So, where's the Intel monopoly?

[Arachnotronic]

So, here we are. Bulldozer didn't crush SNB nor is it available in any appreciable quantities.

Intel still offers us a 2600K w/ HT for $315, a 2500K for $219, and if we really want to push it to the max, a 990X for $1,000.

But even with lack of competition, Intel gives us an incredible value. So whenever I hear people claiming that the reason our CPUs nowadays are fantastic is due to AMD's competition and without it we'd be doomed, I chuckle.

Intel needs to continually improve performance per watt and price to performance in order to make upgrades compelling to people, especially in the laptop scene, where battery life and portability are everything. Stagnating innovation or making things prohibitively expensive is not conducive to sales of new products.

Further, Intel has very little competition in the server market -- a 12 core Opteron more often than not gets its tush handed to it by Intel's 6 core Westmere, and I doubt the "16 core" Interlagos will fare much better. Yet Intel is creating a more compelling server lineup than ever before -- SNB-EP is actually significantly differentiated in a number of important ways from the desktop LGA 1155 stuff and even the SNB-E stuff that will be available on x79 (8 core chips, dual/quad CPU socket support, etc.)

I love PC technology and nothing makes me happier than to see it continually advance. And even with AMD sitting on the CPU sidelines at the higher end, Intel is still pushing and innovating more aggressively than ever.

Lack of competition doesn't necessarily lead to stagnation. At least not in this case.

(Note: I am an AMD shareholder and I'm saying this.)

 

[dma0991]

I could imagine if Intel were to increase their prices by a significant amount(>200%?), that would just make the pace of transition of users to ARM based devices much faster than it is now. If the trend of the current market is to have a lower power consumption then most probably ARM is holding the fort against Intel while AMD fumbles around in the battlefield with a bulldozer.

A significant price increase by Intel would indirectly affect the OEMs as well and the huge price increase of a Dell would just make it that much harder to sell a Dell PC to a consumer that is constantly expecting prices to drop, not rise.

 

[Elixer]

Learn from history, not a snapshot of what is going on now.

Intel didn't start to really improve their CPUs until they got kicked in the pants because of competition. It wasn't very long ago that AMD's best was far better than what intel could produce.

The tactic was sue them, when that didn't work, they tried to lock/freeze them out, and they got busted for that, and now, we have little competition in the mid to high end, and lots in the low end.

Intel still has a huge monopoly, and if they wanted to they could crush everyone by doing some big price cuts.

 

[Olikan]

But even with lack of competition, Intel gives us an incredible value. So whenever I hear people claiming that the reason our CPUs nowadays are fantastic is due to AMD's competition and without it we'd be doomed, I chuckle.

without amd,
we would had to chose between a pention 32bits or a itanium 64
memory controler would still be at nortbridge
have fun with your singre core +ht
igps would suck even more

 

[zsdersw]

Learn from history, not a snapshot of what is going on now.

Intel didn't start to really improve their CPUs until they got kicked in the pants because of competition. It wasn't very long ago that AMD's best was far better than what intel could produce.

The tactic was sue them, when that didn't work, they tried to lock/freeze them out, and they got busted for that, and now, we have little competition in the mid to high end, and lots in the low end.

Intel still has a huge monopoly, and if they wanted to they could crush everyone by doing some big price cuts.

There's a reason why it's called "history"; it happened in the past, not the present or future.

The information technology and computing landscape is not the same anymore. The average consumer is, more than ever before, not bound to the traditional Wintel PC/laptop for a huge chunk of what they buy IT products to do. Intel doesn't have any dominance (to say nothing about a monopoly) in the smartphone/tablet market.

 

[jhu]

Pentium 4

/thread

 

[Arg Clin]

Lack of competition doesn't necessarily lead to stagnation.

Yes and no. Say Intel did manage to kill AMD and get a monopoly they'd still need consumers to keep refreshing their cpus once in a while to keep the income stream going. Expansion by itself won't drive the market - it's fairly saturated by now I think. (at least in the western world, where the $$$ is at)

But it would certainly slow things down, because Itel would be able to squeeze maximum profit out of consumers on each product, rather than having to keep up with competition.

 

[exar333]

Pentium 4

/thread

P4 has nothing to do with a monopoly. If anything, this product was released at the height of competition and allowed AMD to make significant inroads with both consumer and business marketshare.

 

[jhu]

The main thing the courts go after is anti-competitive practices. That's what Standard Oil, AT&T, Alcoa, Kodak, and most recently Intel have done. It's one thing to have a better product. It's another thing to pay people not to use a competitor's product.

 

[bryanW1995]

When AMD had a dominant market position, prices were actually higher than they are now. Intel is going to have strong pressure to keeps prices pretty close to what they are now, we'll just end up paying the same amount for less of a performance bump in the long run most likely.

fyi: this will be post-haswell. I think that there's a reasonable chance that low end haswell >= high end Bulldozer/Piledozer/Hammerhead Google Shark/etc. I don't what will happen then, but I suspect that it will be the end of AMD in the consumer cpu space.

 

[exar333]

When AMD had a dominant market position, prices were actually higher than they are now. Intel is going to have strong pressure to keeps prices pretty close to what they are now, we'll just end up paying the same amount for less of a performance bump in the long run most likely.

The average PC purchase price has decreased considerably over the past 5-10 years. Also, manufacturing gains and process shriks definitely help lower the ASP while keeping margins acceptable.

