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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (68147)	8/9/1999 5:16:00 PM
From: Yougang Xiao	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578480

Dan Niles report: 10:10am EDT 9-Aug-99 BancBoston Robertson Stephens (Niles, Daniel 415-693-324 AMD: Athlon: Better Performance, Higher Clock Speeds and 25-35% Cheaper ... August 9, 1999 A D V A N C E D M I C R O D E V I C E S Athlon: Better Performance, Higher Clock Speeds and 25-35% Cheaper Than PIII; Upgrading to Buy with $23 Price Target Daniel T. Niles (415) 693-3241 dan_niles@rsco.com Arnab K. Chanda (415) 676-2865 arnab_chanda@rsco.com BancBoston Robertson Stephens BancBoston Robertson Stephens ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES AMD $17.38 8/9/99 Industry: Semiconductor Dan Niles 415-693-3241 Key Points: Not since the 386 has AMD had equal/better performance than Intel- until now. Today, if everything happens according to plan, AMD will officially launch the Athlon marketing campaign with PC based systems due out the week of September 5th . Todays launch of the 650Mhz version leaves AMD at the top of the megahertz pyramid by itself. Intel is not due out with its next speed grade till October/November we believe. Athlon is faster than the PIII clock speed at 650 MHz with a significant performance advantage on about any benchmark at an equivalent clock speed. This is the first time since the 386 generation that AMD can claim this. This is one of the main reasons that 9 of the 10 top PC OEMs are expected to launch Athlon systems. ** We expect 300-400K units in Q3 with over 1M units in Q4. We estimate that AMD in Q2 had a $67 ASP on K6 processors and Intel had a $211 processor ASP. We believe that K7 will enable AMD to close a good portion of that gap even at a 25-35% discount. The Athlon, which was designed by AMD for an AMD process will have much less manufacturing issues than the K6 which was originally designed for an IBM process. We are upgrading AMD to a Buy with a $23 year end price target. SUMMARY: BUY from LTA Not since the 386 has AMD had equal/better performance than Intel- until now. Today, if everything happens according to plan, AMD will officially launch the Athlon marketing campaign with PC based systems due out the week of September 5th. Todays launch of the 650Mhz version leaves AMD at the top of the megahertz pyramid by itself. We believe that Intel is not due out with its next speed grade till late October/ early November. We expect a 700MHz Athlon in Q4 and AMD is already yielding processors at that level already. Athlon is faster than the PIII clock speed at 650 MHz with a significant performance advantage on about any benchmark at an equivalent clock speed. The performance is derived from: 1) a faster front-side bus, 2) a better branch prediction unit, 2) a 3-way superscalar design, 3) fully integrated floating point, 3D and MMX, 4) very efficient caching, and 5) deep and regular pipelining. This is the first time since the 386 generation that AMD can claim this type of performance relative to Intel. This is one of the main reasons that 9 of the 10 top PC OEMs are expected to launch Athlon systems starting in September. We expect many different PC magazines and bench marking organizations to release their own performance tests today and expect AMD to have a fairly clean sweep across the board. Intel's response will be to essentially ignore this given there is nothing they can really say. In addition, the Intel processors based on the Coppermine core continue to slip. We expect 300-400K units of Athlon in Q3 with over 1M units in Q4. We estimate that AMD in Q2 had a $67 ASP on K6 processors and Intel had a $211 processor ASP. We believe that K7 will enable AMD to close a good portion of that gap even at a 25-35% discount. The K7 which was designed by AMD for an AMD process will have much less manufacturing issues than the K6 which was originally designed for an IBM process. We believe that AMD should have the capacity to ship over 1.5M units in Q4 assuming the demand is there. We believe that it will be very hard for PC OEMs to ignore the Athlon given better performance at a 25-35% discount versus an equivalent PIII. Q3 should see slight q/q revenue growth driven by flash and initial K7 shipments. We believe that flash revenues could increase by another $40M from $166M last quarter. We believe that chips shipped to Vantis could contribute another $20M with communciations revenues up a few % q/q. We believe K6 revenues will decline by about $50M q/q to about $200M on 4M units at a $50 ASP. We believe K7 revenues will be close to $75M in Q3 on 300K units at a $250 ASP. We are upgrading the stock to a Buy with a $23 price target by year end. The bottom line is that we believe the K7 is better performance for the same price and that AMD will be able to effectively ramp the manufacturing. Given this, we believe that PC OEMs are likely to want to use this product if for no other reason than to have a club over Intel's head. Given the low investor confidence in the stock we believe this is a good trade that can turn into an even better investment. +++++ Thanks, Albert!

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (68147)	8/9/1999 8:19:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1578480

Tench - RE: "In any case, the general consensus is that clock-for-clock, Athlon is slightly faster than Pentium III in integer and office apps, and moderately faster in floating-point and 3D." "Slightly" in office and integer? In Win NT, where Intel USED to rule the world, the Athlon is faster than the PIII clock for clock by 10 - 20%! 10% in this benchmark - tomshardware.com 20% in Winstone 99 - arstechnica.com 13% in High End Winstone 99 - arstechnica.com You may say I am being selective in my choice of benchmarks, and I am. I am just selecting the benchmarks in which the PII/III used to smother the K6-X! The tables have turned. Look at this collection of High End Winstone 99 benchmarks comparing the PIII to the K6-III - tomshardware.com Intel doesn't currently have the same lead it USED to. I guess AMD also "slighty" lost money in the first half of this year! "Moderately" in 3D and floating? In current games and in the higher resolutions, yes because video cards are being maxed out by the 600MHz chips. But look at Quake 3 scores - 25% and 24% faster - arstechnica.com Look at the these 3D Studio Max benchmarks The 600MHz Athlon is 45.3 % faster than the 600MHz PIII! tomshardware.com For reference, look at these earlier benchmarks running the same program- The 450MHz PIII is 41% faster than the 450MHz K6-III. tomshardware.com Can you believe that?! In this test, the PIII used to ROMP the K6-III in performance. But now, The Athlon ROMPS the PIII by a GREATER margin compared to PIII vs. K6-III! Clinton only "moderately" misled the country and his family, right???