This news has made AMD'ers happy

[Yousuf Khan]

Seems that for one week this past month, there were more AMD-based desktops
sold than Intel-based.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/hardware/33636.html

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and only
47% were Intel. Minor, temporary victory? Absolutely. Just a victory in one
geographical market, North America? Sure. Just represents retail sales only?
Yup. Achieved in the middle of an overall bad quarter? Possibly.

But has this situation ever arisen before, where AMD outsold Intel? I've
never seen it, ever.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Allan Parent]

Seems that for one week this past month, there were more AMD-based desktops
sold than Intel-based.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/hardware/33636.html

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and only
47% were Intel. Minor, temporary victory? Absolutely. Just a victory in one
geographical market, North America? Sure. Just represents retail sales only?
Yup. Achieved in the middle of an overall bad quarter? Possibly.

But has this situation ever arisen before, where AMD outsold Intel? I've
never seen it, ever.

Yousuf Khan

Yep, at the present time, AMD sports a better CPU at a lower price so it is
no wonder they are outselling Intel. Good competition between these two will
only help the consumer.

Allan

 

[KR Williams]

@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>, news.20.bbbl67
@spamgourmet.com says...

Seems that for one week this past month, there were more AMD-based desktops
sold than Intel-based.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/hardware/33636.html

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and only
47% were Intel. Minor, temporary victory? Absolutely. Just a victory in one
geographical market, North America? Sure. Just represents retail sales only?
Yup. Achieved in the middle of an overall bad quarter? Possibly.

But has this situation ever arisen before, where AMD outsold Intel? I've
never seen it, ever.

Bums me out. The prices for AMD widgets has gone up, just when
I'm about to dive in. Bastards! ;-)

Serioulsy, I've got the guts picked out, simply thinking about a
case and a graphics card. Suggestions? Note that the case must
support SuSE and dual monitors. ;-)

 

[Stacey]

Yep, at the present time, AMD sports a better CPU at a lower price so it
is no wonder they are outselling Intel.

That and prescott appears to be a flop... I'm sure not selling or even
sugesting anyone buy P4 systems with things the way they are now.

 

[Suen Lee]

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and only
47% were Intel. Minor, temporary victory? Absolutely. Just a victory in one
geographical market, North America? Sure. Just represents retail sales only?
Yup. Achieved in the middle of an overall bad quarter? Possibly.

But has this situation ever arisen before, where AMD outsold Intel? I've
never seen it, ever.

Yes it has... for an entire month even. I don't see why its such a big
surprise, AMD has always been strong in retail.
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m4PRN/1999_Feb_26/53962027/p1/article.jhtml

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

[chrisv]

Seems that for one week this past month, there were more AMD-based desktops
sold than Intel-based.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/hardware/33636.html

Umm... That's RETAIL, and ignores business sales and such.

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and only
47% were Intel. Minor, temporary victory? Absolutely. Just a victory in one
geographical market, North America? Sure. Just represents retail sales only?
Yup. Achieved in the middle of an overall bad quarter? Possibly.

But has this situation ever arisen before, where AMD outsold Intel? I've
never seen it, ever.

They didn't outsell Intel.

 

[chrisv]

Yep, at the present time, AMD sports a better CPU at a lower price so it is
no wonder they are outselling Intel.

But they didn't.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Yes it has... for an entire month even. I don't see why its such a big
surprise, AMD has always been strong in retail.
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m4PRN/1999_Feb_26/53962027/p1/article.jhtml

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ah, good find.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Judd]

Umm... That's RETAIL, and ignores business sales and such.


They didn't outsell Intel.

Intel still sold over 80% of all CPUs (something like 83%). They killed in
the notebook market and server markets which have the highest margins.
Thus, Intel likely profited far more than AMD. It is still a great sign for
AMD. We'll see what happens this next quarter when Intel ups the ante with
Grantsdale/Alderwood and a 3.6 GHz part along with Dothan.

 

[George Macdonald]

@news04.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>, news.20.bbbl67
@spamgourmet.com says...

