AMD To Change Focus Away From Desktop Chips

[agenda2005]

This is getting interesting as Hector Ruiz is indirectly accepting defeat of their flagship FX60 and the upcoming FX-62 even before Conroe appears.

Dena Point (CA) - During a meeting of financial and technology analysts, AMD chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz told an audience he would be willing to pare down his company's consumer market segments, including high-performance desktop PCs, in order to devote more energy to growing the company's lucrative, high-quantity commercial processor market.

Details here for those who reflect.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/06/am...uld_be_traded/

The most interesting thing about the news is that Hector Ruiz is basically BSing the enthusiast who spend tons of money, thousands of dollar buying the FX chip as can be descened from this statement.

What determines ASP for these markets for AMD, Ruiz went on to explain, is the various mix of products it sells within that space. The biggest impact on total ASP, he said, is the mix of products sold within the respective markets. "As you look at, for example, a gaming chip that sells for $1,000, or a server product that sells for $1,000," he remarked, "then [compare] the mix of those products relative to the value space [where AMD is strong] that might sell for $60-75. That's a huge impact on the overall ASP. So one of the emphasis that we have right now is to gain, as rapidly as we can, on those spaces where ASP improvement can be very rapid. For us, the #1 place is the server. Our growth on the server will be a factor for some quarters to come, and we think that as we make that a bigger part of our portfolio, we will drive the average ASP mix up."

What Hector Ruiz is basically saying is that they get little from the sale of FX, but most from Sempron and Server Opteron chips. So it's totally okay to abaadon those sector(FX and high clock A64s) and concentrate on more valuable ones(Opteron and Sempron).

This is a pathetic time to be an AMD fanboy. thank goodness I'm not a fanboy.
Well FX-60, X2 4800+, 4400+ X2 and the likes are going to have a hard time selling at high prices when Conroe lands, especially the E6600 with Dual core at 2.4GHZ, 4MB L2 cache and 1066MHZ FSB. E6600 at $329 is basically going to equal if not hammer the FX-60 that sell for over $1000 now.

Good luck AMD, you've had you good days milking money from guys selling those CPU at skyrocketted prices.

No problem, bi-directional Hypertransport will still give you lead over Intel old FSB technology in 2,4 and 8 way servers. While Semprons are doing well in China, India and even here in the US, since you can get a complete system with Sepron for $199 after rebate at CompUSA.

[Pinnacle]

Interesting

[thunderstruck!]

Very true. AMD has had a nice run with s939, but I fear these little performance jumps for a huge cost, like am2, will not be very appealing for the long run. Intel might finally have a lead.

[ben805]

Very true. AMD has had a nice run with s939, but I fear these little performance jumps for a huge cost, like am2, will not be very appealing for the long run. Intel might finally have a lead.

performance jumps? there's an AM2 article at tomshardware and from what I've read there's no gain whatsoever to go from s939 to AM2 platform, the new socket clock about the same, their DDR2 benchmark wasn't impressive at all, so untill we see much tighter timing or higher clock otherwise DD2 ain't going to outperform DDR1 anytime soon, beside...other than for benchmarking purposes we're not lacking in memory bandwidth, and there's very little (if any) productive applications or games could take advantage of the extra bandwidth. For now I'm just going to wait and see how everything turns out but I do not see myself dumping the s939 for AM2 anytime soon, s939 and DDR1 are as mature as they can be, I have a feeling the AM2 platform ain't gonna last too long either and of course...all this mumbo jumbo is just IMO.

by the way....interesting read but, I think this thread belongs to the news section.

[Major]

http://news.com.com/Strike%20three%2....dailytech.com

[dogsx2]

by the way....interesting read but, I think this thread belongs to the news section.

Yep..Yep..Yep

[agenda2005]

Very true. AMD has had a nice run with s939, but I fear these little performance jumps for a huge cost, like am2, will not be very appealing for the long run. Intel might finally have a lead.

