Industry Update - Q4-2004: AMD adds SSE3 Support, Intel's 925/915 not selling and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 3, 2004 1:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
AMD vs. Intel
The heated AMD vs. Intel debates of the web weren't present in Taiwan. Most motherboard manufacturers were actually surprised to hear that more users appear to be buying AMD today, simply because their shipments are still predominantly Intel based. As far as percentages go, the motherboard manufacturers unanimously agree that the number of AMD motherboard shipments today are higher than the overall 80/20 market split between AMD and Intel.
The advantage is still in Intel's corner, with the highest percentage we were quoted being that only 30% of all motherboard shipments were for AMD platforms. More than anything this is a testament to Intel's strength. While AMD has been performing very well and chipping away at Intel since the release of the first Athlon, it's going to take a lot more than AMD doing well to dethrone Intel.
The server end of things is also looking very strong for AMD, arguably even stronger than on the desktop side. This month will see the first public demonstrations of 8-way Opteron servers, which will be a first for AMD. The Opteron has not only given AMD the ability to compete in the 4P (soon to be 4 Socket) space, but now stepping into the 8P realm, Opteron is the biggest threat to Intel it has ever been. With the Opteron available in 8P configurations, AMD will have brought 8P processing power down to the affordability of a 4P system. Looking at CPU costs alone, a single Opteron 850 currently sells for around $1500, a single 3GHz Xeon MP (4MB L3) sells for $4000 on average. Multiply that by 8 and you've got a $20K difference in CPU costs alone. We've compared the performance of 4-way versions of the Opteron 8xx vs. the 3GHz Xeon MP and already seen that the Opteron is the better performer of the two thanks to the better scalability of its architecture. While we're still waiting for a review sample of an 8-way server, we'd venture to guess that the superior scalability of the Opteron architecture will only be amplified in an 8-way scenario.
It takes time to develop CPUs and platforms, especially for the enterprise market, so Intel can't respond with product to AMD's threat - at least not today. Instead, Intel is offering motherboard makers much more support to develop some of the next-generation Intel server platforms. From what we heard in Taiwan, Intel is being much more cooperative with the manufacturers in making sure that their next-generation (2005 and 2006) server and workstation platforms come along quite well. Intel has also expressed a great deal of concern about Opteron to the motherboard manufacturers we talked to, although you'd never get them to publicly admit that.
AMD has also put dual core Opterons in the hands of the motherboard vendors. While we couldn't get a confirmation of clock speeds, the motherboard manufacturers we talked to could not say the same for Intel. It seems that AMD is truly ahead of Intel when it comes to dual core.
On the notebook side of things, as we've reported in a recent Insider Story Intel wants to kill the "Transportable" (aka "Desktop Replacement") market segment. The goal being a Pentium-M and Celeron-M dominated notebook world, and also conveniently forcing AMD into a tight spot. The motherboard manufacturers we talked to who also happen to do OEM notebooks asked us more than once whether we thought the DTR segment was truly dead. Maybe Yonah in 2006 will change things, but today the DTR market is definitely alive and well. In fact, many of the Taiwanese manufacturers were confused as to why DTRs sold so well in the U.S., with ultra portable designs selling much better in Japan; after all, who wants to lug around a 10+ lbs laptop? Many of the DTRs today are so heavy that they are more like PC-iMacs instead of notebooks. Needless to say, Intel pulling out of the Transportable/DTR market opens that avenue up to AMD, which is what most of the manufacturers we talked to seem to think as well.
There is also a lot of talk about dual core among the motherboard makers; most of them are wondering whether dual core will be interesting enough to force an upgrade cycle on users. For years, Taiwan has depended on higher clocked CPUs and new cores to sell the latest motherboards, but for the first time in recent history, they aren't being given a higher clocked CPU to count on. The fear is that there won't be any tangible performance increase from dual core CPUs to desktop users and thus the next generation of Glenwood/Lakeport based motherboards (the first boards with dual core support) will see dismal sales much like today's 915. Given Intel's recent track record to these folks, with promises of a quick transition to PCI Express platforms, the caution and concern in the eyes of the motherboard manufacturers is easily understandable.
