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Hardware AMD Picks Up Market Share from Intel
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - June 10, 2009 10:33 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 54 comment(s) - last by PrezWeezy.. on Jun 12 at 3:11 PM
Intel's growth streak ends in Q1 2009

The global PC market continues to take a beating at the hands of the economic recession around the globe. As PC sales fall to the lowest point in years in many categories, the sales of microprocessors in both consumer and business computers and servers are also falling.

ISuppli has released its numbers for the microprocessor industry for the first quarter of 2009. The research firm reports that Intel's four-quarter long growth streak has ended with the world's largest chipmaker seeing a decline in sales and market share.

Intel saw its market share drop by 2.5 points for the quarter with its share of the global processor revenue dropping to 79.1% from 81.6% in Q4 2008. AMD took advantage of Intel's situation and grabbed up nearly all of Intel's lost market share. AMD grew its market share by 2.3 points to 12.8%, up from 10.5% in Q4 2008.

Matthew Wilkins from iSuppli said in a statement, "After losing share to Intel on a sequential basis during three out of four quarters in 2008, AMD managed to reverse the trend in the first quarter of 2009. AMD increased its allocation of global microprocessor revenue due to strong performances in each area of its microprocessor portfolio, particularly in its Notebook products. This was an impressive feat given the economic downturn and the weakness in the PC and server markets, which caused global microprocessor revenue in the first quarter to decline by 20.6 percent to $6.9 billion, down from $8.6 billion during the same period in 2008."

Despite Intel losing market share on a quarter-to-quarter basis, the chipmaker sill posted a slight growth year-over-year compared to the 79% market share it held in Q1 2008. ISuppli reports that the decline in market share seen by Intel is a result of a contraction in the PC and server markets. Both Intel and AMD saw revenues decline over the quarter. Intel has the Atom processor to thank for much of its performance.

"Intel widened its lead in 2008 partly due to its Atom microprocessor, which has achieved major success in the fast-growing netbook PC market,” Wilkins said. “However, the strength of Intel’s broad product line in microprocessors for desktops, servers and notebooks was the major factor driving its success.”

2009 has been an important year for AMD. The firm spun its foundries off into a new company and more recently it unveiled the world's first DirectX 11 GPU.

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Excellent
By rudolphna on 6/10/09, Rating: 0
RE: Excellent
By retepallen on 6/10/2009 11:51:56 AM , Rating: 2
AMD are only competitive with Intel in the price / performance category. Not in raw speed.

I do however firmly believe that for 90% of the PC buying public, AMD's solid performance at bottom dollar deserves more market share and full credit to them for getting it.


RE: Excellent
By matt0401 on 6/10/2009 1:14:59 PM , Rating: 5
I don't know about other PC builders out there but the price/performance category is the most important one to me! I build computers for cash-strapped family friends who can't afford the latest and greatest, and I will soon be building a pair of new computers for my younger brothers. Getting the best bang for your buck is crucial here. And those who I've built computers for have been wildly impressed with how much speed I could squeeze out of a very low budget. AMD annihilates in this area. An Athlon X2 wipes the floor with any Celeron D or other similarly-priced offering from Intel.


RE: Excellent
By JKflipflop98 on 6/11/09, Rating: 0
RE: Excellent
By PitViper007 on 6/12/2009 12:58:26 PM , Rating: 2
In today's economy, the price/performance ratio is exactly what I'm looking at. I'd love to have a shiny new Core i7 beast with all the bells and whistles. At one point I was pricing up a new one because my old Pentium D 950 workstation is really starting to feel its age at this point. What did I find? With the parts that I wanted, configured for the performance I wanted, I would be spending about $1500. That was for a Core i7 920, 6GB ram, raid 10 setup, GF GTS 250 Vid card, etc.. Really not bad.....IF I wasn't worried about if I'm gonna have a job tomorrow. So I toned down my requirements to an AMD Phenom X4 9950, single 1TB hard drive, 8GB ram, GF 9400GT vid card, etc. You'll agree a much more conservative machine, but in the grand scheme of what I REALLY need, a better deal at just over $500, roughly one third the price of the other. Say what you will, AMD may not have the performance crown any longer, but today, for me, they are "Good Enough".