If AM2 performs better than S939, trust AMD! They will get them higher PR rating and not the same rating as S939 at the same clock speed. Look at Athlon XP at 2.2GHz was rated 3200+ and A64 at 2.0GHz have the same 3200+ rating.
That was simply because of the improvements that A64 brought. By all indication if DDR2 will bring any improvement to AM2, then the PR rating would have been increased at the same clockspeed.

by the way....interesting read but, I think this thread belongs to the news section.

Sorry Mods can move the thread to the news section.

[dinos22]

much easier to concentrate on cash cows I guess.

i don't mind moving to Intel from all the goodies we've been seeing lately.....bring it on..........the only fanboyism i have is with performance....don't care what stickers are on the box

[agenda2005]

http://news.com.com/Strike%20three%2....dailytech.com

Major,
Those are the Server and Sempron(Consumer market) sectors that AMD is making good gains and trying to focus their attention on. Which is a good strategy, but as for those of you that buys $1000 FX chips, they longer give a damn about you. That is the message that Hector Ruiz is sending out to you guys.
Overall AMD is making money from volume sales from Sempron and Opteron, but too many RMA and low volume for enthusiast chips are just not interesting to them anymore.
Hector Ruiz even mentioned that they are better off using some of their silicon to produce Semprons rather than FX chips that won't sell.

"If we find a place where we might have a challenge in meeting some of the demands," Ruiz concluded, "[it] might be in some segments of the consumer space. For example, a lot of the products that we use to serve the very high end of the desktop market might be products that might be better used and redirected to serve segments of commercial or server. In that sense, we might be tight in those regards. But it will be a year in which the balance between demand and capacity will be carefully managed quarter by quarter."

Don't be suprise when they AMD themselves start to remark some of those excess inventory of FX-60 to X2 3800+ X2 4400+ and selling them damn chip. Remember the remark 3500+ Newcastles that overclock to FX-55 level sometimes ago.

[ozzimark]

What Hector Ruiz is basically saying is that they get little from the sale of FX, but most from Sempron and Server Opteron chips. So it's totally okay to abaadon those sector(FX and high clock A64s) and concentrate on more valuable ones(Opteron and Sempron).

This is a pathetic time to be an AMD fanboy. thank goodness I'm not a fanboy.

you put it as a bad thing. why? if this pans out, all the chips that would normally go into the high end line will go into cheaper, more value oriented chips, and we'll be back to days similar to the 2500+ barton, no? if anything, it's as good a time as ever to be excited

[agenda2005]

you put it as a bad thing. why? if this pans out, all the chips that would normally go into the high end line will go into cheaper, more value oriented chips, and we'll be back to days similar to the 2500+ barton, no? if anything, it's as good a time as ever to be excited

Well, its good news for us consumers as I explain in post #9.

My reference to the fanboys having a bad time is about their attitude that AMD is always better than Intel, irrepective of the performance number.

Unfortunately, AMD is about bussiness and don't give a sh*t about any fanboy.
It looks like they are going to loss out in the desktop battle which has contributed largely to their marketting campaign. Now that they know that its going to be a lost battle in that arena, which they are indirectly admitting too.

The tone we are now hearing is that they dont give a F**K about those fanboys who have been their supporters through their good runs with A64.

[mongoled]

Hey agenda2005,

you seem to be talking alot more abt the 'fanboys' then the reason for posting this article. What ever will be will be, I see no point in all the fanboy talk other than stiring up emotions. XS to its credit has remained impartial when it comes to AMD v Intel, ofcourse fanboys exist here, but I believe I am correct in saying tht the majority of peeps here care mainly abt performance, rather than who is giving them the performance.

