AMD Bulldozer A Surprisingly Sell-Out Sales Success. Victims: Phenom II & Athlon II

[qubit]

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

[xtremesv]

Sometimes it's a matter of brand loyalty or novelty curiosity. I value the performance of Intel's CPUs but I keep my sympathy to AMD (it was my first CPU).

[Super XP]

It took me a while to pick up a FX-8120 at a great price. Anywhere you look, these things are selling out fast. They are not bad chips, just mis-understood
Good move for AMD and consumers.

[naoan]

Whatever the reason for this peculiarity, I hope this make Intel feels threatened.

[JustaTinkerer]

Originally Posted by qubit

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

Hmmm

Originally Posted by qubit

It looks like the Bulldozer disaster might have been too much of a setback for AMD to recover from. After 30 years of competing with Intel in the x86 processor market, AMD is about to give up,

More Hmmm

Note: nothing to do with qubit posting both hes just copying news.
just incase I get flamed

[AthlonX2]

Intel doesnt give a shit about what AMD does

[D4S4]

bulldozer lives!!!1!



i just had to.

[TRWOV]

The FX CPUs managed to beat even the i7-2600K in some benchmarks so I'm pretty sure that for some people the FX are a better buy. Heck, their gaming and general performance isn't bad.

I don't get where all this disdain comes from. AMD always said that BD was aimed at Core i5 performance, they NEVER said that BD was going to tear Intel a new one but everyone and their mother assumed that when they branded the new CPUs as FX.

As I've stated in other threads about this, AMD's marketing is the weak link. They must have anticipated that by going by the FX name everyone's expectations would get up considerably, way waaaaaaaayyyy above reality,even if AMD ALWAYS stated that it wasn't the case.

And this is coming from an ATintel fanboy.

[KieranD]

The AMD hate is strong with this news poster.

[TheLaughingMan]

My FX-8150 runs great. I don't know what the issue was. The chip may benchmark like crap, but the only real issue is the latest BIOS broke my older Valve games. Lucky for me I gots the Skyrim and BF3 which run like butter baby.

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

It could just mean supplies are limited, not that people are buying them at record levels, as their performance is crap.

[GLD]

My first few rigs were Intel's, long ago. Then I built a oc'ed Barton 2500+ rig and there is no going back for me. AMD is my only choice.

[TRWOV]

Originally Posted by TheLaughingMan

My FX-8150 runs great. I don't know what the issue was. The chip may benchmark like crap, but the only real issue is the latest BIOS broke my older Valve games. Lucky for me I gots the Skyrim and BF3 which like like butter baby.

That's what I mean. The suckers work, not as fine as people liked to imagine that they would, though, but they don't have show stopping bugs or anything and their performance is good for most tasks. It isn't like your PC is being thrown back a decade or anything.

[Kantastic]

Originally Posted by AthlonX2

Intel doesnt give a shit about what AMD does

Wasn't the case back in the Athlon 64 days.

[Fx]

ofcourse they are selling well. we the enthusiasts are the minority. too many people forget this

[TRWOV]

Originally Posted by qubit

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.

AMD announced the discontinuation about a month before BD shipped, if I recall correctly. This decision has no direct correlation to their current status.

[PaNiC]

fanboys are retards, they buy a bad product just because they don't like other company. The bulldozer will make more AMD fanboys then ever be for cause that's how fanboys starts, they buy a bad product, defend it and hate the other company for releasing something better.

[ensabrenoir]

limited supplies = easier to sell out & Hey I got an 8 core
Still ...the bottom line is its your money, buy what ever makes you happy.

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by TRWOV

As I've stated in other threads about this, AMD's marketing is the weak link. They must have anticipated that by going by the FX name everyone's expectations would get up considerably, way waaaaaaaayyyy above reality,even if AMD ALWAYS stated that it wasn't the case.

I think their weak link was letting a computer design a new processor from the ground up for them instead of just taking what they already had(Phenom II) and shrinking it to 32nm and adding 2 more cores. They would have save themselves huge amounts of R+D money, and huge amounts of time that they could have used to get the processor out at least close to the launch of SandyBridge(or even earlier). They might have even been able to get a processor out that competed with Sandybridge before Sandybridge was even out...

[ensabrenoir]

Originally Posted by TheLaughingMan

My FX-8150 runs great. I don't know what the issue was. The chip may benchmark like crap, but the only real issue is the latest BIOS broke my older Valve games. Lucky for me I gots the Skyrim and BF3 which like like butter baby.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by KieranD

The AMD hate is strong with this news poster.

I don't actually hate AMD or any other company for that matter... Except Rambus. Those f* patent trolls can crash and burn.

[Fx]

Originally Posted by PaNiC

fanboys are retards, they buy a bad product just because they don't like other company. The bulldozer will make more AMD fanboys then ever be for cause that's how fanboys starts, they buy a bad product, defend it and hate the other company for releasing something better.

does being a loyal fan to AMD because Intel uses shady practices make me a fanboy? if so, I guess I can live with that. but if that is so then I can think of lots of names to call Intel fanboys...

I guess having morals costs me to miss out on some performance- I can live with that just fine. furthermore, it is because of AMD fanboys that AMD has stayed afloat all of these years which has influenced your precious Intel to keep it's ASPs much lower for the majority of their chips

I get disgusted with people with no backbone

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Fx

does being a loyal fan to AMD because Intel uses shady practices make me a fanboy? if so, I guess I can live with that. but if that is so then I can think of lots of names to call Intel fanboys...

I guess having morals costs me to miss out on some performance- I can live with that just fine

I get disgusted with people with no backbone

It's my belief that AMD are no better than Intel ethically. They simply have either not been caught or didn't have the opportunity. In short, in Intel's shoes I think they'd be just as ruthless and underhanded, maybe even worse.

My suggestion is not to let these moral issues get in the way of you buying an Intel CPU to get better performance.

[Fx]

Originally Posted by qubit

It's my belief that AMD are no better than Intel ethically. They simply have either not been caught or didn't have the opportunity. In short, in Intel's shoes I think they'd be just as ruthless and underhanded, maybe even worse.

My suggestion is not to let these moral issues get in the way of you buying an Intel CPU to get better performance.

I tend to go with my gut especially upon seeing hard evidence laid bare

I also tend to go for the underdogs. besides if we were all Intel fans then all of our wallets would probably be fucked

[PaNiC]

Originally Posted by Fx

does being a loyal fan to AMD because Intel uses shady practices make me a fanboy? if so, I guess I can live with that. but if that is so then I can think of lots of names to call Intel fanboys...

I guess having morals costs me to miss out on some performance- I can live with that just fine. furthermore, it is because of AMD fanboys that AMD has stayed afloat all of these years which has influenced your precious Intel to keep it's ASPs much lower for the majority of their chips

I get disgusted with people with no backbone

It takes bigger man to say he got ripped off then to defend it his whole life