Intel Blames $1B Revenue Hit On Windows XP's Stubborn Grip

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
Damn you Windows XP! Damn you! ;)

The company said Thursday it now expects to post $12.8 billion in first-quarter sales, down from its mid-January expectation of $13.7 billion, which was already slightly below Wall Street expectations. Shares sank 4 percent to $31 following the outlook cut.
Click to expand...
 
Need more bloated code to sell more hardware DAMMIT!
 
XP? Nah. At most, I think it's people waiting because they don't want Windows 8. A tiny segment (us enthusiasts) are waiting for a reason to upgrade. Anyone with a Core i series probably isn't hurting. I'm still running my 2600K. It can run anything I want just fine. I'd love to upgrade, but the time of huge speed increases is gone. I'd notice a difference, but not enough to justify the cost.
 
Ur_Mom said:
XP? Nah. At most, I think it's people waiting because they don't want Windows 8. A tiny segment (us enthusiasts) are waiting for a reason to upgrade. Anyone with a Core i series probably isn't hurting. I'm still running my 2600K. It can run anything I want just fine. I'd love to upgrade, but the time of huge speed increases is gone. I'd notice a difference, but not enough to justify the cost.
Click to expand...

Basically what he said,except I have a 2500k. I would also say that we both knew this was going to happen and are quite happy with our strategic purchases. Amiright?
 
Ur_Mom said:
XP? Nah. At most, I think it's people waiting because they don't want Windows 8. A tiny segment (us enthusiasts) are waiting for a reason to upgrade. Anyone with a Core i series probably isn't hurting. I'm still running my 2600K. It can run anything I want just fine. I'd love to upgrade, but the time of huge speed increases is gone. I'd notice a difference, but not enough to justify the cost.
Click to expand...

Spot on. The better chips from that era still run well on Win 7 and Win 8. Intel should help create more intensive software to showcase their new processors. Windows 10 will run just fine on your 2600K also. It will probably run better than it ever did on XP, 7, or 8.
 
Running on an i7 920, and I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. Maybe that's why sales are down Intel, you aren't giving us a reason to buy your shiny, fancy new hardware thingys.
 
Ur_Mom said:
XP? Nah. At most, I think it's people waiting because they don't want Windows 8. A tiny segment (us enthusiasts) are waiting for a reason to upgrade. Anyone with a Core i series probably isn't hurting. I'm still running my 2600K. It can run anything I want just fine. I'd love to upgrade, but the time of huge speed increases is gone. I'd notice a difference, but not enough to justify the cost.
Click to expand...

I don't know if I'd say it's gone, just in haitius until another breakthrough shows up.
 
I think even the first generation of Core 2 Duos (2007) is still plenty fast for a typical desktop. That's 8 years of hardware lifespan.
 
Ur_Mom said:
XP? Nah. At most, I think it's people waiting because they don't want Windows 8. A tiny segment (us enthusiasts) are waiting for a reason to upgrade. Anyone with a Core i series probably isn't hurting. I'm still running my 2600K. It can run anything I want just fine. I'd love to upgrade, but the time of huge speed increases is gone. I'd notice a difference, but not enough to justify the cost.
Click to expand...

Ironically I don't see much different between speed increases in a hell of a long time. Oh sure before release rumors and speculation always talks about massive speed increases, 50-100%, but once the CPUs/GPUs are released it's almost always just a 5-10% increase.

I think what you are actually seeing is more reduced hype, or buying into the hype, about speed increases than an actual decrease in the size of increases.
 
TheOneKnownAsMe said:
Running on an i7 920, and I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. Maybe that's why sales are down Intel, you aren't giving us a reason to buy your shiny, fancy new hardware thingys.
Click to expand...
So agreed! Affordable SSDs have done more for my computing experiences than any CPU upgrade. I can't tell the difference between my Surface Pro 3 and my Intel Core 2 Q6600 based machine with the highest end components at the time it was built.
 
The next thing Intel needs to somehow pull off is to have on-die non-volatile SSD memory for OS installation. A high performance all-in-one SoC would be awesome if done right. i3 with 120GB SSD memory and Intel Iris 5200. All that's left is RAM.
 