RE: Excellent
By PrezWeezy on 6/10/09, Rating: -1
RE: Excellent
By JHBoricua on 6/10/2009 2:41:25 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
It was very common for an AMD chip to burn up and become completely unusable.
Holy hyperboles batman!!

Very common where?? I'm pretty sure since they were such common events that you'll be able to produce a pletora of historical links to support this, right?

quote:
I had 3 different AMD platforms freeze up constantly after several minutes of use.
Then you didn't surround the CPU with quality parts (mobo, memory, etc.) as you did with the P4. That's got nothing to do with the CPU.


RE: Excellent
By PrezWeezy on 6/10/09, Rating: 0
RE: Excellent
By JHBoricua on 6/10/2009 3:47:53 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
There are a few posts from different people who had trouble with AMD processors burning up.
Which is a far cry from your initial statement that "it was very common for an AMD chip to burn up and become completely unusable" , which was nothing but an exaggeration.

I'm willing to bet most of those occurences were the result of user error, ie. not securing heatsinks, dropping their boxes and not checking the internals b4 turning them on again, not using enough or using too much thermal paste, etc...


RE: Excellent
By PrezWeezy on 6/10/09, Rating: 0
RE: Excellent
By amanojaku on 6/10/2009 6:54:47 PM , Rating: 4
Hm... Two of your own examples contradict your claims of AMD making bad CPUs. In both cases the CPU burned up because of improper cooling; one was the result of a bad fan and the other was the result of cheap thermal paste.

My first Athlon burned up because of cheap paste, but the guy who sold it to me swore it was my "cheap Shuttle" case. I bought a new CPU, a REAL thermal compound and fan and ran that baby for three years as my gaming box. My next AMD setup was a newer Athlon XP in an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard and that lasted until it just wasn't fast enough. My mom is running a Duron that isn't even 2GHz (it's about five or six years old) and it's just as reliable as it was when I built the unit. My sister got an HP with an Athlon four years ago and that still works. I just decommissioned my Athlon XP 2500+ HTPC because the onboard video died and that CPU still works, but why bother using it? And my three year old Athlon X2 is running in my current gaming box and hasn't given me a reason to decommission it after a video card upgrade. So... user error sounds like the culprit. I buy AMD because I don't need the high performance of a Core2, and I save money on the CPU and power consumption (maybe not so much as of Core2, but I'm not upgrading yet.)


RE: Excellent
By PrezWeezy on 6/11/2009 2:16:05 PM , Rating: 2
I'm not saying it isn't possible to have a chip run for a long time. My point is that Intel's chips had much better thermal sensing. They simply underclocked themselves when they got hot. A processor should be able to protect itself.

I notice that in every one of the examples people are using against me they say they had to use a "real" thermal paste and get a better fan. Everyone knew you couldn't use the pos fan that came with your Athlon chip. Why? Because the chip would burn up. Hell I couldn't even get Windows installed on one of my computers until I replaced the stock fan. A P4 on the other hand would run just fine with a stock cooling solution. Not because it was a better cooling solution. We all know Intel has never had a great heatsync/fan, but because the CPU could handle the higher temps.

I know of several PC's still running their older Athlons as well. And that's great. However I also know of just as many which are no longer running.


RE: Excellent
By PitViper007 on 6/12/2009 1:12:02 PM , Rating: 2
From my own personal experience, through the Netburst time frame I ran nothing BUT AMD processors. Started with an Athlon 1300+, 1700+, XP 2200 (wife's machine) and a XP 2500. I've never had any problems with any of those "burning up". Now the earlier Athlons did tend to run hot I give you that. My 1700+ (Which I STILL have running BTW as my file server!!!!) does operate in the high 40's C, but they were designed to TAKE the heat. I do agree with you that the boxed HSF was crap, but I felt that way about ALL bundled HSF/processors.


