AMD: no more price cuts coming

[easyg]

Very interesting article at CRN. According to the piece, AMD has no further plans to cut prices of Athlon and FX processors. CRN quotes Gary Bixler, AMD's director of marketing for North America, as saying:

"We've tried to be very transparent on price actions. Things got crazy last year, but this year we made it a point to provide the channel with what it wants, which is a predictable business, a stable business. We communicated that price move well in advance to our channel partners. We haven't announced our next price move yet, so take that at face-value -- another one is not imminent," he said.

Effectively, AMD is announcing that the price war is over (at least on its end). Intel, for its part, could continue to apply pressure with another round of cuts after 7/22/07.

http://www.crn.com/white-box/201001613

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

If AMD doesn't come up with a product to compete with Intel's Core 2 they will have to give their processors away. Or, are they already doing that?

 

[o1die]

I disagree. Amd doesn't have to give away anything. The Dell deal to sell amd systems at walmart is key to more people using amd cpus. The average Joe doesn't care about benchmarks. They just want a cpu that can handle vista and is affordable.

 

[bumster]

I disagree. Amd doesn't have to give away anything. The Dell deal to sell amd systems at walmart is key to more people using amd cpus. The average Joe doesn't care about benchmarks. They just want a cpu that can handle vista and is affordable.

So very true! Up until only about 3 or 4 years ago AMD was also fighting the question "Who is AMD and are they compatible and reliable?" from your typical PC buyer. AMD pretty much kept from advertising heavily in order to keep their prices competitive but in the long run it may have hurt them more than it helped.

Time will tell.

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

I disagree. Amd doesn't have to give away anything. The Dell deal to sell amd systems at walmart is key to more people using amd cpus. The average Joe doesn't care about benchmarks. They just want a cpu that can handle vista and is affordable.

At the prices AMD is selling CPUs to Dell, they are giving them away. Getting your "name" to the masses is not worth much if you fail to make enough money to keep competitive operations going. Profitability drives development.

 

[YO_KID37]

At the prices AMD is selling CPUs to Dell, they are giving them away. Getting your "name" to the masses is not worth much if you fail to make enough money to keep competitive operations going. Profitability drives development.

You mean aggressive competition drives innovation and development. Intel was making profit on their POS Netburst, it was neither competitive or an Innovative CPU. Profit only drives company and investor morale, thats why Intel didn't innovate the CORE arc until AMD started DELETED it's server sales(Big Money).

 

[chunkymonster]

I'm not exactly sure what the point of this thread is. According to the same article, AMD dropped prices 33% last week and there were numerous articles stating that the retail prices were actually less than tray prices. Aside from that, this forum has gone over the "price drop strategy" before and how price drops are used to unload older stock to make room for newer products; especially given that Barcelona and Phenom are slated to be released 3Q07 and 1Q08.

And, AMD is not "giving" anything away.

 

[Wombat2]

My *** there wont be more price cuts :lol: By AMDs own admission K8 will still be making up the bulk of their shipments deep into 2008.

They will cut prices again when Intel launches their 45 nm CPUs.

If you believe anything an AMD or Intel marketer drivels out you have only yourself to blame

 

[jaguarskx]

The key word is "imminent" meaning not anytime soon. I'm sure once their Holy Grail is release, the production of current AM2 CPUs will be slowly phased out and price cuts will ensure they will sell off their existing inventory at that point in time.

 

[mundungus]

I Agree. Wombat's ***.

And I'll state my theory again that AMD would be in a lot better shape today if they had axed their prices before core 2 was released. They knew what intel had for several months before the release. They could have tempted lots more people to go with their chips and be locked into their upgrade path if they had halved the prices 6 weeks before core 2 came out. They just ended up not selling any chips and lowering the prices to that point anyway.

We'll see what happens when barcelona mature's a bit.

 

[koolaidkitten]

So very true! Up until only about 3 or 4 years ago AMD was also fighting the question "Who is AMD and are they compatible and reliable?" from your typical PC buyer. AMD pretty much kept from advertising heavily in order to keep their prices competitive but in the long run it may have hurt them more than it helped.

Time will tell.

I kinda have to disagree. It doesn't matter as much as you used to before Intel decided to drop the "Pentium" name. That damn name meant the world to Non-PC heads. Intel beat into our brains that the Intel Pentium II III IV Inside were the end all be all of PC's and anything less is crap.
Ever since they dropped that name things seem to have changed, people are now more on this manufacturer tip. Now its, I have to get a DELL or a Gateway or its crap.
Now stuff could have a Cyrix nobody would care as long as Dell or Gateway made it.