Doesn't make sense... if anything shouldn't they have gotten a "boost" from XP, as all the people using XP systems that are no longer supported since last April scrambled to replace their old PCs?

I'd agree it's likely a combination of people not liking Windows 8/8.1 as well as the typical performance increases of each CPU getting smaller and smaller.

Might also be related to just how popular ARM has and is becoming vs where they were at before the smartphone/tablet "revolution". It's gotten so bad, some people view a phone or a tablet with an Intel chip inside the same way they view a phone with a Microsoft OS.
 
If XP is so bad, they will never kill Windows 7.

Windows 10 ain't the OS I'm looking for so far.
 
Dear Intel,

If you made an 8ghz Octa-core you'd be selling chips like hot cakes. Speed matters than core counts. You dug this hole and give us what we want!

More Speed with lower TDP and more unlocked chips with VT-d!!

Yours Truly,

Real computer users.
 
LBJM said:
Dear Intel,

If you made an 8ghz Octa-core you'd be selling chips like hot cakes. Speed matters than core counts. You dug this hole and give us what we want!

More Speed with lower TDP and more unlocked chips with VT-d!!

Yours Truly,

Real computer users.
Click to expand...
Well they killed competition from AMD, they have no incentive to release things other than at a trickle. This is what happens when you have no competition at the high end.
 
tetris42 said:
Well they killed competition from AMD, they have no incentive to release things other than at a trickle. This is what happens when you have no competition at the high end.
Click to expand...
but what about Moore's Law? :D
 
tetris42 said:
Well they killed competition from AMD, they have no incentive to release things other than at a trickle. This is what happens when you have no competition at the high end.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you are talking about. If anyone killed off the threat from AMD it was AMD themselves. I did say IF btw because AMD is still alive in the server and special appliance markets. They are also still used in many bargain priced laptop/mobiles. It's main stream Desktop and high-end laptop markets that are dominated by Intel.

AMD screwed around doing exactly what LBJM, they skimped on processor innovation and tried to brute-force their engineering pushing up the processor speeds as opposed to developing more efficient processor functionality, the exact opposite of what they did with the Thunderbird chips. Don't blame Intel because AMD can't learn from their own successes. The Core2Due is a perfect example of Intel learning from AMD, the Northwood was Intel's perfect answer to the Thunderbirds. This time around AMD just missed the innovation boat.
 
tetris42 said:
Well they killed competition from AMD, they have no incentive to release things other than at a trickle. This is what happens when you have no competition at the high end.
Click to expand...

I disagree to a point. I think MS has been trying, and failing. MS somehow believed their own, and other's BS that the PC is dying. They overvalue the Consoles, Cloud and Mobile, that's the simply truth of it. They can't get it in their heads that people still need to do real work on a machine and mobile doesn't do it and Cloud isn't a trustworthy replacement. They also fail to understand that consoles are a poor-mans substitute for a real gaming machine and that the gaming experience is lessened on consoles vs PCs. I get by using a laptop as a desktop replacement though my gaming suffers a little. But I sure can't get by on a tablet or a phone and I despise the gaming experience of consoles which is why I gave my X-Box to my kids as soon as I finished the game in Halo.
 
lcpiper said:
I don't know what you are talking about. If anyone killed off the threat from AMD it was AMD themselves. I did say IF btw because AMD is still alive in the server and special appliance markets. They are also still used in many bargain priced laptop/mobiles. It's main stream Desktop and high-end laptop markets that are dominated by Intel.

AMD screwed around doing exactly what LBJM, they skimped on processor innovation and tried to brute-force their engineering pushing up the processor speeds as opposed to developing more efficient processor functionality, the exact opposite of what they did with the Thunderbird chips. Don't blame Intel because AMD can't learn from their own successes. The Core2Due is a perfect example of Intel learning from AMD, the Northwood was Intel's perfect answer to the Thunderbirds. This time around AMD just missed the innovation boat.
Click to expand...
Maybe you're unaware that Intel broke the law during the original Athlon days in many countries, with many vendors (Dell, HP, NEC, Lenovo, etc.). They would sell chips below cost, enter illegal agreements to shut out AMD from major vendors, etc. I mean despite having the superior chips, AMD gained NO marketshare during that time. It would be like if ATI had come out with the 9700 Pro, but simply couldn't sell them compared to the Geforce 4 since Nvidia they had locked up all the major vendors. That never happened, but if it had, we might be on the equivalent of the Geforce 200 series by now.