RE: Excellent
By StevoLincolnite on 6/11/2009 12:42:59 AM , Rating: 2
I'm sorry I find it hard to believe...

It's like as if you are making it sound as if AMD Processors just simply self combust even when they are set up correctly, which is just wrong.

I've had AMD chips from the AMD K6-2, to the original Athlon where the L2 cache wasn't on-die, to the hot headed Thunderbird through towards the Palamino and eventually got a Barton.

I've had my Athlon XP 3000+ Barton running for 6 years without issue, I got the chip a few months after release, and has served me well, it's now relegated to a kids machine, it has sat at a constant 50'C during that entire time with the same heatsink, I did replace the fan because it was failing; with a 80mm case fan which I zip-tied to the heatsink.

Not one single AMD Athlon processor I have owned has failed on me, I've owned probably a good dozen and a half over the past decade as well, the only AMD processor that has fried on me was an AMD K6-2 300 which I overclocked to 500mhz, which worked fine for a few months till it eventually refused to boot up past 100mhz.


RE: Excellent
By FaceMaster on 6/11/2009 11:00:41 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
I'm not going to spend all day looking up threads to prove my point. I put up 4 different examples within a matter of 5 minutes. You can do your own searching. Unfortunately no matter how many examples I give you will always just discount it because you don’t' want to believe it. Not because of any factual evidence.


What a generic argument.


RE: Excellent
By JPForums on 6/11/2009 8:49:03 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
You're right, the HP laptop that cost over $2000 and had the PROCESSOR replaced on 3 seprate occasions was poor quality. It would work great for 4-5 months, then would start locking up again. Send it to HP, get it back with a note saying that the processor had tested bad and was replaced, works great for a while before burning up again.


A friend of mine went through the same thing with his HP, only his was a northwood based P4. The repairs were getting frequent enough that HP offered to replace his system with one that had a Pentium M. Hasn't had a problem since. My suspicion is that HP designed their thermal solution at the time to support the Pentium M and made minor changes (read: not good enough) for P4/A64 based systems.

I'll give you the benifit of the doubt and dismiss improper installation as a possibility. After all, if you can properly build an Intel system, then why wouldn't you be able to same with an AMD system.

Of course, it was more difficult to properly mount the heatsink for a socketed Athlon/Athlon XP than an A64/P4 or other processors with a heat spreader. If you aren't careful they'd mount unlevel. Also, if you transported them, you'd want to make sure you used a better mounting system than the standard clip. But, that's just an aside, as you never told us which platform your desktop system was.

My experience with MSI motherboards have been hit or miss. They usually do well, but sometimes have some real lemons. I haven't really used a mediocre board from them, just one extreme or the other. That said, I'd like to know specifically which board you had (or at least the chipset). Though, if it was a top end gaming platform, I can only imagine it had an nVidia chipset. Most of their AMD chipsets were pretty solid, but I didn't really have good luck with their A64 chipsets previous to the nForce 250Gb. Also, some of Via's chipsets can be sketchy. I've never seen and SIS chipset I've liked (though some were pretty innovative in theory).

I'm sorry you had such bad luck with AMD based systems in the past. However, I really wouldn't label their processors as anything but solid since the overly hot K5s went obsolete. Of course system stability was largely a function of the motherboard (and chipset). In my opinion, AMD didn't reach stability parity with Intel until its Opteron/A64 lineup and corresponding chipsets came to market.

The only processors in recent memory that could double as a space heater are the Prescott based P4s. A google search on Prescott and overheat turns up a boatload of results along with some (semi)clever insults to support this statement, however, I'm just not that interested in proving it as this information should fall in the territory of common knowledge for anandtech readers. That said, I've built/repaired plenty of Prescott based systems and they're owners haven't reported any further issues. Heat is only an issue if you let it be. If proper cooling requires an additional investment, than this should be considered in the overall price of the system.