So id like to see less talk abt fanboys and more talk abt how this is going to effect the average XS member

[agenda2005]

Hey agenda2005,

you seem to be talking alot more abt the 'fanboys' then the reason for posting this article. What ever will be will be, I see no point in all the fanboy talk other than stiring up emotions. XS to its credit has remained impartial when it comes to AMD v Intel, ofcourse fanboys exist here, but I believe I am correct in saying tht the majority of peeps here care mainly abt performance, rather than who is giving them the performance.

So id like to see less talk abt fanboys and more talk abt how this is going to effect the average XS member

Thanks for your thought. I own an AMD system(see my sig) and previously owned an AXP 2500+ as well. I know a lot of people here on XS care more about performance/$, performance/watt etc. I'm not in anyway referring to anybody been a fanboy, but soon, it sure will suck to be an AMD fanboy if you happen to be one now.

[Vapor]

This is extremely interesting.....I don't doubt it, but I'd like to hear it from somewhere other than THG just to verify.

That said, I guess now would be the time to sell my 4400+ and buy stock? (hey, if Hector wants to only make money and not give the people what they want, I'll play his game)

[mesyn191]

This is getting interesting as Hector Ruiz is indirectly accepting defeat of their flagship FX60 and the upcoming FX-62 even before Conroe appears.



Details here for those who reflect.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/06/am...uld_be_traded/

The most interesting thing about the news is that Hector Ruiz is basically BSing the enthusiast who spend tons of money, thousands of dollar buying the FX chip as can be descened from this statement.




What Hector Ruiz is basically saying is that they get little from the sale of FX, but most from Sempron and Server Opteron chips. So it's totally okay to abaadon those sector(FX and high clock A64s) and concentrate on more valuable ones(Opteron and Sempron).

Uh, all you did was put words in his mouth...

All that can be gotten from the above quotes is what we've known now for over a year, AMD is concentrating on server parts ATM to increase ASP. That is totally different from abandoning the high end and desktop chips altogether. Not once does he even mention anything about Conroe...

Mods please close topic, OP is prob a Intel fanboi posting flame bait....

[mesyn191]

performance jumps? there's an AM2 article at tomshardware and from what I've read there's no gain whatsoever to go from s939 to AM2 platform, the new socket clock about the same, their DDR2 benchmark wasn't impressive at all, so untill we see much tighter timing or higher clock otherwise DD2 ain't going to outperform DDR1 anytime soon, beside...other than for benchmarking purposes we're not lacking in memory bandwidth, and there's very little (if any) productive applications or games could take advantage of the extra bandwidth. For now I'm just going to wait and see how everything turns out but I do not see myself dumping the s939 for AM2 anytime soon, s939 and DDR1 are as mature as they can be, I have a feeling the AM2 platform ain't gonna last too long either and of course...all this mumbo jumbo is just IMO.

by the way....interesting read but, I think this thread belongs to the news section.

Um, Tom benched beta hardware on DDR2 667 RAM, AMD recommends DDR2 800 RAM to get a significant increase in performance over DDR400. Anyone remember when K7 was first launched? Review sites said it sucked cuz they benched beta hardware, but of course when the final stuff came to market it was a totally different story.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...ew/default.asp

DDR2 doesn't need tighter timings, its like RDRAM, you want to push the clockspeed as much as possible....

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=413&num=4

OP's commentary on what Ruiz said is total FUD...

[agenda2005]

Uh, all you did was put words in his mouth...

All that can be gotten from the above quotes is what we've known now for over a year, AMD is concentrating on server parts ATM to increase ASP. That is totally different from abandoning the high end and desktop chips altogether. Not once does he even mention anything about Conroe...

Mods please close topic, OP is prob a Intel fanboi posting flame bait....

If you only have the time to check my threads/posts, most of them has been directed at exposing Intel's anti-computitive behaviour.
For example, see the thread I started here

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=68501

If I'm an Intel fanboy, then common wisdom should prove you otherwise.

I'm no fanboy and I have stated it several times on this forum. I am a "fanboy" (if you like it that way) of good performance/$ commodity. Period.

