Would you buy an Opteron SMP board for enthuthiasts?

[chew*]

It's not my call, I am the director of marketing, not product management (they make all of the product decisions.)

Let me give you 2 scenarios where this could hurt us:

1. Some bonehead decides to overclock a server because he has figured out how to do it. Server crashes. Bad. Data lost, database corrupted. CIO comes to find out what happend. "Servers shouldn't allow overclocking. Why in the hell were we buying consumer products? Get these things out of here now."

2. Some person is intel biased and is trying to talk their company into spending more for intel. They point to the fact that Opteron can be overclocked as "proof" that this is a gamer platform and not a "real server."


The potential sales to consumers could never compensate for the potential damage to the brand. Every morning I walk into my office and try to convince the world that there is a better choice for server platforms. Anything that detracts from that will not help me meet my goals.

You have to look at this from a pure revenue and market perspective. I understand that everyone wants to overclock my parts. That meets your goals, not mine. There is no way that selling Opteron into the enthusiast market could allow us to grow share. We have run the numbers, it just won't work.

Let me give you a scenario that is hurting right now.......

1. Intel wins all 3d bencmarks............intel fanboy's chant AMD is teh sux......consumers that are easlily persuaded and not very budget minded listen or they go buy some castrated intel part that is indeed slower just based on some number they will never acchieve. Unfortunately intel has you on thread count......match the threads and in those benches we can be somewhat competitive again etc even a single magny cours.

2. intel is allowing ocing on a select board geared for enthusiasts......Due to the fact it OC's all the cruchers are opting for it over magnycours. Although this market share you belive to be small it is much larger than you can imagine.

I see a rather simple solution......a new SKU for desktops....with a server grade part "rebranded" that will not work in a server environment.......no ECC support......call it a stop gap for now. It surely would not be first time a server grade part was trickled down to desktops.........