Is Intel too expensive?

[Charles Kozierok]

AMD has far superior perf/watt than Intels graphics.

I personally am tired of hearing about performance per watt, which as I said in a previous thread, is IMO an overpromoted statistic, as bad as raw cycle speed used to be.

Anyway, whatever the technical arguments, AMD is getting killed in the marketplace. So something is not working.

Just where would AMD be if all their stuff was on 22nm?

AMD isn't on 22 nm because AMD wasn't able to develop 22 nm and Intel was. This falls into the category of "if the queen had balls, she'd be the king".

 

[Lonbjerg]

No they are not.....otherwise they wouldn't be selling...logic 101.

 

[SiliconWars]

The trivial fines reflect the trivial offences.

The inescapable fact about AMD is that their problems are overwhelmingly due to inept management over the years who used AMD as their personal fiefdom to enrich themselves and build a cult of irrational supporters to act as their apologists all over the Internet.

Trivial? I'm sure you'll find the $1.45 billion fine was the record fine handed out by the EU, some $800 million more than was handed out to Microsoft.

While I don't disagree that AMD has had some bad management, to claim that they have taken the amounts of money out of the company that would actually harm the company to the state it is in is pretty ridiculous. Count up all the revenue AMD has made and count up all the director pay. I'm sure you'll find it's less than what many have been paying themselves.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Trivial? I'm sure you'll find the $1.45 billion fine was the record fine handed out by the EU, some $800 million more than was handed out to Microsoft.

While I don't disagree that AMD has had some bad management, to claim that they have taken the amounts of money out of the company that would actually harm the company to the state it is in is pretty ridiculous. Count up all the revenue AMD has made and count up all the director pay. I'm sure you'll find it's less than what many have been paying themselves.

Take your AMD crusade into another thread, thanks.

 

[SiliconWars]

Take your AMD crusade into another thread, thanks.

Why don't you just stop reading it instead? Or should I embarrass you by quoting your entire contributions to this thread so far?

 

[CHADBOGA]

Trivial? I'm sure you'll find the $1.45 billion fine was the record fine handed out by the EU, some $800 million more than was handed out to Microsoft.

And still subject to appeal.

While I don't disagree that AMD has had some bad management, to claim that they have taken the amounts of money out of the company that would actually harm the company to the state it is in is pretty ridiculous. Count up all the revenue AMD has made and count up all the director pay. I'm sure you'll find it's less than what many have been paying themselves.

I'm not claiming that their remuneration is why AMD is in financial dire straits, rather that instead of knuckling down and building up AMD, they were more interested in stupid games of self-aggrandisement and bluster.

Their main concern was to sit in the Chair that gave them the big bucks, rather than work out the best way for AMD to thrive.

The last years of Jerry Sanders and the whole reign of Hector Ruiz was one big missed opportunity due to their rampant ego's.

 

[Idontcare]

I would love to see some cheaper overclockable dual cores or quad cores,
cheapest unlocked is what, $230? cheapest quad core $179?

I kind of miss the days of the 1700+ JIUHB (under $100, and could perform 100% like a 5x higher priced CPU when overclocked, like the 2800+), or the e5200 (same performance as stock e8xxx when overclocked, for less than half the price), same probably applies to other old CPUs,

but overall, if you forget about OC, prices are good... for $50 you can buy a good enough CPU for many uses (based on the same architecture, same motherboards as the $300 CPU), for $100 you give another step, and for $200 you are really close to the best possible today... now things start getting more expensive for the gain, but if you need it makes sense $300 for some i7, or $600 for a 6 core i7... I don't even consider "extreme CPUs".

now if you go a few years back, the big difference was locking OC. :|


well, let's not forget, around 2005:

(Intel dual cores were cheaper, but slower)

Only reason I ended up with an Intel P4 2.4C was because I literally could not afford to pay AMD's prices for even their lowest priced X2 SKU at the time

And you know why AMD's prices were so high? Supply and demand, supply was limited because of AMD's capex decisions and everyone knew (and accepted) this back then...but now we got some serious history revisionism going on, complete with the "Intel is too expensive" perspective :\

Right. AMD priced themselves to silly high levels but it was those bastard OEMs and evil Intel that kept those over-priced X2's out of the hands of suffering consumers like myself.

Reminds me of the movie title "Eyes wide shut".

 

[Lonbjerg]

Why don't you just stop reading it instead? Or should I embarrass you by quoting your entire contributions to this thread so far?

Read the thread title...this has nothing do with AMD...reported.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Funny observation...the pole reflects Intel's market share in CPU's quite well.

 

[Torn Mind]

Why are you still telling us how great AMD when that is completely off topic?

On the one hand you claim that Intel is a monopoly with no competition when it suits you.

Some markets are not monopolies per se but close to it market power-wise. Measures such as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is used to measure market power. N

That being said, perfect competition or monopolistic competition is a pipe dream in the semiconductor industry because of the barriers to entry; there is much capital needed to enter it, both in terms of physical capital and "soft" capital like knowledge of how to build chips.

The "best" situation possible, IN THEORY, is an oligopoly, but with many firms. I personally am not aware of a particular economic model that has many firms yet with barriers to entry.

However, you can only lower prices so much before you start stymieing technological progess, which in turn limits the outward movement of the production possibilities frontier.

 

[SiliconWars]

And still subject to appeal.

I'm not claiming that their remuneration is why AMD is in financial dire straits, rather that instead of knuckling down and building up AMD, they were more interested in stupid games of self-aggrandisement and bluster.

Their main concern was to sit in the Chair that gave them the big bucks, rather than work out the best way for AMD to thrive.

