Carl, thread, really good first hand report by a CPU chip customer (and AMD shareholder) of an Intel presentation, from the Motley Fool. The fan removal part cracked me up! - Tony
Wow, it finally happened. We finally had CPU training from Intel today. My company sells thousands of cpu's every month for the past few years and we're just now appearing on their roadmap as a player in our market.
I hate to tell everyone this, but they actually gave a pretty good presentation. They made the P4 seem like a pretty compelling product by showing how much quicker it was than a P3. They stressed the fact that today's benchmarks don't highlight the true benefits of the P4 architecture because this CPU was engineered to enhance tomorrow's applications rather than yesterday's. They actually made some interesting arguments that at the very least made me question my personal preference towards Athlon processors.
I'm not going to go into specific examples of products I learned about or things they said because my company has signed an NDA with Intel, but I did want to tell you how they're dealing with the threat of AMD.
The example they used to show the superiority of their product over AMD's was a video from TomsHardware.com. Since this video is available from a public website, I'm pretty sure I can discuss it. (to any Intel lawyers that might be reading this: I'd just like to remind you that I'm a really good guy, so go easy on me.)
I hadn't seen this video before. For anyone not familiar with it, it basically shows what happens when you remove the fan from a variety of processors. When you pull the fan off a P4 the application slows down, but the computer continues working. When the fan goes back on, the application continues working normally. With a PIII, the fan was removed...the system crashed, but the CPU survived and continues working once the fan is put back on and the system is re-started. The video then shows an Athlon processor. The second the fan is removed, the application crashed. Within a couple seconds after that, a white plume of smoke is seen coming off the top of the CPU. The CPU (and potentially the motherboard) was fried. The same thing happens with a Palomino. In our meeting, it was also pointed out that this could possibly even be a fire hazard.
At this point, I couldn't hold back any more. My favorite company in the world was being trashed by the enemy right in front of my very eyes. I blurted out "So is this the marketing tactic you guys are going to take? If you buy an AMD CPU, you'll burn your house down?" Everybody laughed at this, but I knew their point was effective. The message was heard by my fellow sales reps. My thoughts went to "How will AMD ever crack the corporate market if this kind of an image can be shown to an MIS department?"
By the end of the meeting, I did end up getting along pretty good with the Intel guys, although they gave me a lot of crap once they heard I was an AMD shareholder.
We have AMD visiting us next week, so I look forward to hearing their take on that video. I still believe in AMD's technology and don't put a ton of weight into it, because I do sell many CPU's and haven't heard of this being a huge problem out there. All my customers know the importance of proper cooling. The main point I'm trying to make is that it shows a pretty powerful argument against buying an AMD based system, if you haven't used them before. Especially to a corporate end user that isn't as price sensitive as other segments of the market.
On a more personal note regarding the Intel meeting, I was quite proud of myself that I could ask so many detailed questions about their current and future products. Much of that knowledge I've picked up from this board, so I thank all of you for that!
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