RE: Excellent
By PrezWeezy on 6/11/2009 3:33:02 PM , Rating: 2
I agree AMD has great products today. As I stated in my original post. They have fixed their issues with overheating. And the Prescott chips had terrible heat problems you are absolutely right. I never actually owned a Prescott but I also never heard of one actually destroying itself. I also never insinuated that Intel didn't have its share of problems. I just mentioned a fact which I have seen time and time again which is that the original Athlon did not have a very high thermal ceiling.

I'm with you on the SIS, VIA is also one of my least favorite. I always stick with nVidia if I can't use Intel. I do wish AMD would come out with their own chipset though. I have to believe they could squeeze more power out of their chips if they could create their own board to go with it like Intel has.

The whole point of my post was (originaly) to show the fact that we each have a bias, whether justified or not, to which chip we prefer. The fact is that neither company makes a perfect product and we just end up going with whatever we feel fits our needs the most. Unfortunatly everyon has taken it as me hating AMD which isn't true. I don't use their products because I've become entrenched in Intel. I know Intel really well, I know their product numbers by heart now, I sell Intel quite well, and I've become friends with their sales and service people. If I'd chosen AMD I would have all those same reasons to go with AMD.

As both of us have stated, AMD has great product TODAY. And they have for the past several years. My only point was in response to someone else who had said Intel left him feeling high and dry. Neither company is perfect.


Either
By bubbastrangelove on 6/10/2009 10:50:34 AM , Rating: 5
I think if you're building an enthusiast PC once every two years such as myself it's kind of silly to be stuck on AMD or Intel. Go with whatever one gives you the best bang for your buck.




RE: Either
By fishbits on 6/10/2009 11:49:07 AM , Rating: 5
Nice, in theory. Especially if each company were roughly equal in assets and market share. In reality, if AMD goes under our enthusiast CPU "bang for the buck" will go straight in the toilet. Due to that harsh reality, I give AMD a little extra consideration where I can. Beyond that, yeah, I don't care whose logo the CPU is boxed under.


RE: Either
By bubba551 on 6/10/2009 11:58:56 AM , Rating: 4
"Bang-for-the-buck" only exist for a snapshot in time and begins to "go straight in the toilet" as soon as the build is complete, regardless of a company's prospects.


RE: Either
By Screwballl on 6/10/2009 2:13:28 PM , Rating: 2
Thats what was meant, or at least how I took their comments... the bang for the buck is spent for the best items for the budget at the time. That budget may change in a few days to a few weeks. The price I just spent for my 9800GT 512MB is the same as what I spent for my 8800GTS 320MB a year ago... it all depends on the timeframe.


RE: Either
By amanojaku on 6/10/2009 2:29:04 PM , Rating: 1
"Bang-for-the-buck" only exists when you have no prospects and have to pay a hooker, and it's definitely for a limited amount of time. Toilet play optional.


RE: Either
By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 3:05:18 PM , Rating: 2
I cant really agree with that. My AMD 3200+ can do 1080p playback in Windows 7. I think thats a pretty good investment for a 100$ 4 year old CPU.


RE: Either
By Flunk on 6/10/2009 1:50:46 PM , Rating: 1
No, because then people would just buy less CPUs. The last thing Intel wants is to sell less CPUs.


RE: Either
By Yawgm0th on 6/10/2009 1:18:25 PM , Rating: 2
+6


RE: Either
By DeepBlue1975 on 6/10/2009 7:54:09 PM , Rating: 2
true.
Specially because every two years you'll find that to get the best performing part, the motherboard you have won't be compatible and if you need to change everything, you'd rather get what you like best as the upgrading possibility becomes a moot point.


$40-$120
By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 11:49:07 AM , Rating: 5
Ive been eyeing Intel CPUs for quite a while now wanting to get into the Core2 Duo action. Just recently, with help of the Anandtech.com Bench and newegg.com ive noticed something, possibly something many of you have.

In the 40$ to around 120$ range, AMD CPUs are either keeping pace with their Intel counterparts or outperforming them dollar for dollar. At the ultra low-end, $40, the AMD CPU actually outperforms the Intel by 16% overall. In nearly all cases, even if AMD is overall behind a few %, it nearly always beats its Intel counterpart in games by 0-20%. Something to think about if youre a gamer.