The last years of Jerry Sanders and the whole reign of Hector Ruiz was one big missed opportunity due to their rampant ego's.

And not at all helped by Intel basically bribing them out of the big players. If you're looking for somebody who disagrees about AMD's ex management then you're looking at the wrong person because I'm aware of how bad they were.

Your problem Chad is you cannot believe that Intel is in any way to blame, and over the years you have convinced yourself of utter nonsensical stuff (AMD in cahoots with the worlds government to bring down Intel? Puhleeease!) instead of just believing what is 99.999% likely to be true. That is, Intel used their monopoly position to harm consumers, harm innovation and harm AMD. That's what the EU report says, that's pretty much what the Japan and Korean reports say and I'm sure the US one is even worse.

 

[1nf1d3l]

They are on the forefront of innovation and design of CPU chips. R/D is expensive. Are they worth it IMO? Yeah, otherwise, I wouldn't have purchased any.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

You keep ignoring the fact that AMD was more competitive a couple of years after these misdeeds than they were five years after that.

Intel is winning because Intel is making better chips.

 

[SiliconWars]

You keep ignoring the fact that AMD was more competitive a couple of years after these misdeeds than they were five years after that.

In 2009 AMD was more competitive? Really? These misdeeds lasted from 2002-2007. What did AMD have in 2009 that was so competitive compared to what they have now?

Intel is winning because Intel is making better chips.

Already answered and you deflected it by claiming perf/watt was a useless metric, so there's no point even attempting to argue the point with you if you believe that.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Your problem Chad is you cannot believe that Intel is in any way to blame

You do know that in a capitalist system, rivals aren't there to give a helping hand to each other.

and over the years you have convinced yourself of utter nonsensical stuff (AMD in cahoots with the worlds government to bring down Intel? Puhleeease!) instead of just believing what is 99.999% likely to be true.

It is not a case of being in cahoots.

There is a natural bias for various Governmental bodies/Tribunals like the FTC to justify their existence, so when a complaint is brought before them, they feel the need to "do something with it", so we see something like the Japanese and Korean bodies decide to ask Intel to formally agree to change some practices, that Intel claimed they weren't doing in the first place.

Poorly performing companies have a bit of an edge here, as a Trades Practices Commission is unlikely to know exactly why a company is in trouble, and will not automatically dismiss a clutching at straws attempt, to blame others for their own mistakes.

From the Microsoft experience with the EU, we have seen disturbing comments like "high market share" is a sign of abusive practices, and if Microsoft were to lose a large chunk of their market share, then competition is working as intended.

So the EU's starting position comes at these issues from a perspective of companies with low and/or falling marketshare, must have been victims of successful companies, rather than possibly being to blame for their own problems in the first place.

You also seem to forget that in no Court of Law where Witnesses can be called and Cross Examined, has Intel been found guilty of anything in respect of these rebates.

The EU's own Ombudsman's report into how the EU treated Intel was scathing, saying that they hid material that would have been beneficial to Intel's case.

 

[Piroko]

Right. AMD priced themselves to silly high levels but it was those bastard OEMs and evil Intel that kept those over-priced X2's out of the hands of suffering consumers like myself.

There's a difference between "I don't want/can't afford a product" and "I'm not even told that this product exists".
What happened in the EU was that the big Supermarkets took out all the different sorts of Butter and hid them behind the counter except for one salted sort because the manufacturer gave kickbacks to the CEOs. And if you wanted a different sort, perhaps one without salt, you'd be asked first "Well yes, we have that, but why don't you take the salted one over there?".

I'm not arguing that AMD wasn't capacity constrained, but Intel built up an unjustified image of quality back then which still sticks around.

 

[SiliconWars]

I'm not necessarily arguing against AMD being contrained back then either. I just find it very illogical that if it was a severe issue, intel would bother to bribe OEM's billions of dollars when AMD couldn't have delivered the chips anyway. Plus the fact that they had a million spare chips sitting around that they could just offer away to HP. That was a lot of chips back then.

Those two factors together simply do not paint a picture of AMD having terrible supply issues, whether true or not. It just doesn't add up.

 

[ViRGE]

Locked for mod review
-ViRGE

 

[Idontcare]

What happened in the EU was that the big Supermarkets took out all the different sorts of Butter and hid them behind the counter except for one salted sort because the manufacturer gave kickbacks to the CEOs. And if you wanted a different sort, perhaps one without salt, you'd be asked first "Well yes, we have that, but why don't you take the salted one over there?".

Reminds me of my cable, phone, and ISP choices

The problem in your analogy is that the customer's should have commercially penalized the supermarkets for having sold them (the consumer) out in exchange for kickbacks.

You can't cheat an honest man. Intel's alleged gambit could not have worked had the cultural environment in Europe been ethical in its own right.

Corruption requires willing participants on all sides of the equation, the fact that it purportedly transpired for years and years before anyone decided to do anything about it is equally telling.

And were any of the unscrupulous actors in Europe jailed, fined, or otherwise put out of business? Or are they still there, waiting in the wings to pocket the next bribe that comes their way? (or did they already pocket the bribe, a bribe that compelled them to then prosecute Intel without fair trial at the behest of the tribunal's anonymous contributors?)

You can't cheat honest people, and all you've convinced me of is that Europe is full of dishonest business and political leaders that were willing to commit crimes against their own customers to earn a dishonest buck from Intel. And now we are to be surprised that these same unscrupulous people are looking to extract even more money from the hand that previously fed them?

Oh the irony in that. Beware the man that will take your bribe to do your bidding, as they will just as readily take your enemies bribe as well