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AtaStrumf - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great info Anand! More of that whenever possible.He, he, we thought 2004 was gonna be slow, but it turned out quite nicely, but 2005, man, that is gonna be SLOOOOOOW! Only one new desktop CPU per company before dual core madness begins in late 2005. The biggest story in GPUs is gonna be SLI and we will be watching chipsets mature and GPUs become more available and affordable. None of these things are gonna be terribly interesting be it for eighter speed, price or bugs. I guess I wont be pulling out my wallet all that much in 05, but hey, that's a good thing right?
The biggest drawback for new Intel's platforms is not PCIe graphics, its DDR2. It's slower and more expensive. Don't these people learn anything? RDRAM anyone? That was at least faster! This is bad even for OEMs, who don't care if nothing is compatible with previous HW since they build whole new system, but they sure as hell care if they have to pay more for less. But then again, they can sell it as if it were faster, but it stil automatically puts PC based on DDR2 in a higher price class and shrinks their profit margins.
blckgrffn - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Go to Taiwan more often, for sure! I love this kind of stuff :-)Nat
dextrous - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great article Anand! I think more of these gems would be awesome.Dasterdly - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Good article, just go to taiwain when theres much good info. Hire some locals to cover the rest.All the people Ive seen interested in the new intel chipsets want the 925XE. Why are they so excited about ati/intel? Did they hire the soundstorm team or something?
MAME - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
I was reading reviews about the Intel P4 3.x GHz chip on newegg. One user review said (I sh!t you not):"I heard somewhere that AMD's are better for gaming, but they run at suck low clock speeds, maybe they meen the 64 bit version at 2.2 GHz. Why not get a P4? 800FSB HT. If you ever want a 2.4 Ghz Amd prepare to pay $750+"
With morons like this, Intel is not going to lose much market share.
manno - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
About destop replacements. I have a laptop that is just that it literaly replaces my desktop. It has a HUGE screen, good grafics card. I played through Doom 3 and FarCry on it, and it stays in my house exclusively. I like it because it has the power I need, I can use it in any room in my apartment (wireless network) and I don't need to be tethered to a desk to use it. It's an emachines m6805 with a 754 A64 @ 1.8 GHZ with 1MB of cache. It's surprisingly cool, and I frequently use it on my lap without a problem, unlike my Dell 1.6 GHZ P4M that gets extremly hot. Is it like an imac? I guess you could say that. But it's very convenient for me because I can move from room to room without needing the space required by a huge desk somewhere. It never leaves the apartment though, and I could loose the batery and not notice the difference, so maybay that's where the incongruity between the laptops they're thinking of, and the "laptop" I'm thinking of. They think people are getting laptops to take the computer with them out of the house/office. I bought my laptop to stay in my apartment but to let me use it away from my desk. I know for a fact that 2 of my brothers are looking for DTR's, and not desktops, because they have the same user habbits as me, so from personal experience I don't see the market dissapearing. Though I also see the usefulness of a laptop that could run for 24 hrs on 1 charge, that's 12' x 9' x 1' and weighs just a pound. But I realy don't see me leaving the apartment to go surf the net. I leave it to get away from the computer, not to use my computer in new places.-manno
emailauthentication - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
great article, its good to know what the people that actually produce this stuff have to say, instead of just feeding us press releases, more articles like this would be greatly appreciated. keep up the good work and thanks for the imformative article.4lpha0ne - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Here is a small list of possibly fixed bugs:http://aceshardware.com/forum?read=115106142
4lpha0ne - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Am I blind or why am I inable to find any mention of fixed bugs in the former article (Oct 14th) except in the related discussion thread on aceshardware, where Dresdenboy brings up this idea?See http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=115105861
ceefka - Wednesday, November 3, 2004 - link
Great article!I see again bad news for Intel. They are still big, but this must hurt some way. Intel wouldn't want you to know of course.
#11 There are also totally ignorant users that buy AMD64, like a few of my neighbours.