AMD to release dual-core server chips

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Ruining their market?

And before anyone says I'm picking on AMD, I blame both Intel and AMD of not thinking their market through. But in this case, AMD is making a big mistake because they are wasting a golden opportunity.

Making the chips for servers only and pricing them in the top dollar range means Joe Average user isn't going to be buying one soon. But the money is in servers you say? True, to an extent, but for a server box do I really care if there are two CPUs or one chip with two CPUs on it? Not really, they are going to come out about even on price and performance. Well that isn't quite true, early testing suggests the dual core isn't as fast as having two CPU's but I expect to see that gap closed over time. So for these server sales, there is no huge advantage to have a dual core CPU. It's simply not a must have sort of thing.

Now if they had brought out the desktop version at a reasonable cost and it seriously out performed a single CPU machine, they would have gotten out of the gate well ahead of Intel in the consumer market. Consumers are MUCH more likely to buy into new technology than the corporate folks are.

Who needs this processing power on a desktop? Anyone that has ever done anything in the way of AutoCAD or video editing/rendering would jump at it. I have a very fast machine by most standards I use for video and it is painfully slow. In some cases it simply lacks the power to do what I want like a 30 Frames Per Second screen capture of a running program. (Try doing a 30 fps of a running PowerPoint presentation sometime to see what I mean.)

I guess the idea in both companies is to be able to milk a high profit margin on servers before following the path they always follow to put it in the hands of average users. Too bad AMD din't see this for the opportunity it is to seriously grab consumer market share.

After all, a smart company would rather make $100 profit per box and sell a million boxes than make $200 profit per box and sell only 5000 boxes before the market forces them to lower their price.

AMD, who is driving your marketing bus???

Posted by: No_Ax_to_Grind   Posted on: 04/21/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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