Spotted the Compaq 5888 (700MHz Athlon) at Fry's today...
During my walk up and down the PC isles I did a quick count of PC's on display (not the number of systems in stock):
- 1 700MHz Athlon (Compaq)
- 2 600MHz Athlon's (3rd tier manf.)
- 7 PIII systems of various speeds by the likes of Sony, HP, Compaq, none faster than 600MHz!
- 16 Celeron systems of various speeds by the same manf. and more
- 3 AMD K2/K3 systems
The fastest boxed/OEM CPUs for sale were a 600MHz/133MHz bus PIII ($749) and a 650MHz Athlon ($759).
Here is my quick analysis of this Fry's microcosm of the retail PC market:
Two types of PC buyers
- Those that want to do basic stuff like web surfing, email, etc. who are more than happy with the low cost Celeron or AMD K2/3 systems, and those who want the most powerful PC they can buy for image editing, NLE video editing, 3D animation, and yes, 3D gaming.
Intel will have a lower than expected Q4
- Judging by the ratio of Celeron systems to PIII I would say the consumer demand is in the low end. This has got to be bad for Intel and its ASP's (16 Celeron systems to 7 PIII's, with none faster than 600MHz). So where are all those Coppermines?
AMD's Athlon owns the high end
- Getting back to the second type of PC buyer, the power user, he's going for MHz and FPU power. All Athlon systems at Fry's were more powerful than the PIII machines they had on display. If you need the fastest you're not going to putz with all those middle speed PIII's. You're going to ask the sales guy for their most powerful system and he's going to point you to the Athlon. As long as those 7xx Copermines are no where to be found, the Athlon owns the high end.
Of course these are just my observations based on a walk through Fry's Electronics in San Diego and some gut feelings on what I saw. As Peter Lynch advised, just look around you, sometimes the best investment advice are your own low-tech observations (paraphrased).
Gary.
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