Friday, December 2nd 2011
AMD Bulldozer A Surprisingly Sell-Out Sales Success. Victims: Phenom II & Athlon II
AMD's new Bulldozer "FX" series of processors may be very lacklustre performers in reviewer's benchmarks and have garnered considerable scorn in enthusiast circles, but they're a very good performer for AMD's bottom line. Incredibly, they are selling out as soon as shops get them in stock - and they are not even priced very competitively against Intel's offerings, so perhaps the "It's an 8 core CPU!!" marketing is working well on the uninformed "enthusiast" after all? Mind you, what enthusiast, however uninformed, wouldn't know exactly how these products perform? Every tech website and computer magazine has covered these chips by now. The mind boggles.
Unfortunately, the victims of this unwarranted success are the decent Phenom II & Athlon II processors, which have always been priced very well, giving good value for money and are good sellers. The reason is that the manufacturing plants share equipment between these old 45 nm products and the new 32 nm ones, creating a conflict between them, so one must go. It therefore makes sound business sense for AMD to discontinue selling the old product in favour of the new, expensive one which is flying off the shelves. AMD will stop shipping all Athlon II's and Phenom II's to distributors, but with one exception. The "Zosma" 6 core Phenom II X4 960T will continue to be available until stocks run dry. This has two cores disabled, making it a "quad" core CPU, but with luck they might be unlockable. To state the obvious, if one is considering buying one of these discontinued chips, then they'd better not wait long.
Source:
Nordic Hardware
175 Comments on AMD Bulldozer A Surprisingly Sell-Out Sales Success. Victims: Phenom II & Athlon II
anyways, false marketing is no where near as bad as what Intel has done to their competition. I would have no problems with Intel if they practiced putting their competition into the dirt by sheer innovation
so cling to your 'hard evidence'. you have your reasons and I have mine. btw, your assumed stereotype is wrong. I dont drive saturns nor do I build with ECS. I drive a G37 and I prefer to build with Gigabyte and ASUS. I do not own an FX chip since I was waiting for a higher bin. now it looks like I am going to wait for PDperhaps you should start reading entire threads. yes, it got off topic for a second but it also got back on. it started from my response to statement that Steve Jobs gave a damn about his company's bottom line
All the hype 6 months ago let OEM designers to design PCs for the Xmas season to be based on these chips. Prepurchase orders and production lines set up for these CPUs.
The question is whether the PCs themselves will actually sell, or stockpile on retailers shelves.
You bet AMD is discounting heavily in the OEM so that they dont switch mid production to an Intel product.
AMD are very lucky today they have their own socket... otherwise switching to Intel would be so much easier for the OEM.
OT: Good for AMD. Maybe they can take this and invest the money in those new low end chips they're planning to produce. I wish them nothing but the best for their future.
It's possibly the average consumer being conned into thinking 8 cores is better than 6 and the price you are paying for 8 initially is a steal.
The average consumer doesn't know squat about PCs and believes more is better.
Just like, say a late model V6 which puts out more power than a late model V8.
There is just a ring to having that higher number amongst people who do not know any better especially when there is a lack of knowledge about the actual performance output.
I gotta admit though- I wish I hadnt replied cause this wasnt my intention
It's like changing your relationship status in facebook from "in a relationship" to "single" and when someone asks why, you'll reply "I don't want to talk about it." :laugh:
"I wish I hadnt replied cause this wasnt my intention"?
But you did reply. So you did change your intention, by replying. :laugh:
EDIT: Oh shucks, sorry about that. It wasn't my intention really to call you out about that. Oh wait. :laugh:
With AMD, it's like, the performance isn't really that great but it's a bargain I suppose since I can't afford a decent Intel CPU.....
While with Apple, it's like WHOA that's expensive....I'm sure there is a good reason for it.
I had a long post replying to every one of your points, but as Damn Smooth pointed out this is getting rather off-topic, and it'd have been a redundant response for most of the people who read it.
Edit: Sorry, not dropping..."Avoiding the high end", rather.
Since 939skt.
Hence their AMD64 badges.
On the flip side of this, this is why intels offerings are the more powerful solution, because they do keep changing sockets, not limiting themselves.
But back on topic..
I feel majority of people are aware of how bulldozer performs, but for those that already have a bulldozer ready set up it is the latest, best and most futureproof upgrade within their budget.
My budget right now is $0 lol, but if i was in a position to be getting a new cpu - since I am an enthusiast (a minority, like already mentioned in this thread) I would still sell up and start fresh with an i5/7 build though...oh to be part of the 5% who care about the nitty gritty huh?
this way they will be able to continue building a high-end cpu if they want to and just say that they changed their mind upon an announcement of a new high-end cpu. they would have plenty of time to work on it cause no one would be expecting it from them
it seems they are focusing on the larger more profitable markets and APUs to me
You can only shove crap in consumer's faces so long till they realize faster crap, is still crap. Apple found out the hard way after the initial x86 switch. Consumers complained for GPU performance and they brought in NV low end chips.
Just a cold hard fact, Intel cannot make GPUs right. They fail on hardware, and they fail on drivers. The difference between a Mac user and a PC user is about ~$500-$1000. For that extra cost, they have the right to be upset when their Mac can't run anything. It'll only take so long till it happens again and Apple is forced to reintroduce discrete in lowends. By then, the price ratio with AMD APUs will look mighty tempting.
they might go over completely to FM sockets and make more kick ass APUs there.
Mac gaming must have come a long way lately -both in game selection and acceptance in polite Mac society.