In the mid to highend, where you see Quads start pulling away from all but the top-end Phenom II, and then when overclocked the Intel chips widen the gap a bit more. With the coming of i5 however AMD is going to need to do something, as you will see 95% of i7 speed without having to buy a 200$ mobo (on average) or a 250$ CPU.




RE: $40-$120
By inperfectdarkness on 6/10/2009 12:57:39 PM , Rating: 2
i WANTED to get my sager 8662 with an AMD quad-core...but i couldn't.

given the availability of both in a certain application--i'll almost always opt for AMD's. it's just a damn shame that it's impossible to find a 15.4" WUXGA laptop with quad-core AMD cpu's.


RE: $40-$120
By tviceman on 6/10/2009 1:25:12 PM , Rating: 3
If I were upgrading right now, I'd go with a Phenom II X3, and use the little bit of money I saved to spend on a GPU. In my opinion, Phenom II X3 black edition CPU's have the best bang for the buck, especially for overclockers.

As for the immediate future, AMD needs to ramp up their clock speed and die shrinks faster.


RE: $40-$120
By SunAngel on 6/10/09, Rating: 0
RE: $40-$120
By StevoLincolnite on 6/10/2009 1:47:08 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
And I can still play Age of Empires II on the Intel GMA4500HD superbly.


Please.

I used to play Age of Empires 2 on a 4mb S3 Virge DX/XG, 128mb of ram and a Cyrix PR300+ many, many years ago.
Pretty much every machine regardless if it has an Intel decellerator or not should handle it just fine.


RE: $40-$120
By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 3:01:08 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I need faster hardware accelerated decoding of video formats, particular h.264.
quote:
Core 2 Q6600

Why would you buy that CPU if your only real want was 1080p playback?

-The Celeron 420 is the near the exact CPU model in the 40$ price-range i was referring to in my original post. The AMD counterpart is faster overall and much faster in games.

-The AMD part uses around 5-10 more watts on load. The Celeron seems to have poor idle wattage (doesnt go down from load much) the AMD part may fair a bit better. In the end the Celeron may save you 50 pennies a month at the expense of alot of performance.

Links.
AMD Sempron1300 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Intel Celeron 430 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

Anandtech Bench -
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=41&p...


RE: $40-$120
By SunAngel on 6/10/2009 9:29:36 PM , Rating: 2
At the time the Q6600 was introduced, the GMA X3000 was the video chipset on the Intel 965 boards. X3000 by itself could not decode hd dvd nor blu-ray. However, with a quadcore I could yield 720p and 1080i, but not 1080p.

I've never been a fan of discrete video cards because I am not a gamer, the fan noise, and the power consumption. On board video decode had been plentiful for everything I do or have done.


RE: $40-$120
By MrFord on 6/10/2009 4:07:12 PM , Rating: 5
When I think HTPC, the first thing to come in my mind is an ATI 3200HD chipset motherboard, with HDMI, with a Phenom/Athlon with Cool'n'Quiet, not something built on a GMA4500. Very similar idle/normal load power consumption, with much more power available, for the same price, plus hardware decoding, thus keeping the CPU frequency down.
And it's upgradeable down the road.
Intel chipsets are very good for basic utilization, office work, etc. But for HTPC application? It barely runs Aero...


good for AMD
By smackababy on 6/10/2009 11:12:32 AM , Rating: 3
As much as I love my Intel Q9550, I am glad AMD is going strong. I would hate to see Intel without AMD forcing them to compete. Granted, I haven't even looked at AMD since they got Conroe'd. They are putting up a fight still it would seem.




RE: good for AMD
By 9nails on 6/10/2009 1:48:33 PM , Rating: 2
You know, that's my sentiments exactly. I've long been using Intel CPU's since I know that they work and I don't run into little glitches with chipsets like I did when I had an AMD a while back. (Like the K5 days.) But I know that AMD is closer to it's community than Intel is. And AMD cares that much more about it's customer. I think that this is good news for them, and I wish them even more business in the future.