[mesyn191]

Well, its good news for us consumers as I explain in post #9.

My reference to the fanboys having a bad time is about their attitude that AMD is always better than Intel, irrepective of the performance number.

Unfortunately, AMD is about bussiness and don't give a sh*t about any fanboy.
It looks like they are going to loss out in the desktop battle which has contributed largely to their marketting campaign. Now that they know that its going to be a lost battle in that arena, which they are indirectly admitting too.

The tone we are now hearing is that they dont give a F**K about those fanboys who have been their supporters through their good runs with A64.

They've said nothing like that at all, you're trying to read so much into what they're saying that you've become delusional.

AMD and Intel switch places all the time when it comes to being the performance leader due to differences in thier process and design schedules/releases. Sometimes AMD is on top, sometimes its Intel. I expect AMD to behind Intel when Conroe comes out much like last time when the 2.4C came out vs. AthlonXP though perhaps they might not do so poorly this time around by focusing on improving thier ASP's and getting FAB 36 online. Eventually Conroe will come to its EOL too, and I'd expect AMD to start to get a lead on Intel once again when that happens a few years down the road...

[mesyn191]

If you only have the time to check my threads/posts, most of them has been directed at exposing Intel's anti-computitive behaviour.
For example, see the thread I started here

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=68501

If I'm an Intel fanboy, then common wisdom should prove you otherwise.

I'm no fanboy and I have stated it several times on this forum. I am a "fanboy" (if you like it that way) of good performance/$ commodity. Period.

Normally I give people the benefit of the doubt, but the stuff you said in the first post of this thread makes me question whatever else you've ever posted, its so out of line with what Ruiz said that I don't see how you could ever have come to your conclusions...

[ben805]

who give a crap what AMD or Intel has to say....I mean really, just bring whatever they got on the table and let the numbers do the talking, until then...whomever make the best stuff(and affortable ) get my money! competition will only benefits consumer anyway, case closed.

[Vapor]

Some people invest in these companies....that's why it matters

[mesyn191]

who give a crap what AMD or Intel has to say....I mean really, just bring whatever they got on the table and let the numbers do the talking, until then...whomever make the best stuff(and affortable ) get my money! competition will only benefits consumer anyway, case closed

What are these forums for if not discussion?

Since all this hardware (conroe, AM2, etc.) is vapor at the moment anyways what else can we do with it but speculate about it...

nice of you to totally ignore what I posted above in response to your ealier comments too BTW...

[jsriolo]

I don't think that he is in any way admitting defeat. If you read any article and finish it thinking that someone representing a company would be allowed to say anything negative then you should read it again. Actually, for this specific case, I can't find anything bad about AMD focusing on its server parts because that is where the Athlon64 came from in the first place. Hell, I have an Opteron in my machine now! They can develop that as much as they want and I'll be happy.

Going off topic a little bit it seems that each market segment has traditionally been a cut down version of another one. Laptops have been cut down desktop CPU's and desktops are cut down server CPUs. AMD would seem to be continuing this strategy which has clearly been working for them while Intel are the ones deviating from this model with an ass-backwards mobile based architecture. Weather or not this strategy works out for intel remains to be seen, but AMD certainly does need some competition to force them to release some better products. The amount of innovation lately has been a bit behind what it could be with compeditive products from both companies.

[Shadowmage]

Anyways, does it matter? Opterons are cheaper and overclock better.

[ben805]

What are these forums for if not discussion?

Since all this hardware (conroe, AM2, etc.) is vapor at the moment anyways what else can we do with it but speculate about it...

nice of you to totally ignore what I posted above in response to your ealier comments too BTW...

what you'd posted were available on those and some other sites already, they mean absolutely nothing other than midnight entertainment and stir up senseless discussion, heh....speculate, fantasize, Whatever floats your boat man. Have fun and keep up with the discussion....I've got some real world hardwares to test and overclock, don't even know why I bother to waste my time to reply....stupid me.