A real horse race. I'm beginning to think that, until a DDR chipset is ready, it would be foolish for INTC to release an SDRAM P-4 chipset. If they did so, while RDRAM is expensive, many would shift to SDRAM, thereby reducing demand for RDRAM and slowing the ramp-up and together with it the decline in RDRAM pricing. The circular effect of this would be to make the high end P-4 less competitive with the high end AMD DDR computer.
The better play for INTC is to either "delay" such a release, or to decline to release an SDRAM chipset, altogether, waiting until a DDR chipset is available. Were INTC to survive a delay in the SDRAM chipset, RDRAM pricing to fall to the level of DDR, and the P-4 to rapidly ramp-up in the 2 GHz range, then INTC blows everyone out of the water, AMD is caught without an RDRAM board, and it's lights out. |