RE: good for AMD
By JHBoricua on 6/10/2009 2:57:40 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I've long been using Intel CPU's since I know that they work and I don't run into little glitches with chipsets like I did when I had an AMD a while back.(Like the K5 days.)
Hmm, that was like, 13 years ago or so? A lot has changed since then.

As per your suggestion that the Intel CPUs didn't run into glitches, as long as you're willing to go that far back, let's not forget the infamous Pentium division error (http://www.emery.com/1e/pentium.htm) that costs them millions in PR war trying to supress and even more after admiting the flaw. Or the buggy P3 1.13 that was rushed to compete with the Athlon and was so unstable that Intel had to halt shipments until it fixed it.

Really people, staying in a static frame of mind in the technology field based on obsolete views is a bad thing for your job security.


RE: good for AMD
By PrezWeezy on 6/10/2009 4:37:52 PM , Rating: 2
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We have learned that some companies don't compete to our expectations, whichever way those expectations are bias towards, and we don't want to take the risk to get burned again. From the sound of it you are so stuck on the idea that AMD is infallible that you are attacking anyone whose opinion differs. I don't think either company is perfect but I chose to go with the company who I perceive has having better stability overall. Stop being a hypocrite.


RE: good for AMD
By RubberJohnny on 6/11/2009 11:20:34 PM , Rating: 2
The definition of a intel fanboi is you.

Sounds to me like you've got your back up cause he pointed out that Intel has had it own problems in the past just as AMD has, how is that hypocritical?

As i read your fanboi comments higher up in this thread I've come to realise that you have very little understanding of the history of cpus. Here's a cracker you wrote "I have not since the Athlon X2 seen an AMD chip with heat problems" If you had any understanding of the competing chips at the time you'd know the x2 was a MUCH better cpu than the Pentium D - faster and cooler.

Pull your head out of your nether regions and do some research instead of "my mate had an AMD and it was broked"


RE: good for AMD
By PrezWeezy on 6/12/2009 3:11:16 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Here's a cracker you wrote "I have not since the Athlon X2 seen an AMD chip with heat problems" If you had any understanding of the competing chips at the time you'd know the x2 was a MUCH better cpu than the Pentium D - faster and cooler.


That was my point dumbass. Read what I said "I have NOT since the X2 seen an AMD chip with heat problems." In case you don't understand what a negative is, it means that the X2 chip was a very GOOD chip. In fact I stated many times that AMD has GOOD products today. Everyone is jumping all over me because I didn't like a particular line of chips. If you would all read my entire posts you would see many times that I defend AMD.


Why settle for a triple core . .
By delta nyak on 6/10/2009 3:00:36 PM , Rating: 2
when you can get a perfectly good AM2+ Quad for $76 . . .

AMD Opteron 1354 Budapest 2.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2 75W Quad-Core Processor - OEM - $74.99 at newegg

I have tried mine in 3 AM2+ boards (Gigabyte AMD 740, Foxconn AMD 780G and 760G) and it works fine . .




RE: Why settle for a triple core . .
By Bull Dog on 6/10/2009 7:52:05 PM , Rating: 2
because that CPU is built using a 65nm process. The tri-core 45nm Phenom IIs will overclock much, much farther, use less power and run cooler.


RE: Why settle for a triple core . .
By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 8:15:31 PM , Rating: 2
Oh and preform better... lets not forget that.


By delta nyak on 6/11/2009 3:24:17 AM , Rating: 2
Well, how about someone running the Phenom II Triple in a comparison, would be very interesting to see its PCWizard 2008 specs . . . The 1352 running at 2.3 MHz managed a Processor Global Score of 268,870.

Configuration:

MB: Foxconn A7GM-S
CPU: Opteron 1352
Ram: 2x2GB DDR2 800


Selling at a loss?
By Regs on 6/10/2009 11:24:25 AM , Rating: 2
I would prefer to see AMD have the ability to charge more per processor with a superior product like the good old days. More market share isn't really any sign of improvement except AMD having to sell CPU's cheap that don't even cover operating expenses.

