Re: People here didn't think they would lose it in the first place...
Elmer,
At the horrible, despair inducing risk of sounding like you and Paul :-)
Intel may have announced a 733 a month ago, and shipped a few samples, but at the point that they actually have 733 machines readily available, the Athlon 750 will also be available.
I suppose Intel will soon after announce that the Pentium III 800 is in production, ship 3 samples, and claim to have recovered the speed crown :-)
Regards,
Dan
PS - the reality, of course, is that 700, 733, 750, 767, and 800 are separated much more by marketing than performance, but so it goes. The other sad thing (for us AMD longs) is that it takes a lot more 700+ INTC processors to maintain a marketplace presence that it does 700+ AMD processors. The high end is still pretty shy about non-Intel CPUs so AMD doesn't need much volume there to satisfy demand - yet. But if AMD can keep it up, that will gradually change. It's still a case of AMD finally making substantial money, not one of Intel being hurt. Given that Intel now seems to see this (CPU) market as mature, and is more interested in using its CPU sales proceeds to fund ventures in the internet infrastructure area where it sees large growth opportunities, Intel may be better off sharing a profitable market than it would be if it began pouring resources into what it now regardes as a non-growth area and cutting prices to maintain market share. We'll soon be seeing the response.
These two companies may be sending some signals to each other, though. Did you notice that when Intel announced it was going to be pushing hard into networking and communications, AMD put its networking and communications operations up for sale? And that as AMD has been heavily emphasizing its flash business, Intel seems to be treating its more as a cash cow, and not as an important business? AMD certainly could have announced a 750 at Comdex, but didn't. AMD seems to be focused more on making money, and less on making trouble, than it used to be. |
