Friday, December 2nd 2011
AMD Bulldozer A Surprisingly Sell-Out Sales Success. Victims: Phenom II & Athlon II
AMD's new Bulldozer "FX" series of processors may be very lacklustre performers in reviewer's benchmarks and have garnered considerable scorn in enthusiast circles, but they're a very good performer for AMD's bottom line. Incredibly, they are selling out as soon as shops get them in stock - and they are not even priced very competitively against Intel's offerings, so perhaps the "It's an 8 core CPU!!" marketing is working well on the uninformed "enthusiast" after all? Mind you, what enthusiast, however uninformed, wouldn't know exactly how these products perform? Every tech website and computer magazine has covered these chips by now. The mind boggles.Unfortunately, the victims of this unwarranted success are the decent Phenom II & Athlon II processors, which have always been priced very well, giving good value for money and are good sellers. The reason is that the manufacturing plants share equipment between these old 45 nm products and the new 32 nm ones, creating a conflict between them, so one must go. It therefore makes sound business sense for AMD to discontinue selling the old product in favour of the new, expensive one which is flying off the shelves. AMD will stop shipping all Athlon II's and Phenom II's to distributors, but with one exception. The "Zosma" 6 core Phenom II X4 960T will continue to be available until stocks run dry. This has two cores disabled, making it a "quad" core CPU, but with luck they might be unlockable. To state the obvious, if one is considering buying one of these discontinued chips, then they'd better not wait long.
Source:
Nordic Hardware
175 Comments on AMD Bulldozer A Surprisingly Sell-Out Sales Success. Victims: Phenom II & Athlon II
But
It's slower than even Phenom II in some or most tasks...
a current example is the upcoming iPad. it will bring higher resolution to the masses cause no other company has the balls to do it. its too much about the bottom line to them. Apple will still prove that the bottom line can benefit from it though even with higher production costs
They were just as quick to charge $1000 for their processors, and make shady under the table deals with OEMs.
but this is besides the point. Intel has been found guilty of illegal business practices internationally. AMD has always been guilty of trying to out-innovate
I'm sorry, but you have just lost your credibility after saying that. :laugh:
Their only "innovations" would be these:
1) Aesthetics is now the most important aspect to consider
2) Macs are not PCs even though they are
3) Apple is always right, and you're wrong, so buy our products
4) Stiff competition? Sue competitors
but in this case they are pushing the 1080p boundary... the rest of the market is going to follow suit. how can you hate them for that?
I am only going to disagree with 1)
they do focus on aesthetics and in doing so have some credit for raising the standard of appearance in PCs
I am not saying AMD is run by saints, I am just saying I don't remember any underhanded deals like Intel and the kick backs.
proof is in the pudding amd sells crap loads of cpu's because of value. intel sells crap loads of i3's not because they are the best available but because they do what most people want without breaking the bank. simple as that.
In then end, my FX-8150 is overall better than my AMD PII 1100T. I think there is a lot to sort out in the BIOS/software and I think there is a lot of tweaking to be done with the chip itself especially inter-core communication. Design is solid, execution could use a lot of work and I don't think AMD's latest business moves were good ideas. I want to keep this short so I will stop there.
And Intel might have been found guilty, but AMD did the same when they were in the lead. They just didn't get called out on it because they were only in the lead for like 6-months. But in that time, there was a huge shift in the OEMs towards AMD, ever wonder how that happened? Once AMD had the money flow by being able to sell a high margins with higher volume thanks to being in the performance lead, they started throwing that money around to try and oust Intel the same way Intel was. Shady deals with OEMs to exclude Intel from their products and all.
no I didnt wonder. it was because OEMs were impressed with AMD's performance. vendors want to offer their customers the best performance and value
Personally I buy the best bang for my buck, be it Intel or Amd. If Amd released a chip that is imo the best performance for my money at the time, i will buy that.
It is a bit anal to stick to one manufacturer, surely it is better to buy the best performance chip for your money, even if it means switching camps.
many of us that support AMD are doing just fine with AMD's cpus. please answer me this:
why would we have a reason to leave AMD if they can meet our needs and do so with good pricing?
I game on ultra settings with every game I play so I am not anywhere close to painting myself in a corner now am I?
Remember Randy Allen? Mr "40% better"
or maybe showing around benchmarks of non-existant products?
Surely you must remember Mr Fruehe's forum based viral marketing campaign over the last couple of years ? Could pay to ditch the rose coloured glasses- they're bad for eyesight You drive a Saturn and your FX sits in an ECS motherboard perhaps?
It's certainly no bad thing that Bulldozer's selling. AMD and Intel fans alike should be happy about that. I feel wary saying anything on a tech forum, but just going from memory...
5) MP3 players were niche prior to the iPod.
6) Smartphones were...where? prior to the iPhone.
7) Tablets were the butt of jokes prior to the iPad.
8) The first decent touchscreens in wide use to my memory?
9) Apps. Hadn't been done as well before.
10) And in response to your no. 1...Have you seen Thermaltake's cases?!
/neverownedanappleproduct