Just a added note, I think its a bad idea for AMD to drop Athlon myself. IMO Athlon has made itself a pretty decent name for itself over the years. Its not pentium status, but I still wouldnt abandon it from a PR standpoint myself.

 

[Gh0stDrag0n]

You mean aggressive competition drives innovation and development. Intel was making profit on their POS Netburst, it was neither competitive or an Innovative CPU. Profit only drives company and investor morale, thats why Intel didn't innovate the CORE arc until AMD started molesting and raping it's server sales(Big Money).

Without funds you can not sustain aggressive competition, innovation, or development. Invester backlash has been the downfall of many. I'm not cutting AMD, they need to be profitable. AMD going from the "big money" to the budget Dell Wall-Mart special is not going to pull in enough funds to compete with the Intel powerhouse.
BTW Intel was making a profit with their POS Netburst, quite a large one.
AMD does need a "Holy Grail", Barcelona is not going to be it and Phenom might be too late.

 

[PSYCHoHoLiC]

So AMD Doesnt have anything that will hang with a core 2? I Beg to differ.. take a look at the cpu charts, the 6000+ hangs in there quite nicely.

 

[bfellow]

The 6000+ only hangs with mid-range E6600 and E6650. The E6750 is its competition now.

 

[morg]

Very interesting article at CRN. According to the piece, AMD has no further plans to cut prices of Athlon and FX processors. CRN quotes Gary Bixler, AMD's director of marketing for North America, as saying:

"We've tried to be very transparent on price actions. Things got crazy last year, but this year we made it a point to provide the channel with what it wants, which is a predictable business, a stable business. We communicated that price move well in advance to our channel partners. We haven't announced our next price move yet, so take that at face-value -- another one is not imminent," he said.

Effectively, AMD is announcing that the price war is over (at least on its end). Intel, for its part, could continue to apply pressure with another round of cuts after 7/22/07.

http://www.crn.com/white-box/201001613

this article is fallacious... they say AMD is ending the price war because they won't cut prices around july 22nd...
while this is completely true, it's biaised to link this with AMD not cutting prices... prices have been cut on july 8th... why would they cut again ??? X2 6000+ is worth the E6600 and will stay cheaper...
while only 5% of computer users overclock, 80% now know AMD is as reliable as Intel.
if you pay 259$ for the E6600 and 195$ for the X2 6000+ ( canadian prices from www.ncix.com weekly specials )
i'd take the E6600 but recommend the X2 6000+ to anyone not overclocking...
then, again, Intel don't sell C2D under 133$ ( the E2140/60/80 performance are really bad compared to the real C2D ) amd starting CPU is a 2.1ghz for 80$ which outperform the E2140 1.6ghz at 90$ in many fields.

many buyers want the cheapest dual core machine... and they don't even buy games... so they will get a
4000+ for 80$
a GeForce 6100 + 405 chipset for 65$
1gb ram for 44$
a cheap case/PSU for 60$
a 80/160gb for 50 $
a dvd-rw drive for 40$
and they will buy VISTA...
resulting in a 450$ entry-level surfer-only computer...

some will even buy the 3600+/2gb/GeF 6100+410 or 430/ 250gb
Dell for 599$ which is not so bad... ( god this computer even has 666mhz ram... get a bios update and tweak the fsb to 333mhz... but those people don't even know they could nearly double their processing power just by setting their computer manually )

they will never even burn a DVD, they'll plug their 5 year old CRT 15" monitor and find this computer
too fast for their needs...

while my computer is a 3700+ overclocked to 2.86ghz, with 4x 512mb ram 400mhz, a tv-tuner ati 550 and a geforce 6600 GT i got used for 30$, my 2x250 seagate sata HDD raid 0 and a 200 gb Pata WD HDD,
i don't feel like i need to upgrade now, i'll wait until my computer becomes too slow for my needs...
i'm thinking of upgrading to a dual core CPU... lol, X2 3800 S939 for 70$ on tigerdirect...
1x 2.86ghz san diego ( like fx-57 ) or 2x2.4-3.0ghz (around X2 5600+ on DDR)

 

