AM2 X2 cut by 50% on July 24

[DrMrLordX]

I'd say Core 2 duo E6600, but that's just me.

 

[TrevorRC]

Originally posted by: Kougar

Originally posted by: golem

AMD isn't in as bad a place because of Opteron (at least not for 06). The profit margin on Opteron is huge by comparison, and they will continue gaining marketshare there in both 2P and 4P until the Woodcrest platform is qualified next year...and then they will still gain marketshare in 4P. After that comes K8L, and that is a big questionmark (though the paper specs make it appear to be slightly better than Conroe based processors).

Also, we have yet to see how well the AMD 65nm chips (Rev G) will perform at the end of this year

I don't think you're right in this. Desktop sales dwarf server sales by orders of magnitude. The profit margin on server cpus may be much better than on desktops cpus, but it's the desktop sales that pay the bills, the servers sales are just gravy.

I'm pretty sure you have it backwards I couldn't say about the numbers of chips that are devoted for servers vs the desktop markets, but AMD makes by far the most net income from their server sales, with the desktop and mobile segments trailing behind those. I can't seem to find that brief interview where AMD said around the start of this year they'd be concentrating on the server market for this very reason. AMD makes almost nothing off of a Sempron and only a bit better on the low end Athlon 64 segment. Nor can I find any good breakdowns on this years quarterly earnings beyond some figures I can't directly compare or draw info from.

I would expect the "up to" to be the catch, I'm pretty sure there will be no 50% off a X2 3800+... with the discount off edging up in as the model number does, since they have a higher profit margin they can trim off with the higher end chips.

That'd be my bet as well "Up to 50%" not all price down 50%.

So the 4800+ may be shaved down 50%, but I doubt the 3800+ will drop more than 20.

Nonetheless, I'll be selling my X2 on July 15th on eBay, 1 week auction. If the prices plummet, I'll make a nice chunk of change.... if they don't, I can always get a new 65nm processor anyway . Good deal either way.
--Trevor

 

[lopri]

I can't believe that I've sold a 3500+ for $250 (shipped) last week.

 

[UsandThem]

Originally posted by: Viditor
The X2s are AM2 only according to the article...

Several say AM2 and 939 on the X2's according to the chart.

 

[richardrds]

Glad i waited and never pulled the trigger on my Winchester to x2 upgrade. With X2 3800's at $150 time for dual core upgrade for me!!!!!!!

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: richardrds
Glad i waited and never pulled the trigger on my Winchester to x2 upgrade. With X2 3800's at $150 time for dual core upgrade for me!!!!!!!

In a similar position. I was going to pull the trigger on from Venice 3200+ to either an X2 3800+ or Opteron 165. Time to wait now. I really could use dual core for my video encoding needs. $150-160 X2 3800+ here I come!

 

[golem]

I don't think you're right in this. Desktop sales dwarf server sales by orders of magnitude. The profit margin on server cpus may be much better than on desktops cpus, but it's the desktop sales that pay the bills, the servers sales are just gravy.

I'm pretty sure you have it backwards I couldn't say about the numbers of chips that are devoted for servers vs the desktop markets, but AMD makes by far the most net income from their server sales, with the desktop and mobile segments trailing behind those. I can't seem to find that brief interview where AMD said around the start of this year they'd be concentrating on the server market for this very reason. AMD makes almost nothing off of a Sempron and only a bit better on the low end Athlon 64 segment. Nor can I find any good breakdowns on this years quarterly earnings beyond some figures I can't directly compare or draw info from.[/quote]

I don't think I'm wrong on this. According to Overclockers.com, server sales are only about 5% of the total number of desktops sold. ASSUMMING this number is correct, even if they make 5 to 10 times more per server chip than they do on a desktop chip, they still NEED the desktop unit sales or else they'll really start hurting.

Making up some numbers

5 dollars per desktop x 100 chips is 500
50 dollars per server chip x 5 chips is 250

sure they're making a whole lot of money on each server chip sold, but they need the desktop chip sales to pay for the huge fixed cost of chip production, they NEED the economies of scale from the desktop chips to spread the huge fixed cost of running a fab.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: golem

I don't think you're right in this. Desktop sales dwarf server sales by orders of magnitude. The profit margin on server cpus may be much better than on desktops cpus, but it's the desktop sales that pay the bills, the servers sales are just gravy.

