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

To: Scumbria who wrote (98181)	3/12/2000 7:01:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 1570665

Scumbria, If MSFT wants to close off future use of the AThlon, yes, that would be true. However I expect MSFT will make the games runnable on both CPUs in the development phase and then when they sell the game it will be restricted to the P-III or AThlon. If the publicly say never again Athlon then Intel will not be as low in price because they have got a monopoly client....MSFT. but if MSFT shows it can change to an AThlon based mobo in a minute then Intel will see permanent price pressure. MSFT has done extensive optimisation of the stripped win2K and I expect they will continue that. In addition they are the ones who issue the specs to the gamers and so they can keep the AThlon alive. If they sell games to xboxs and Athlon boxes they stil profit and they can also sell a win2K stripped os to each of them as well. As for linux?? that depends on the game providers as there will be little in common software wise with alinux box, but MSFT will get zero revenue. MSFT will probably never let their own games go to linux boxes, but a number of private games may well go there. It all depends on how it works, what are the fees the game publishers are charged. If the fees and restrictions are too large then some will jump ship and make for the linux box. Such a box with is just the kind of project wher linux can do well/better that win2K....if they get the games. That's the rub, get the games. Bill

To: Scumbria who wrote (98181)	3/12/2000 8:12:00 PM
From: Gopher Broke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570665

Scumbria,<optimized for SSE, making AMD clones impossible> I think it is unlikely that MSFT will allow INTC to move into a position of sole supplier. INTC might start looking to make a profit on the processor sales or something equally preposterous.

To: Scumbria who wrote (98181)	3/12/2000 9:56:00 PM
From: SteveC	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1570665

"X-box games will likely be optimized for SSE, making AMD clones impossible." I can only hope that what MSFT (& Intel) did to Gigapixel and AMD will not be easily forgotten. Gamers may publicly embrace the X-Box, but they would be quite foolish to let MSFT and Intel define the future of the market. The profit is not going to be on the hardware, but on the games themselves (and possible connections to the Internet). If the gaming community becomes dependent on the X-Box and optimizes its best software for it, MSFT could one day take all their profit by charging licensing fees for the sale of each game. MSFT is not doing this as a charity activity, and I'm sure is imposing licensing fees (for now at a nominal rate) in its development contracts with gamers. MSFT will find a way to make a killing on the product and essentially taxing the gamers is the easiest way for it to do so. With that in mind, it is in the interest of software developers to continue to work closely with AMD and support alternative instructions and platforms.