 

[ultimatebob]

Pentium 4

/thread

I was thinking Pentium III... wasn't that the first Intel processor that AMD clobbered in benchmarks when the original Athlon's came out?

 

[cantholdanymore]

Microsoft

 

[Edrick]

Further, Intel has very little competition in the server market

Well, that is not the case at the enterprise level. IBM (Power7 and z196) is kicking Intel (Itaniums) arse! And Intel is not happy about it.

 

[jhu]

I was thinking Pentium III... wasn't that the first Intel processor that AMD clobbered in benchmarks when the original Athlon's came out?

Pentium !!! was actually a decent processor. Then Pentium 4 came out, and people's reactions were WTF??? Although there was one guy in particular on anandtech back then who was raving about how awesome his Pentium 4 was despite benchmark evidence to the contrary.

 

[Arg Clin]

Pentium !!! was actually a decent processor. Then Pentium 4 came out, and people's reactions were WTF??? Although there was one guy in particular on anandtech back then who was raving about how awesome his Pentium 4 was despite benchmark evidence to the contrary.

True. But the K7 did mob the floor with the old Katmai. Coppermine levelled things out a but, but I'd still say the K7 was the better architecture.

P4 Willamette was a plain disaster.

 

[Gigantopithecus]

There's a reason why it's called "history"; it happened in the past, not the present or future.

The information technology and computing landscape is not the same anymore. The average consumer is, more than ever before, not bound to the traditional Wintel PC/laptop for a huge chunk of what they buy IT products to do. Intel doesn't have any dominance (to say nothing about a monopoly) in the smartphone/tablet market.

Very poignant post. I know many people who are content with their iPhone and a netbook. Laptops are increasingly replacing desktops, and in that segment, Llano competes extremely well with Intel's low to mid-range CPUs. And very few people need a quad core CPU in their laptop.

Five years ago, the average consumer benefited from the best and fastest CPUs. This is absolutely not true today. The i3-2100/Phenom II X4 level CPU is more than enough for everyone except enthusiast gamers, and people who do computationally intense work on their PCs. Even now, how many people really benefit from spending the extra hundo on an i7-2600K vs the i5-2500K?

Also, five years ago, the average consumer was in a much, much better position financially than they are today. The economy is still in terrible shape, and it's a lot easier to sell a $500 PC than it is to sell a $1,000 PC. Why replace a five year old Core 2 Duo that still works well when the $1,000 Core i5 rig can't open your email and let you watch YouTube videos any faster?

 

[Eddie313]

I don't understand why people can't enjoy having a choice. All I hear about Is Intel is Faster in this or that. Most of the Computers I build is Amd and that is because of cost/performance with the customer. They do not want to spend the extra money on something that they do not need. I normally do not get into the posts about the cpu wars, But really that is all I'm seeing on this form any more. Both Companies have There Faults and there benefits and love going to the store/website and going buying either Amd or Intel.

 

[Lasthitlarry]

Competition is good, because most of the time both companies AND consumers win. Of course there are times when one party loses, but with Intel and AMD, I just see win-win.

I still buy AMD because I enjoy cheap toys to be replaced more than expensive toys, and I wouldn't want to see that choice go away.

I don't really think Intel would want a monopoly once they got it. They both are about where they want to be (of course they want to do better).

 

[DaveSimmons]

Notice how a legal copy of Windows still costs you at least $99 at Newegg?

Yep, prices drop quickly when a monopoly has no credible competition. Or not.

 

[Mopetar]

Intel is Intel's biggest competition. If they don't produce something better, most folks will be happy to continue using older Intel parts. Look at how Apple pretty much skipped Arrandale in a lot of their products because it really wasn't all that much better and the limitations weren't worth any improvements that were made.

If Intel comes out with a truly bad product, the market will pretty much eschew it and not upgrade, especially if AMD doesn't have anything better. That would hurt Intel just as badly as AMD having a highly competitive chip.

 

[jhu]

Notice how a legal copy of Windows still costs you at least $99 at Newegg?

Yep, prices drop quickly when a monopoly has no credible competition. Or not.

Or pick up a copy of Debian for $0. Microsoft isn't the only company that produces operating systems.

 

[sangyup81]

Intel is still feeling threatened but it is not by AMD. ARM may come to a position to challenge Intel in 3-5 years due to power consumption superiority so Intel is looking to be ready to meet this competition.

As for AMD, it seems like Intel has moved on from them and are willing to throw them a bone (low end of the market) to keep the regulators happy

 

[Keysplayr]

Or pick up a copy of Debian for $0. Microsoft isn't the only company that produces operating systems.

0$ cause they can't sell it and have to give it away. Say what you want about MS but their OS is best. Bugs and all.

 

[ViRGE]

I would say we haven't really felt the effects of an Intel monopoly, and that is because they've gone out of their way in the last 5-6 years to keep it from happening. Make no mistake: Intel could wipe AMD off the map within a year or so by accepting lower gross margins on their sub-$200 parts. AMD exists but for the grace of Intel, as Intel purposely hampers themselves just enough in the sub-$200 market to keep AMD viable in the long-term and to avoid having to take any gross margin hits in the short-term.

Intel doesn't want to be a dejure monopoly, because that will get them heavily regulated. Instead they want to be the 800lb gorilla (or at the most, a defacto monopoly), always able to point at AMD when regulators come sniffing around. Thus the fact that they keep AMD around keeps them on their toes and avoids stagnation, as they have a 20% ghetto carved out for AMD and they need to make sure AMD stays there, which means they can't completely ignore AMD's progress.