Dan, surely there is a huge difference in opinions being expressed on both the INTC and the AMD threads. On the one side, people look at the availability of processors and systems at Fry's, CompUSA, PriceWatch.com, and other stores and web sites. They wonder why the Athlon is so plentiful while the Pentium III is so scarce at high MHz. On the other side, people look at the manufacturing capacity of Intel and see that Intel is cranking up production of Coppermines at an incredible rate. One fab was even reported to hit the one million per week mark. Another fab, the new Fab 18 in Kiryat Gat in Israel, just reported the one millionth Coppermine shipped last week (or the week before). This would be less than a quarter after they began production.
My only answer is that there is a huge difference between the business and the consumer markets. AMD is making gains in the retail and consumer markets, but as Jerry Sanders admits, that's only part of the picture. On the business side, it's still pretty much Intel-only. And that's where I suspect most of the high-end Coppermines went.
Perhaps that's why Intel's "token launch" of the 1 GHz Coppermine is targeted at the consumer market. Intel knows that the consumer market is more visible to the public than the business market, so that's where they'll target their 1 GHz PR.
Tenchusatsu |