Point is, AMD innovated, made the better product, and they got punished hard by illegal practices by Intel, so it didn't pay off. Had Intel actually obeyed the law, there's no telling where AMD would be right now. Yes, some of their decisions weren't the best, but acting like Intel had no hand in their current situation is delusional at best.
 
tetris42 said:
Maybe you're unaware that Intel broke the law during the original Athlon days in many countries, with many vendors (Dell, HP, NEC, Lenovo, etc.). They would sell chips below cost, enter illegal agreements to shut out AMD from major vendors, etc. I mean despite having the superior chips, AMD gained NO marketshare during that time. It would be like if ATI had come out with the 9700 Pro, but simply couldn't sell them compared to the Geforce 4 since Nvidia they had locked up all the major vendors. That never happened, but if it had, we might be on the equivalent of the Geforce 200 series by now.

Point is, AMD innovated, made the better product, and they got punished hard by illegal practices by Intel, so it didn't pay off. Had Intel actually obeyed the law, there's no telling where AMD would be right now. Yes, some of their decisions weren't the best, but acting like Intel had no hand in their current situation is delusional at best.
Click to expand...

Although Intel had some bad practices (and they settled some of the disputes, not all were decided by the governments) AMD does have responsibility for a fair amount of their problems ... Intel made some poor design decisions in the transition from the Pentium IV to the Core technology ... these gave AMD a window where they were dominating the high end market and able to collect the $1000/chip prices that had previously been exclusive to Intel ... however, AMD was unable to capitalize on their profits to build the Fab infrastructure and reinvest in the R&D needed to stay ahead of Intel (allowing Intel to regain the lead once the Core technology was released) ... AMD also couldn't produce the volumes needed to totally dominate in the high consumption markets (Dell, HP, etc) which allowed Intel to maintain their position during the technology transition ... not all of AMDs stumbles were due to nefarious policies by Intel ;)
 
Personally, I think Intel's woes are because of things like:

http://cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Why? if you ignore the supposed prices on that page, and think about the total system cost, you'll see that often times you can back 3 or 4 generations and get roughly the same performance.

With that said, sometimes that performance comes at a wattage price... but still, upgrading isn't as nice as it once was... just baby steps...

My old workstation still performs more than adequately.... why buy?

So... if we consider that there is some level of saturation computing wise today (that is, everyone has computers)... and I'm talking about business, then does it make sense for businesses to constantly buy new when there are huge discounts to had buying used or sticking with what you have?

Maybe I'm just stating the obvious...
 
tetris42 said:
Point is, AMD innovated, made the better product, and they got punished hard by illegal practices by Intel, so it didn't pay off. Had Intel actually obeyed the law, there's no telling where AMD would be right now. Yes, some of their decisions weren't the best, but acting like Intel had no hand in their current situation is delusional at best.
Click to expand...


You ignoring the fact that AMD stopping innovating after they gained the performance crown, yes Intel's practices were shady back then but that is not an excuse for AMD's action. Their gpu department understands this and that is part of the reason the 300x will be coming out in June.

Think about how Apple behaves they said for years people don't want a large screen on their phone and the android vendors showed that wasn't the case. In the end the customer dictates what they want.
 
LBJM said:
Dear Intel,

If you made an 8ghz Octa-core you'd be selling chips like hot cakes. Speed matters than core counts. You dug this hole and give us what we want!

More Speed with lower TDP and more unlocked chips with VT-d!!

Yours Truly,

Real computer users.
Click to expand...

