Re: Me, unless the difference is ridiculous...
Hi Tony,
Well, that was kind of my point, I think the price difference was ridiculous - and if that system in the news report didn't include a monitor (it wasn't mentioned either way) then it was absurd. And don't forget, you can still buy Intel Pentium IIIs on Intel motherboards without rambus. Which was the example I gave.
Another thought to consider is that, despite what we on these message boards consider to be of vast importance, the majority of PC Buyers buy IBM or Compaq or Dell or Gateway, and leave the component choices up to the OEM. I think we saw from the rise and fall of the K6-2, that megahertz matters a lot more than CPU brand name.
And I would guess that the OEMs, even Gateway and even Dell are getting pretty sick and tired of the whole rambus thing. They must have been told by Intel that there wouldn't be price, availability, or performance problems and they've gotten all three.
AMD has made using the Athlon real easy, there is one chipset, the chipset works, and it works with memory that is available at a competitive price. The Athlon motherboards are expensive and the systems need larger than standard power supplies. Together these factors add $100 to the price of an Athlon machine - as opposed to the $500 or more dollars rambus adds to a system.
If Intel had shipped a PC133 chipset with Coppermine, many problems would have been avoided and AMD would be sweating a bit now - thanks to rambus, AMD is going to be profitable a quarter early.
There are even rumors that Gateway is going to start offering Athlon systems soon - which would be pretty amazing after the recent press releases trumpeting, "Gateway drops last of AMD chips".
Following this competition is more fun than watching a good football game.
Regards,
Dan |