Bums me out. The prices for AMD widgets has gone up, just when
I'm about to dive in. Bastards! ;-)

Serioulsy, I've got the guts picked out, simply thinking about a
case and a graphics card. Suggestions? Note that the case must
support SuSE and dual monitors. ;-)

Hmmm, I'm nearly ready to take the toe-dip(?) myself. For a graphics
card, nVidia has come a long way on the 2D and I'm still nervous about
previous ATI "driver of the week" syndrome results. For a case, I never
even bother to look beyond Antec now but choose carefully according to the
power supply if included - the TruePower ones have a thermistor controlled
fan in the P/S and special connectors for controlling the case fans off the
same temp measurement. The Plus AMG cases seem to work fine in our office
and I'm looking at that or the Lifestyle series Sonata for my home system.
Of course, all their cases satisfy the AMD design criteria for airflow
though I'd hope that's true of all the other brands.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

 

[RusH]

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/hardware/33636.html

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and
only 47% were Intel.

I guess DELL is not enough retail for them so it was skipped in the
counts


Pozdrawiam.

 

[KR Williams]

Hmmm, I'm nearly ready to take the toe-dip(?) myself. For a graphics
card, nVidia has come a long way on the 2D and I'm still nervous about
previous ATI "driver of the week" syndrome results.

Well... Graphics cards look like a big bugaboo. Unless anyone
can convince me otherwise, I think I'm going safe: Matrox G550.
I'm really a 2D kinda guy anyway (and dual monitors are a must).

BTW, my board of choice is the Tyan 2875S and a Opteron 144. I'd
like to go more, but the CFO has already expanded the budget a
few times. Going back for even more may get expensive. ;-).

For a case, I never
even bother to look beyond Antec now but choose carefully according to the
power supply if included - the TruePower ones have a thermistor controlled
fan in the P/S and special connectors for controlling the case fans off the
same temp measurement.

Ok... How about the SX1040BII:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-129-
120&depa=0 (sorry for the split)

The Plus AMG cases seem to work fine in our office
and I'm looking at that or the Lifestyle series Sonata for my home system.

The Sonata didn't look all that interesting, though I'm willing
to be convinced otherwise.

I'm also 99.44% sure I'm going with SuSE (they've even gotten
smart and are packaging the 64b version along with the 32b
package).

 

[David Schwartz]

Well... Graphics cards look like a big bugaboo. Unless anyone
can convince me otherwise, I think I'm going safe: Matrox G550.
I'm really a 2D kinda guy anyway (and dual monitors are a must).

BTW, my board of choice is the Tyan 2875S and a Opteron 144. I'd
like to go more, but the CFO has already expanded the budget a
few times. Going back for even more may get expensive. ;-).

Any suggestions on what we should put in our next desktop box for our
top developers? Our current box has dual 2.4Ghz Xeons on a Tyan i7505
Thunder (S2665), 4 512Mb ECC DIMMs, a 3Ware 7500-4LP with 4 120Gb Maxtor
drives. The graphics card is a Matrox Parhelia with two 18" LCD monitors
(Currently NEC LCD1850X).

Our plan is tentatively a dual Opteron box with 4 SATA RAID drives,
probably using a 3Ware controller as well. We're hoping for 4Gb of RAM as
dual 128-bit memory busses. I've looked at many motherboards and they all
have large numbers of insane drawbacks. (Who thought it was a good idea to
connect the onboard gigabit LAN to the legacy 32-bit/33Mhz PCI bus?)

I'd love suggestions on the graphics card and motherboard especially.
Also SATA RAID recommendations would be appreciated. Anybody have a gut
reaction of whether a developer would prefer dual xeons or dual opterons,
assuming they're not religious.

DS

 

[Tony Hill]

Seems that for one week this past month, there were more AMD-based desktops
sold than Intel-based.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/hardware/33636.html

For the week ending April 24th, 52% of retail desktops were AMD, and only
47% were Intel. Minor, temporary victory? Absolutely. Just a victory in one
geographical market, North America? Sure. Just represents retail sales only?
Yup. Achieved in the middle of an overall bad quarter? Possibly.

