Although I think some of your logic is also noth much more than speculation (as mine is
), I'll try to go through and address those points, to show you what led to my conclusion (again, not that it's right).
First:
So far I still don't see anything that is proof of that. As I've pointed out in other threads, AMD can afford to just hand-pick processors to run at higher MHz for Opterons because Opterons cost a lot more for us to buy and so AMD isn't losing money to hand-pick good processors from a bad yield process. In fact, they can easily ramp to a higher speed just by testing the processors at an even higher clock and 'downbinning' all that don't make it.
What would indicate better yields is not what speeds they can offer from their high-end high-cost chips, but what price they can offer their chips at. If they can finally start selling Athlon64's (which should be significantly cheaper), then that is a sign that their yields are better.
If they did so much hand-picking, then wouldn't it be harder for them to ramp up in clockspeed? 2.5ghz is quite a big difference than 1.8, which would have to account for more than just hand-picking. That's probably confusing, but basically, if they are already hand-picking to get these speeds, then how can they just hand-pick to get a speed almost 1ghz higher? That's assuming yields were abysmal at best (which I'm sure they were in the beginning). In fact, those abysmal yields was almost surely the cause of the Athlon 64 delay. However, that says nothing about current yields.
Who ever said that they'd be selling the gaming systems at lower prices? Throw together a single (or dual) CPU system and offer it as a workstation. It'll cost an arm and a leg, but then people are willing to pay bewtween two and five grand for a workstation. (And sometimes more.)
Who cares if you market that workstation as a workstation, an entry-level 64-bit server, or a gaming platform? The hardware and price will be the same either way.
This seems a little odd to me, as it isn't a great explanation, but I'll still explain further. The prices for a workstation can be the same as a top-end gaming rig, however the money is spent on completely different things. Workstations are concerned about the quality with the CPU, motherboard, and stability of those together. Therefore, those prices are quite a bit higher than normal computers. Gamers, however, are not only worried about the CPU, and motherboard, but also Graphics, fast RAM, sound (including nice speakers), and the like there. I guess I could see it still being priced the same, but how can you justify to DIY'ers (which most gamers are) that it's worth the extra money to buy? Maybe that's part of the deabate against making it a gaming machine, but something still doesn't add up. There would still be more of a demand (or at least they'd think there would be) then for workstations, which again leads us to the need for more of them, and therefore a presumption of at least somewhat higher yields.
And lastly,
One big one: No one ever said that their 'gaming system' prices would be (or even are likely to be) lower than their workstation prices. That's purely your assumption.
I already kind of went over this. You very well could be right, but, again, it doesn't make sense to market them as good gaming processors and then charge more than a gamer is willing to spend on a processor. Yes, it is my assumption, but it's based on some common sense and business strategies.
I was just speculating, to get some opinions on the subject. I don't want to start a flame, or a fight, or anything. How about we just leave it at that?
<font color=red>The all new GeForce FX-</font color=red>
<font color=blue>The only factory-overclocked vacuum cleaner, complete with upholstery attachment!!!</font color=blue><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mac404 on 04/15/03 06:01 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
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