From Yahoo: Interview with Reinhard Fabritz Regional Marketing Manager, Eastern Europe.
<Q>: Good day, thank you for answering our questions. Let's start out interview in traditional way. Please, introduce yourselves and tell us briefly what you are dealing with in AMD.
<A>: My name's Reinhard Fabritz, I'm a Regional Marketing Manager, Eastern Europe.
<Q>: What's the reason for delay (or rather a complete absence on the shelves) of CPUs with 266MHz? For example, the Athlon 1.2 GHz, which was announced two months ago.
<A>: We are positioning the processors with 266 MHz bus for High-End solutions, one of the features of which is DDR memory. The memory is still too expensive (and we have some upper limit of cost of the systems), chipsets from the third manufacturers (such as VIA) are not ready yet since the boards on them (like in case of ALi) are not spread widely enough. So, under such conditions we think that it makes no sense to speed up shipping of the processors.
<Q>: By the way, as far as we know AMD set the price for the Athlon 1.2 GHz in $369. And this resulted in curious situation - for the first time a complete set - motherboard + CPU + RAM from Intel - is cheaper than the analog complete set (conditionally) from AMD. Intel, above all, has an advantage in frequency - the Pentium 4 with speed from 1.2 GHz to 1.5 GHz. The rule of "buying megahertz" has not been yet abolished. What is AMD' opinion on this situation?
<A>: Such comparison today is not completely correct, since, as I have already said, platforms with 266 MHz bus are not widely spread. Besides, mainboards on the AMD chipset (and the chipset itself) are created mostly for more active promotion of the technology itself than for mass sales. But we still have to wait for boards on the third manufacturers' chipsets - they will be much cheaper. Therefore, you should compare now the 1.2 GHz (200 MHz bus) Athlon + board on the KT133(A) + PC133 SDRAM. And performance of a such combination is very good (to the issue of "buying megahertz"). Moreover, availability of the Pentium 4 platforms is not obvious.
<Q>: What can you say on competition of the Athlon and Pentium 4 in performance in the second half of this year?
<A>: I do not doubt that we will be able to easily oppose the competitors in terms of real performance (and not in the "announced megahertz").
<Q>: How can you comment on the Athlon 1.2 GHz with a locked multiplier which has become available? Is that an intentional event or what? AMD is returning to an unlocked multiplier on their processors, or is that only dreams of fans of overclocking?
<A>: Let's leave it without comments. As far as overclocking is concerned, the percentage of users which are fond of overclocking, is so low that on the world scale we can just ignore this fact.
<Q>: Some words on overclocking. Considering the fact that the process of unlocking a multiplier on CPU SocketA is very easy (you need just a pencil or a special film), can you take off this irritating obstacle at all?
<A>: For comments on overclocking see above. AMD does not encourage overclocking and will never do it.
<Q>: Having lauched the 800 MHz Celeron, Intel, at last, shifted their low-end processors to the faster bus. Will AMD move Duron from 200MHz bus to 266 MHz one?
<A>: Duron - definitely won't. Morgan - probably, in the future. The difference in performance among older Duron models and younger Athlons is small enough for it.
<Q>: When will we see SMP boards based on the AMD760MP on sale?
<A>: Our partners have already got our samples. As for the market - in this year (most likely 3Q).
messages.yahoo.com |