I'm pretty sure you have it backwards I couldn't say about the numbers of chips that are devoted for servers vs the desktop markets, but AMD makes by far the most net income from their server sales, with the desktop and mobile segments trailing behind those. I can't seem to find that brief interview where AMD said around the start of this year they'd be concentrating on the server market for this very reason. AMD makes almost nothing off of a Sempron and only a bit better on the low end Athlon 64 segment. Nor can I find any good breakdowns on this years quarterly earnings beyond some figures I can't directly compare or draw info from.

I don't think I'm wrong on this. According to Overclockers.com, server sales are only about 5% of the total number of desktops sold. ASSUMMING this number is correct, even if they make 5 to 10 times more per server chip than they do on a desktop chip, they still NEED the desktop unit sales or else they'll really start hurting.

Making up some numbers

5 dollars per desktop x 100 chips is 500
50 dollars per server chip x 5 chips is 250

sure they're making a whole lot of money on each server chip sold, but they need the desktop chip sales to pay for the huge fixed cost of chip production, they NEED the economies of scale from the desktop chips to spread the huge fixed cost of running a fab.
[/quote]

They are making substantially more than that on a per chip basis for high end servers.

More like $600+ per chip.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: golem

I don't think you're right in this. Desktop sales dwarf server sales by orders of magnitude. The profit margin on server cpus may be much better than on desktops cpus, but it's the desktop sales that pay the bills, the servers sales are just gravy.

I'm pretty sure you have it backwards I couldn't say about the numbers of chips that are devoted for servers vs the desktop markets, but AMD makes by far the most net income from their server sales, with the desktop and mobile segments trailing behind those. I can't seem to find that brief interview where AMD said around the start of this year they'd be concentrating on the server market for this very reason. AMD makes almost nothing off of a Sempron and only a bit better on the low end Athlon 64 segment. Nor can I find any good breakdowns on this years quarterly earnings beyond some figures I can't directly compare or draw info from.

I don't think I'm wrong on this. According to Overclockers.com, server sales are only about 5% of the total number of desktops sold. ASSUMMING this number is correct, even if they make 5 to 10 times more per server chip than they do on a desktop chip, they still NEED the desktop unit sales or else they'll really start hurting.

Making up some numbers

5 dollars per desktop x 100 chips is 500
50 dollars per server chip x 5 chips is 250

sure they're making a whole lot of money on each server chip sold, but they need the desktop chip sales to pay for the huge fixed cost of chip production, they NEED the economies of scale from the desktop chips to spread the huge fixed cost of running a fab.
[/quote]

It's actually more than 10x the profit/chip...and for AMD it's much more than 5% of their shipments. Last quarter, almost 70% of AMD's profit came from server chips.

Edit: BTW, the reason it's not clear is that OC.com is counting ALL x86 chips shipped...this includes embedded controllers, game consoles, etc...

Edit 2: I should also add that almost half of all chips that both Intel and AMD ship are either Semprons or Celerons...the profit on these can be as low as $5-10. The profit on an AMD Opteron 880 is ~$1,300...

 

[the cobbler]

Originally posted by: UsandThem

Originally posted by: Viditor
The X2s are AM2 only according to the article...

Several say AM2 and 939 on the X2's according to the chart.

I'm thinking it would be borderline retarded to mark down AM2s but not identical S939 chips.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: the cobbler

Originally posted by: UsandThem

Originally posted by: Viditor
The X2s are AM2 only according to the article...

Several say AM2 and 939 on the X2's according to the chart.

I'm thinking it would be borderline retarded to mark down AM2s but not identical S939 chips.

At this point, 939 owners are locked into the platform anyway, and AMD would like to make hte platform go away. Of course, they'll lose some serious mindshare should they do that.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: the cobbler

Originally posted by: UsandThem

Originally posted by: Viditor
The X2s are AM2 only according to the article...

Several say AM2 and 939 on the X2's according to the chart.

I'm thinking it would be borderline retarded to mark down AM2s but not identical S939 chips.

At this point, 939 owners are locked into the platform anyway, and AMD would like to make hte platform go away. Of course, they'll lose some serious mindshare should they do that.

I don't think anyone is so locked into Socket 939 that it cost as much or only slightly more to buy a new Socket AM2 motherboard, CPU and RAM (after reselling the old stuff) than it is to buy a new Socket 939 CPU...

Let's say I want to upgrade to AM2. I sell my old Venice 3200+, Asus mobo and 2GB RAM for $200'ish. I then buy new 2GB DDR2 kit for $150. Mobo for $150 and X2 3800+ for $160. I'm down the hole $250'ish cause prices are never exact and maybe higher if I go for the performance RAM. But the overall cost would be $250 to $300'ish.