Every time I read something like this all I can think about is Netburst and then i start to shake a little.
 
kbrickley said:
Although Intel had some bad practices (and they settled some of the disputes, not all were decided by the governments) AMD does have responsibility for a fair amount of their problems ... Intel made some poor design decisions in the transition from the Pentium IV to the Core technology ... these gave AMD a window where they were dominating the high end market and able to collect the $1000/chip prices that had previously been exclusive to Intel ... however, AMD was unable to capitalize on their profits to build the Fab infrastructure and reinvest in the R&D needed to stay ahead of Intel (allowing Intel to regain the lead once the Core technology was released) ... AMD also couldn't produce the volumes needed to totally dominate in the high consumption markets (Dell, HP, etc) which allowed Intel to maintain their position during the technology transition ... not all of AMDs stumbles were due to nefarious policies by Intel ;)
Click to expand...
Actually they DID invest in R&D the best they could. The 64-bit processors you're using right now are a result of their work. Again, they weren't gaining any marketshare despite having better chips at competitive prices due to the tricks Intel was using. If they had been able to capitalize on that more, then maybe they could have secured their foothold longer, or at the very least, get production up to where it would ideally be. You're talking like they had the resources of Intel. They never did, and Intel did their damndest to make sure they never had the advantage again. In 2006, AMD was making approximately 3% in net revenue what Intel was, with less than a fifth of the number of employees. Think about that. It's kind of like a fruit stand going head to head with a grocery store, yet somehow winning for a time.

It's possible the outcome would have been similar, but if they had been able to compete on a fair market and had more resources to throw at everything, it could be closer to how ATI and Nvidia played out, neck and neck. I just get sick of people downplaying the impact companies breaking the law at the right times have on the outcome of an entire market, like it doesn't matter.
 
LBJM said:
You ignoring the fact that AMD stopping innovating after they gained the performance crown, yes Intel's practices were shady back then but that is not an excuse for AMD's action. Their gpu department understands this and that is part of the reason the 300x will be coming out in June.

Think about how Apple behaves they said for years people don't want a large screen on their phone and the android vendors showed that wasn't the case. In the end the customer dictates what they want.
Click to expand...
Do you have a source on the numbers AMD was investing for R&D during that time compared to other years? With the Athlon, they were gaining no marketshare, it's entirely plausible they didn't have the additional resources to be investing in more innovative R&D than what they did because they weren't making the profits they needed to fund it properly, which again, comes back to Intel.
 
ssd
Click to expand...
Last month I tried putting an ssd into an old, old A64 3000+ (single core 2ghz, single channel ddr, agp) ... some things cannot be helped by ssd, hehheh.
 
tetris42 said:
Do you have a source on the numbers AMD was investing for R&D during that time compared to other years? With the Athlon, they were gaining no marketshare, it's entirely plausible they didn't have the additional resources to be investing in more innovative R&D than what they did because they weren't making the profits they needed to fund it properly, which again, comes back to Intel.
Click to expand...

They are a publicly traded company go look up their balance sheets, Income statements, and statement of cash flows online.

start here: http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/company-financials.aspx and try here
http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml#.VQH2dXuPm5M

if you need help to use the web sites use google.

AMD might even post them on their web site.
 
tetris42 said:
Actually they DID invest in R&D the best they could. The 64-bit processors you're using right now are a result of their work. Again, they weren't gaining any marketshare despite having better chips at competitive prices due to the tricks Intel was using. If they had been able to capitalize on that more, then maybe they could have secured their foothold longer, or at the very least, get production up to where it would ideally be. You're talking like they had the resources of Intel. They never did, and Intel did their damndest to make sure they never had the advantage again. In 2006, AMD was making approximately 3% in net revenue what Intel was, with less than a fifth of the number of employees. Think about that. It's kind of like a fruit stand going head to head with a grocery store, yet somehow winning for a time.

It's possible the outcome would have been similar, but if they had been able to compete on a fair market and had more resources to throw at everything, it could be closer to how ATI and Nvidia played out, neck and neck. I just get sick of people downplaying the impact companies breaking the law at the right times have on the outcome of an entire market, like it doesn't matter.
Click to expand...

