While I agree that the Duron brand was largely a failure, it was largely a marketing problem, not a technology problem. The Athlon brand got a lot of free publicity when it was king of the hill at 1 GHz against Intel's unavailable alternative. So Athlon is recognized as a good brand name by those who make decisions.
Duron got no publicity whatsoever. The performance difference between a 900 MHz Duron system and a 900 MHz Celeron system was astonishing, but the consumer was never told that, so there was no demand for the what-the-heck-is-it-anyway Duron.
(e.g. why not pay $90 for a XP1600+ compared to $70 for a Duron 1300)
Part of the problem here is the quantispeed rating for Palomino but not for Morgan. Once Intel kills the P3-Celerons that problem will be reduced. But to answer your question directly -- for a hobbyist, it makes no sense to buy the Duron, you are 100% right.
But if AMD had done some marketing, the OEM's would be only selling Durons in cheap integrated-video PC133 systems and Athlon XP's in moderate-priced DDR systems. If a Duron 1.3 GHz system and selling for $400 with a 20G hard disk and CDROM, but the XP1600+ system were $600 with DDR Ram, a 40G hard disk and a CDRW, there would probably be equal demand for both systems. (Even more so if the Duron 1300 could be a "Duron XP1500+", but that wouldn't be legit until it's major competition is the castrated P4.)
So, the problem with Duron is that, without marketing, AMD never had the OEM's supporting Duron, which meant that they never supported the low-end=Duron, high-end=Athlon segmentation strategy.
Long term, the best solution for AMD is to let the Duron brand die, and have only Hammer's and Athlon's. "Clawhammer" and "Sledgehammer" are both too long as brand names -- they will never survive in advertising copy. I've already forgotten the supposed brand name for the Clawhammer, maybe the new ad agency will come up with a good name and a good marketing campaign.
Petz |