Their product line has been a lot better since the die shrink Phenoms and Opteron variants. Not only in performance but also choices at varied price offerings. It's good news no matter how you take it though, though I'm feeling less optimistic they can keep at this rate considering the enormous expenses they accrued. The spin-off of the Fabs should help AMD next year.




RE: Selling at a loss?
By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 1:27:19 PM , Rating: 2
Who doesn't want a superior product for less, no matter the brand.


RE: Selling at a loss?
By Targon on 6/10/2009 8:32:37 PM , Rating: 2
AMD is more of a platform company at this point, where the focus isn't just on the CPU, but in how to improve the overall system architecture to improve performance. AMD went with the integrated memory controller, which allowed AMD to take the performance crown from Intel back in the days of the P4(which is why the lawsuits against Intel for anticompetitive behavior during THAT period are so important).

Since then, AMD has been having problems with their next real platform improvement that will allow better competition against Intel at the high end. The Phenom 2 with the L3 cache was a good step, but it isn't enough to catch up to Intel(unless you count how pathetic Intel graphics chips are). At least the Phenom 2 processors have allowed AMD to catch up a bit.


Does Intel have supply problem?
By Conficio on 6/10/2009 4:46:15 PM , Rating: 2
That would explain why Intel powered HP PC's are disappearing at least at one German retailer (Conrad Elektronic). Or is it HP that can't supply them.

In any case I watched their HP offerings for about four weeks and firs the Intel models went out of stock then the AMD models went out of stock and got replaced with other models.




By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 6:24:09 PM , Rating: 2
It shoulds like Conrad Elektronic wasn't ready. Nothing to do with HP or Intel.


Intel needs some competition
By spkay on 6/10/2009 8:09:25 PM , Rating: 2
I have been almost strictly running Intel for the last 4+ years but my last two home systems have been Kuma 7750 for $59 and a Phenom II 920 for $134. Better yet these newer AMD chips OC very well and run pretty cool. For home system builders AMD offers great value and is starting to regain the enthusiast market they used to dominate.




RE: Intel needs some competition
By icanhascpu on 6/10/2009 8:26:29 PM , Rating: 2
They are only getting some more of the gamer market back, not enthusiast. Wither or not the gamer is enthusiast or not isn't relevant. Just for clarity.

They do OC well, but they do not OC as well as their Intel counterparts. Phenom II vs i7 you will see an i7 hit 4.2Ghz where the Phenom will hit around 4. The thing is with that, in all areas except gaming clock for clock the Intel will be stronger, and the extra OC will even out the gaming benchmarks. Now, as mu first paragraph stated, gamers are still with AMD, but that's because of the premium of i7 parts and motherboards due to the vast majority of i7 profits come from people that do more 'other' than gaming.

Thus the i5 is born. 95% of i7 power, major OCability and even automatic outofthebox turbo mode that OCs the chip more of less depending on thread-ability of applications. All this for sub 200 CPU and 100~$ mobo just like with AMD.

So in a few months AMD isnt even going to have its price advantage.


How does one 'grow a market share'?
By croc on 6/10/2009 8:33:14 PM , Rating: 3
Do you plant it in the fall, then hope it rains in the spring? Do you irrigate? And even when your crop matures, how do you harvest it? I've never seen a 'market share' on any edible foods list yet. Must be new age food, eh?




By amanojaku on 6/10/2009 10:47:38 AM , Rating: 2
AMD's advantage is likely in the virtualization space; raw MHz is not needed there. Lower cost is likely the driving factor as AMD and Intel offer similar CPUs in terms of cores, but AMD is generally cheaper.




Market Share
By Goty on 6/10/2009 10:48:51 AM , Rating: 2
It would be interesting to see what happened to Intel's desktop market share. If they only saw a slight increase in total market share with the huge number of Atoms they are selling, it seems logical that they might have lost a good chunk in desktops.




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