There is an erroneous assumption that the company with the highest performing product always wins in direct competition ... AMD did much better than they had previously during the brief time where they owned the higher technical performance ... however the ultimate success of any company in the market may depend on other factors than just raw performance:

Market preference - Android is usually touted as a superior system to iOS but Apple hangs onto a large and profitable portion of their market due to user preferences ... Intel also had some loyalty with users and customers ... Intel customers would periodically threaten a shift to AMD to achieve better pricing or support but they realistically were happy keeping both companies in play

Economy of Scale - competition can almost always favor the larger company since they can negotiate better pricing, support larger volumes, and support a wider range of SKUs ... Intel's total capacity was many times that of AMD and they could guarantee a consistent supply more reliably than AMD for certain products

Support - Intel had just started a new process they called "enabling" before I left them in 2002 ... as part of this process Intel worked with the 3rd party providers to their customers who were going to be supplying TIM, sockets, motherboards, and heat sinks ... although Intel didn't sell these components or make any revenue from them, they also knew that the ability to sell chips for use in systems depended on the entire value chain ... their enabling work insured that Intel's customers had access to multiple HVM suppliers for all the critical components needed to manufacture and sell computers and servers ... I don't think AMD had as much money and resources to support these kinds of activities

Cost - AMD survived for many years as the lower cost provider ... this switched during the Athlon period where Intel grabbed up the low end market while they developed new high end products and has now shifted back again (where AMD has a strong position on the low cost segment)

Infrastructure - Chips require a lot of supporting computer hardware to work (chipsets, controllers, etc) ... many of the biggest manufacturers didn't want to support too many variations (as that was more work and cost for them and reduced their already competitive profit margins) ... if they were already established with Intel and other provider infrastructures they didn't always feel a desire to switch to a new company and infrastructure, unless the consumption market was forcing them to make the switch

There was no way for AMD to totally take over the market because their window of availability was too short ... if Intel had failed to abandon the Tejas architecture for the Core architecture (or skipped the Duo which gave them a competitive product during the transition) then AMD might have eventually worn Intel down ... however, if you look at the notable transitions where the old companies were totally displaced (Apple/Android replacing Blackberry/Nokia) it was because the old company ceded the market to their competitor and failed to compete ... Intel continued to compete against AMD in many legal ways during the transition :cool:
 
LBJM said:
They are a publicly traded company go look up their balance sheets, Income statements, and statement of cash flows online.

start here: http://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/company-financials.aspx and try here
http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml#.VQH2dXuPm5M

if you need help to use the web sites use google.

AMD might even post them on their web site.
Click to expand...
Well you're the one making the claims that Intel's actions of cutting off their revenue at the peak did NOT affect their ability to be able to rebound R&D-wise and continue innovating. What's YOUR source for this? The burden of proof is on you. My explanation is pretty straightforward.
 
kbrickley said:
There is an erroneous assumption that the company with the highest performing product always wins in direct competition
Click to expand...
That's really not what I was implying. I think you're ignoring some factors:

Market preference - Intel customers would periodically threaten a shift to AMD to achieve better pricing or support but they realistically were happy keeping both companies in play
Click to expand...
What you're saying here seems to directly contradict history at the time. Do you have a source on this? Vendors weren't interested in keeping AMD in play if Intel was offering their CPUs at discount prices, far below what they could normally get them at. As a vendor, if I could a 1ghz CPU from AMD at $800 to sell at retail for $1000, or a 900mhz Pentium 3 at $350 to sell at retail for $950, which one do you think I'm going to take? While those numbers are just an illustration, the point is this was happening all over with big vendors. Intel was hijacking the market preference. It seems that since you're listing this as one of the determining factors of success, you're only reinforcing my point that what they did made a big impact

There was no way for AMD to totally take over the market because their window of availability was too short
Click to expand...
That wasn't what I was implying. Of course they couldn't take over the market for the other reasons you listed, but to release a competitively priced superior product and gain NO marketshare at the same time your competitor is performing illegal practices? Again, it would be like if the Radeon 9700 Pro could never gain a foothold in the market because Nvidia was breaking the law with vendors.

It sounds like you think things would have gone done exactly the same if Intel hadn't broken the law. If that's the case, why did they do it and to such a large degree?
 
GotNoRice said:
Might also be related to just how popular ARM has and is becoming vs where they were at before the smartphone/tablet "revolution". It's gotten so bad, some people view a phone or a tablet with an Intel chip inside the same way they view a phone with a Microsoft OS.
Click to expand...

Maybe for Android, but if you are buying a Windows tablet, stick with an Intel CPU.
Besides, Intel is practically giving the Atom chips away.

