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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (71077)	9/4/1999 11:56:00 PM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 1574854

Re: If AMD could do it, all their Athlons would be sold at 650 MHz... No, it may be counter intuitive, but it is absolutely not the case that they would necessarily maximize income by shipping all processors at the highest speed. Maximizing profitability through market segmentation is a fine and complex art. The slope of the demand curve for CPUs is quite steep. If AMD marketed only 600 and 650 Athlons and were producing equal quantities of each, then in order to get sell through at the highest speed grade they would have to reduce that price to whatever the 50th percentile customer was willing to pay. This is why Intel has long shipped downrated chips. If all of your product is at one speed grade, you must price it low enough to capture the buyer who is willing to pay only a low price, otherwise some of your product is left unsold. If you were to do that, you would forego the profits that could have come from buyers who are willing to pay more for better performance. This is why you only want a small percentage of chips at the highest speed and many speed grades. Then you capture most of what buyers are willing to pay and don't forego profits. Dan

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (71077)	9/5/1999 1:40:00 AM
From: Charles R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574854

Tenchusatsu, <The fact that the 650 MHz speed grade is still in the phantom stage tells me that not all Athlons can be overclocked like the web sites are suggesting.> Of all the arguments I have seen this is the only one that holds up to debate. However, I have posted the following about a month back and I think it is still the most likely explanation (that what I think, anyway) Message 10838823 AMD has to clear the 500 speed grade chips before they introduce 650 in retail - that is the reason "I" think you don't see too many 650s on the street. AMD began shipping 500/550/600s beginning June and could not clear them out because of the motheboard problems. They introduced 650 speed grade faster than expected because Intel used AMD slips to get in a 600 speed grade ahead of time. Phasing in higher speed parts on a monthly basis is going to stress the channel. The next few months are going to be a big challenge for AMD (an even bigger one for Intel to be sure). Unless AMD can ensure that somewhere around 300 ku systems shipped by the time 700s are introduced, we are going to see the same story repeat again - i.e. 700s will be no where to be found because OEMs have to clear out the 550s and they will not get cleared out unless there are sufficient quantity of motherboards. Chuck