[kpo6969]

morg says
"some will even buy the 3600+/2gb/GeF 6100+410 or 430/ 250gb
Dell for 599$ which is not so bad... ( god this computer even has 666mhz ram... get a bios update and tweak the fsb to 333mhz... but those people don't even know they could nearly double their processing power just by setting their computer manually )

they will never even burn a DVD, they'll plug their 5 year old CRT 15" monitor and find this computer
too fast for their needs"

Not everyone that buys a Dell should be stereotyped as such or buys at Walmart. I bought one direct from Dell last Nov for $1050.00 with a 4200+/2gb/GeF 6150+410/430 250gb hd 19" UltraSharp digital dvi monitor and XP MCE2005. $400.00 in upgrades later including Vista Home Premium ($10.00 shipping only cost), speakers, sound card, 1GB ram, 8600GTXXX, and a 5000+. 2years left on my warranty and I do burn DVD's (and more). Happy with what I have and it's still not fast enough for me but still pretty fast. Oc'ing not an option since bios doesn't allow it but I wouldn't mess with it anyway. I don't use used system components which adds to piece of mind along with my warranty.

 

[f61]

Who let the box-builders in here GTFO!

This is about Turion/C2D price performance.

 

[BaronMatrix]

It's about time. I always asked how they expected to keep their revenue up if they drop prices lower than the amount of growth.
One thing they said that sounds rally stupid was that the price cuts had nothing to do with what Intel was doing.

If that's the case, then they are pretty dumb. I mean $1.5B dumb. That's the loss so far this year if the Q2 preliminary numbers are to be believed.

Though Intel isn't much better as they have gone from 30-40% margins to 19%.

I will just be glad when Barcelona drops on the desktop.

 

[kpo6969]

Who let the box-builders in here GTFO!

This is about Turion/C2D price performance.

What an intelligent post. Did you even read the thread before going ballistic? The subject was about AMD price cuts and Dell was mentioned also. I was replying to an earlier post specifically about that which you would of known if you bothered to read it. So get your head out of your *** and grow up.

 

[bixplus]

Though Intel isn't much better as they have gone from 30-40% margins to 19%.

What are your talking about? Intel gross margins for Q2 2007 was 46.9%. Care to elaborate?

 

[yomamafor1]

I think AMD did a extremely stupid step. They're the first one to start the price war, the first one to call foul, and the first one to give up.

While AMD's price cuts are more "reactionary", Intel has price cuts set long before they're actual date. I believe a lot of posters here know about 266USD Q6600 way back in March, and E6320's launch back in 2006.

AMD is really getting a little bit pathetic.

 

[caamsa]

Ahhh who thinks AMD's new cpu is going to blow intell out of the water? If it is an improvement it will be marginal at best. I mean there are limits as to what the technology can do each generation. Unless they come up with some new technology that is totally new then you will continue to see marginal gains in performance. Yes core2 made a nice jump in performance but now what? More cores? More GHz? I think maybe we might not see that much of an increase in GHz power in the future and just the addition of more cores. Then we will need better programming to take advantage of those cores. I think dual, quad, octo, etc cores..... will be around for a while. More GHz? Maybe a small increase. Brand new blow you head off technology.....no....

In regards to the price drops.........how low can you go.................?

 

[bixplus]

Once again..Ed nails it. http://www.overclockers.com/tips01180/

 

[grieve]

AMD is in a world of hurt, Price cuts or no price cuts at the end of the day they need to compete, which there not. I personally do not believe Barcelona is going to stop the downward spiral and AMD will continue to plummet… And lets not even talk about ATI.

To be frank I have reached a point where I don’t care to read about AMD anymore which is a shame because I once loved Athlon. Everyday there is something ‘new’ in the news in regards to AMD but it is never anything of value… OHH price drops!!!!… I wouldn’t buy a piece of s**t if it were free and I sure as hell wouldn’t buy a second rate processor because it is a dime less then the good one.

Ill hold a candle for AMD as the industry strives on competition, but I for one am not optimistic in regards to AMD’s future.

 

[BaronMatrix]

What are your talking about? Intel gross margins for Q2 2007 was 46.9%. Care to elaborate?

I'll look for the article. It was a Q1 article. If I find it I'll post it. Just don't assume that I'm trying to make Intel look bad or prop up AMD. That's what causes arguments. Their margins are worse. The point was that this price war hurt a lot of people and I'm glad it's over.