And if they didn't drop the prices on Socket 939 CPU's that same X2 3800+ but for Socket 939 would cost me roughly $300. After reselling my old CPU for about $50. I'd be right at the same price point as upgrading to AM2.

At that point, only an idiot would upgrade to another Socket 939 CPU.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: UsandThem

Originally posted by: Viditor
The X2s are AM2 only according to the article...

Several say AM2 and 939 on the X2's according to the chart.

Sorry, you're quite correct. I read the article before they updated it.
Thanks for the correction!

 

[beggerking]

Time for a major upgrade..

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: akugami

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: the cobbler

Originally posted by: UsandThem

Originally posted by: Viditor
The X2s are AM2 only according to the article...

Several say AM2 and 939 on the X2's according to the chart.

I'm thinking it would be borderline retarded to mark down AM2s but not identical S939 chips.

At this point, 939 owners are locked into the platform anyway, and AMD would like to make hte platform go away. Of course, they'll lose some serious mindshare should they do that.

I don't think anyone is so locked into Socket 939 that it cost as much or only slightly more to buy a new Socket AM2 motherboard, CPU and RAM (after reselling the old stuff) than it is to buy a new Socket 939 CPU...

Let's say I want to upgrade to AM2. I sell my old Venice 3200+, Asus mobo and 2GB RAM for $200'ish. I then buy new 2GB DDR2 kit for $150. Mobo for $150 and X2 3800+ for $160. I'm down the hole $250'ish cause prices are never exact and maybe higher if I go for the performance RAM. But the overall cost would be $250 to $300'ish.

And if they didn't drop the prices on Socket 939 CPU's that same X2 3800+ but for Socket 939 would cost me roughly $300. After reselling my old CPU for about $50. I'd be right at the same price point as upgrading to AM2.

At that point, only an idiot would upgrade to another Socket 939 CPU.

Some of us don't wanna order a new mobo(cause mines drilled into my case to where it can't come out)

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: GundamSonicZeroX
Some of us don't wanna order a new mobo(cause mines drilled into my case to where it can't come out)

I'd say you're the exception to the rule then because the overwhelming majority of users do not have their motherboards bolted to their case. Not saying there aren't a lot of enthusiasts whose boards would be a pain in the rear to take apart but nothing a little elbow grease and time won't take care of.

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: akugami

Originally posted by: GundamSonicZeroX
Some of us don't wanna order a new mobo(cause mines drilled into my case to where it can't come out)

I'd say you're the exception to the rule then because the overwhelming majority of users do not have their motherboards bolted to their case. Not saying there aren't a lot of enthusiasts whose boards would be a pain in the rear to take apart but nothing a little elbow grease and time won't take care of.

Well, for reasons I can't even remember anymore, I had to bolt it into the case and I can't rip the mobo out without fvcking up my case. For now, an X2 4600+ will do until next year.

 

[magomago]

If X2 can get into sub 120 range for even the low end I will definitely buy one...or if the P 9X series can get to 100, I'll buy one

 

[Ranulf]

Hmm, AM2 may be worth it if they do drop to those prices. Just not too sure I wanna deal with brand new mobo designs of AM2 vs 939.

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Hmm, AM2 may be worth it if they do drop to those prices. Just not too sure I wanna deal with brand new mobo designs of AM2 vs 939.

Wait a few weeks for a less expensive and or better quality version of these mobos(if you want SLI) and AM2 will definately be worth it.

 

[R3MF]

hmm, i'm waiting for a 570 mATX board before i jump on AM2

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

I think I'll wait for a DFI LAnparty for AM2.

 

[customcoms]

Yeap...I'm waiting for a DFI Infinity board for AM2 to build a really fast budget computer (can anyone else say Sempron 3000+ @ 2.6ghz? Thats a 1ghz overclock btw). I no longer trust any motherboard except DFI...maybe a Biostar (haven't tried them out)

 

[GundamSonicZeroX]

Originally posted by: customcoms
Yeap...I'm waiting for a DFI Infinity board for AM2 to build a really fast budget computer (can anyone else say Sempron 3000+ @ 2.6ghz? Thats a 1ghz overclock btw). I no longer trust any motherboard except DFI...maybe a Biostar (haven't tried them out)

What about Gigabyte?

 

[AkumaX]

heh, why get an opteron 170 when you can get an X2 4000+?

i hope these apply to S939 also...

man this is exciting! i never would have thought AMD dual core would dip below sub-200 range so quickly...