But has this situation ever arisen before, where AMD outsold Intel? I've
never seen it, ever.

Yes it has, at least in the very narrow market that is defined as
"retail desktops".

Note that "retail desktops" only includes something like 15% of the
world market. Dell need not apply at all, they don't sell into retail
channels, just mail order. Business desktops don't count either, and
certainly laptops, workstations and servers aren't counted here. Only
the Compaq Presarios and eMachines of the world sold at CompUSA, Best
Buy, etc. Ohh, and this is only in North America, so all in all
you're looking at a very small portion of the world market.

As mentioned above, this is NOT the first time this has happened
either. Back in the K6-2 days and early Athlon days there were times
when AMD was beating Intel in the North American retail desktop market
as well. I think they got up to about 60% of this market at their
peak.

In short, this story is lots of hot air, very little substance.

 

[Grumble]

Our plan is tentatively a dual Opteron box with 4 SATA RAID drives,
probably using a 3Ware controller as well. We're hoping for 4Gb of
RAM as dual 128-bit memory busses. I've looked at many motherboards
and they all have large numbers of insane drawbacks. (Who thought
it was a good idea to connect the onboard gigabit LAN to the legacy
32-bit/33Mhz PCI bus?)

http://anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=2004&p=6
nForce3-250Gb: On-Chip Gigabit LAN

 

[chrisv]

Well... Graphics cards look like a big bugaboo. Unless anyone
can convince me otherwise, I think I'm going safe: Matrox G550.
I'm really a 2D kinda guy anyway (and dual monitors are a must).

That's what I've bought for my last couple office PC's. Just bought
one a month ago for my latest. They are kind of annoyingly expensive
for an "old tech" card, though...

 

[Bjorn-Ove.Heimsund]

I'd love suggestions on the graphics card and motherboard especially.

Continue using Matrox cards, their 2D image quality is excellent. For
motherboards, I've got good experience with Tyan Thunder K8W. If it's
too expensive, a Tiger K8W would be cheaper (and mostly as good).

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Yes it has, at least in the very narrow market that is defined as
"retail desktops".

Note that "retail desktops" only includes something like 15% of the
world market. Dell need not apply at all, they don't sell into retail
channels, just mail order. Business desktops don't count either, and
certainly laptops, workstations and servers aren't counted here. Only
the Compaq Presarios and eMachines of the world sold at CompUSA, Best
Buy, etc. Ohh, and this is only in North America, so all in all
you're looking at a very small portion of the world market.

Which was all mentioned in the original posting.

As mentioned above, this is NOT the first time this has happened
either. Back in the K6-2 days and early Athlon days there were times
when AMD was beating Intel in the North American retail desktop market
as well. I think they got up to about 60% of this market at their
peak.

Although at that time, the one difference was that Cyrix was still a strong
contender, having 15% of the retail NA market. Another difference was that
back then this was all achieved on the back of a scorched-earth price war
between the manufacturers. Intel had it's high-end and low-end products, it
let the low-end participate in the muck against the "cloners" at that time,
while it continued to rake in profits from the high-end. This time, there's
no scorched-earth competition going on.

So there are similarities to 99, but then there are also major differences.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Intel still sold over 80% of all CPUs (something like 83%). They
killed in the notebook market and server markets which have the
highest margins. Thus, Intel likely profited far more than AMD. It
is still a great sign for AMD. We'll see what happens this next
quarter when Intel ups the ante with Grantsdale/Alderwood and a 3.6
GHz part along with Dothan.

Actually, I think the overall total for that one particular week was Intel
sold only 61% of all CPUs, and AMD sold between 37-38% of all CPUs.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Tony Hill]

Actually, I think the overall total for that one particular week was Intel
sold only 61% of all CPUs, and AMD sold between 37-38% of all CPUs.

If that is indeed accurate, that would be VERY good news for AMD!
However I'd be extremely skeptical of that number, that would be more
than double the amount of chips that AMD was selling just a couple of
months earlier. If AMD managed even 20% of the total CPU market for
the week they were doing well, but I'd be surprised if the managed
anything more.