

If I were going to start fresh, I would read allot and then most likely still buy the AMD. Thats cause I am a big fanboy. :D

[Midknyte]

Unfortunately for AMD. there are a lot of people that only care about price.

Just because something is dual core ain't gonna mean jack to Johnny Newb. $500 is way too much for a processor. How many "Enthusiasts" are willing to pay over $500 just for a cpu? How many people are going to look for complete Dell PCs for $500?

Remember the movie "Ants"? It's like the ants versus the crickets. Sure the crickets are bigger and stronger, but the ants have the superior numbers. AMD has a chance to kill with a superior product, but alas they are aiming the gun at the wrong target.

[RamonGTP]

If your average consumer read, or even know tomshardware existed, AMD would probably not have a problem, dispite the price premium. Unfortunatly, its us techies that are "in the know" and your average consumer is still left thinking that Intel is king, and now, as far as their concerned, Intel is king, and is cheaper.

[BadDriver]

Yeah, I guess Joe Newb buying a pre built will buy the Intel machine.

The prices should be more realistic before I even think about a dual. I just bought a 3700+ 2 weeks ago. I don't think even I could convince the wife it is outdated just yet.:D

Maybe next year at this time I'll have a look, maybe not. I have a feeling most of the early dual processors will be sold on sites like newegg and not direct to the prebuilt market.

I'd still buy the Athlon because like I said I am a believer.(fanboy) :p

[BadDriver]

Ahem!! Cough!

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-lambastes-Intel-s-dual-core-processor-2574.shtml

[Midknyte]

The argument is not performance. AMD is definitely better. The point is who is going to sell more, Intel or AMD? Intel will sell more for sure because of price and name recognition. If AMD wants to compete, they need to come out with an X2 that is more reasonably priced.

[RamonGTP]

I try to do my part to increase AMD's hold in the market. All my systems are AMD based with the exception of my laptop. My boss at work is an Intel guy, but I spam him all the time with reviews saying how AMD is the better processor as of now. I'm slowly starting to get him to suggest AMD machines to clients, not necessarily over Intel ones quite yet, but atleast give the customer the option. He went from not using them at all, to recommending them for gaming systems, but still didn't trust them in a business environment, especially for servers. So then I had to keep sending him links that put the Opteron up against Zeon.

We just got a client that needs a fairly beefy server, boss came up to me just today and wanted me to build 2 systems (on paper) with pricing and everything. One a Zeon, and the other a Opteron. Prices were pretty much the same, within $100. Gave him the quotes and put my backing behind the Opteron system. Surprisingly he also seemed to like it better, so who knows. Ultimatly the customer will make the final decision.

[bob05]

Originally posted by BadDriver
There are pros and cons to both. With the Intel you'll need a board and that offsets some of the cost of the AMD for a person already running a 939 pin board.


True, but with the Intel you are left with a brand new board (with a presumably newer chipset) and possibly new features, as oppose to keeping your (older) socket 939 motherboard, which will soon not support the faster socket 939 CPU's or new cores. Given the choice between the two for the exact same price, I'd pick a new board and CPU.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

The 939 has plenty of life left in it yet, its the 754 which is a dead duck

--Jakk:t

[BadDriver]

Originally posted by bob05
True, but with the Intel you are left with a brand new board (with a presumably newer chipset) and possibly new features, as oppose to keeping your (older) socket 939 motherboard, which will soon not support the faster socket 939 CPU's or new cores. Given the choice between the two for the exact same price, I'd pick a new board and CPU.

If you have a decent 939 board you wouldn't need to worry about it, the Athlon duals will run on it. The Athlon is a better performer and runs on standard DDR. The Pentium needs DDR2 which most likey brings new more expensive ram into the picture.

The AMD users will stay AMD. The people who love Pentiums will buy a Pentium even if they see the Pentium isn't as strong. That is the way it works. The last link I posted claims that the Pentium isn't even a true dual. Of course the claim was made by AMD.

Another thing I have heard is that AMD is slicing the cores for their duals from the same piece of silicon and Intel isn't.

The rumors are flying fast and hard. I can't wait to see what the real facts are. It shouldn't be a long wait.

[RamonGTP]

Originally posted by bob05
True, but with the Intel you are left with a brand new board (with a presumably newer chipset) and possibly new features, as oppose to keeping your (older) socket 939 motherboard, which will soon not support the faster socket 939 CPU's or new cores. Given the choice between the two for the exact same price, I'd pick a new board and CPU.

All you'd need is a bios update to support any newer socket 939 cpu's and new cores, not a new board. Chipset isn't much of a concern with Athlon64 boards since half of it resides on the CPU itself.

[RamonGTP]

I need to correct myself... With S939, true enough that EVENTUALLY, you'll need to upgrade the board, that is when AMD moves to DDRII since they are physically different than DDR. However, even with that, the number of times you're forced to buy a new board with AMD vs Intel is a lot less with AMD. For example, Dual Core processors will work fine on current S939 boards with a bios update.