I picked up an 8" Winbook last month for $99. 1.33Ghz Atom quad core, 2GB ram, 32GB flash. It's actually pretty nice. It's faster than the overclocked (3.7 ghz) p4 system I was running before I built my current system (i860), and it takes less than 10% of the power :)

Amazing what you can get for $99 now days. I'll likely take it on my next vacation instead of the 11.6" acer laptop I have, as they are about the same speed, and the tablet is smaller/lighter.
 
I'm not buying this excuse. XP retention wasn't the primary reason for this miss. Intel was doing too much chest puffing after taking so much share from AMD last quarter, and while this quarter isn't going any better for AMD, it wasn't a realistic view based on what Intel is currently shipping. Atom is still going nowhere on Android, x86 phones lol no, and regardless of Core M's merits it's only competing against cheaper and/or faster Intel products because Windows x86 laptop price points are mostly fixed.
 
tetris42 said:
Well you're the one making the claims that Intel's actions of cutting off their revenue at the peak did NOT affect their ability to be able to rebound R&D-wise and continue innovating. What's YOUR source for this? The burden of proof is on you. My explanation is pretty straightforward.
Click to expand...

For starters look at all the money they wasted in their execs? Show me that wasteful spending didn't affect AMD's R&D more than any tactic Intel employed. Show me hard numbers that AMD suffered more at the hands of Intel than their own management. OH look http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/04/17/278046/index.htm AMD was listed as having one of the worst boards from 1997-2000. Technology wise all you have to do is look at it the Athlon chips released from 1998-2005 to see the minor improvements they made over time, I thought that was pretty self-evident they sat on their hands rather than spend any money on R&D. My source for this is every damn computer review site. Where is your proof?
 
TheOneKnownAsMe said:
Running on an i7 920, and I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. Maybe that's why sales are down Intel, you aren't giving us a reason to buy your shiny, fancy new hardware thingys.
Click to expand...
I still have my i7 860 rig which I use as a music workstation. It's still zippy as hell for that purpose, which can be CPU intensive at times. I still can't make up my mind if that's a good or bad thing. A bit of both, I suppose.
 
tetris42 said:
That wasn't what I was implying. Of course they couldn't take over the market for the other reasons you listed, but to release a competitively priced superior product and gain NO marketshare at the same time your competitor is performing illegal practices? Again, it would be like if the Radeon 9700 Pro could never gain a foothold in the market because Nvidia was breaking the law with vendors.

It sounds like you think things would have gone done exactly the same if Intel hadn't broken the law. If that's the case, why did they do it and to such a large degree?
Click to expand...

Except they did take a big chunk of the market ... they went from single digit percentages to double digit and their profit margins rocketed ... HOWEVER, they also did this at a time when building new Fab capacity was in the 4-5 Billion per plant range (limiting their ability to meet market demands and build more capacity) ... they also had never had the Fab expertise that Intel did so they weren't able to leverage as much from their Fabs as Intel did (this is one reason they eventually farmed that part of their business out to be a foundry business)

I can't speak to Intel's marketing practices as I only worked on their manufacturing side but Intel competed where they could during the transition ... they offered more services to their customers (like the enabling) ... they lowered prices (to meet market demands ... the lower performing product must be cheaper) ... they made a design paradigm shift (similar to what happened at AMD when they bought Nextgen) and returned back to the P3 core (totally abandoning their P6 cores) to design their ultimately competitive Core and iX product lines

For AMD to have had more success than they did, they would have needed Intel to complacently cede the market (like Blackberry and Nokia did with Apple and Google) ... Intel continued to compete in many legal ways and didn't give up the fight ... because of that they ultimately retained their leadership position (until ARM came along) ... the threat to Intel has always been a totally new technology like RISC or ARM and not AMD who essentially competes in the same CISC market as Intel ... if AMD had bought ARM along with Nextgen then you might have your wish of an AMD monopoly instead of an Intel one :cool:
 
Intel should focus on faster hardware and not outdated software for sales. Intel's CPU's for the past 5 years are incrementally faster. Worse yet, they still sell dual core i3's. Why? Why is the i5 without hyperthreading?

I still use an i3 laptop for 2011, and a Core2Duo from 2009. It works fine. I also have AMD Athlon X4's from years ago. My 8350 is ancient. Unless faster CPUs are actually made, nobody is going to spend money to upgrade. I don't care about power consumption when it comes to desktops. Laptops I have issues with heat output, and even then Intel should be pushing for water cooling on laptops.
 
