Paul, et al, Gartner (Group), Kumar and Krewell vote for the P4, Niles is outside the tent, for now.
"In corporations, (buying Pentium 4 computers) becomes a no-brainer. The price moves are incredibly aggressive," said Van Baker, a vice president at Gartner. "For consumers, for the kind of applications Intel is talking about--video streaming, audio--it offers significantly better performance."
"Intel will be the lowest-cost producer, enhancing its gross margins and giving the company an edge in any price war," wrote Ashok Kumar, an analyst at U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.
The megahertz gap between the two companies will also grow. Right now, AMD's fastest Athlon tops out at 1.3GHz. By the third quarter, it goes to 1.5GHz. By then, the Pentium 4 will be hitting 2GHz, according to sources.
"AMD is forced into a frequency matchup with Intel, which is beneficial to Intel," said Kevin Krewell, senior analyst with Microdesign Resources.
Then again, the Pentium 4 to date hasn't sold as well as anticipated, according to, among others, Dan Niles of Lehman Brothers. AMD's share of the PC processor market rose from 17 percent in the fourth quarter of 2000 to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2001, according to preliminary numbers released by Mercury Research.
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