LBJM said:
For starters look at all the money they wasted in their execs? Show me that wasteful spending didn't affect AMD's R&D more than any tactic Intel employed. Show me hard numbers that AMD suffered more at the hands of Intel than their own management. OH look http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/04/17/278046/index.htm AMD was listed as having one of the worst boards from 1997-2000. Technology wise all you have to do is look at it the Athlon chips released from 1998-2005 to see the minor improvements they made over time, I thought that was pretty self-evident they sat on their hands rather than spend any money on R&D. My source for this is every damn computer review site. Where is your proof?
Click to expand...
1997 - 2000 was BEFORE the Intel tactics really got started. You're assuming they had all this extra money afterwards. I wasn't able to find statistics on operating costs during that time, but take a look at their numbers after the Athlon launched:

http://geoffmanne.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/figure3_intelicle.png

The Athlon launched in mid 1999. They're not exactly soaring in the clouds, it looks like they were puttering around the same level they were at the start of the year before launch. Now add additional fab costs during that time and it seems to me there would be less money going into research because it wasn't there, it was going towards production.

kbrickley said:
Except they did take a big chunk of the market ... they went from single digit percentages to double digit and their profit margins rocketed ...
Click to expand...
I think your assumed truth is wrong here. Their marketshare didn't really increase until Turion, which is towards the end of Intel exercising their illegal tactics and causing the hit. After Athlon and about half a decade prior to that, they were hovering around 15% as usual. As for "profit margins rocketed", what are you referring to? From this article:

"The company had a net loss of $61 million in 2001, $1.3 billion in 2002, and $274 million in 2003."

Those don't sound like record profit margins to me. Intel's tactics started in 2001.

I can't speak to Intel's marketing practices as I only worked on their manufacturing side but Intel competed where they could during the transition
Click to expand...
You don't need to, a lot of government bodies did:

"
After examining the evidence, at least six government regulatory bodies, representing some 30 nations, agreed with AMD. From about 2001 to 2007, they concluded, Intel had engaged in a wide range of abusive practices to preserve its 80% to 85% market share during a period when AMD’s product offerings — especially its Opteron chip for enterprise servers — were widely seen as technically superior to Intel’s. Intel was paying computer makers to abjure AMD chips entirely or to constrict their usage to tiny, backwater portions of their business, the regulators found. Intel allegedly made such payments to Dell DELL , IBM , Hewlett-Packard , Lenovo, Acer, NEC, Toshiba, Sony , Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung, Sambo Computer, and Europe’s largest computer retailing chain, Media Markt. (Wounded in the collateral damage, computer maker Dell eventually also had to cough up $100 million to settle charges brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleged that Dell misled its shareholders by failing to tell them that the only reason Dell was able to meet its quarterly numbers for 20 consecutive quarters was the $6 billion in funds Intel was paying it to not use AMD chips.)
"
hey offered more services to their customers (like the enabling) ... they lowered prices (to meet market demands ... the lower performing product must be cheaper)
Click to expand...
I'd like to make this clear: there is a difference between good customer service v. breaking the law. What your saying doesn't seem to recognize this distinction.

if AMD had bought ARM along with Nextgen then you might have your wish of an AMD monopoly instead of an Intel one
Click to expand...
You're completely misinterpreting me. I don't want either company to have a monopoly. I'm not even a huge AMD fan, I just frigging hate corruption, even moreso if the people practicing it get rewarded greatly and the whole thing gets swept under the rug, which is essentially what happened with Intel except for a litigative slap on the wrist.
 
No reason to upgrade when Intel has released no real motivator. My 2600k is more than fine for everything I do. The last 3 generations have been quite disappointing, from my user-desktop point of view. Then again, I know I'm not Intel's target market, anymore.
 
XamediX said:
Basically what he said,except I have a 2500k. I would also say that we both knew this was going to happen and are quite happy with our strategic purchases. Amiright?
Click to expand...

The 2500k will go down as the best gaming CPU of all time I think and now with Directx 12 lowering CPU overhead significantly in the near future, I really don't see myself upgrading till the capacitors pop.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top