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To: stylepts who wrote (149283)	11/24/2001 2:45:06 PM
From: fingolfen	Respond to of 186894

Compare this to a couple years ago prior to the Athlon success. Intel once owned 90% market share and this is no longer the case. If performance enthusiasts are 50/50 split between the two ~ using your numbers ~ this a HUGE contrast to when Intel had a virtual monopoly. I would disagree. AMD has always had a very loyal fan base in the enthusiast groups for several reasons. First, a large portion of the enthusiast community is, and always has been, young. As you get older, spare dollars go to mortgages, family, and what not. When you're younger, you can gadget. AMD has always sold at a much lower price point than Intel, which attracts those who want to "gadget," but don't have a lot of income. Furthermore, as a fair portion of the enthusiast community is young, they tend to be more anti-establishment. Intel is viewed as some monolithic corporate entity, while AMD is the scrappy underdog. That image (regardless of accuracy) is one that many younger people identify with. So when AMD had 10-12% market share, the only reason their share was that high is because they retained roughly 50% of the enthusiasts. AMD is finally building a reputation for itself...a brand name. And best of all, it requires minimal advertising to maintain. Meanwhile Intel showers our TVs with ads just to hold market share among the uninformed consumers. Again, I think you're being overly optimistic here. Intel is one of the top 10 brand names in the world. AMD comes no where near that. If you ask "Joe Consumer" about AMD, they're most likely not going to be able to tell you who they are. Joe consumer still represents the lion's share of sales at the low end. AMD is yet to crack the business market as well, where the real money lies. Tomshardware.com is right when they state that AMD needs to become more confident in its position and realize they deserve, and are capable of, charging more of a premium for their high-end chips now. I'm all for it, but I don't think they'll get it. AMD's strength, if you can call it that, is that they've always been inexpensive. I haven't done a cost analysis for AMD, but it is an interesting point. What do their demand and supply curves actually look like? Intel's P4 2 Gig chips lag in most benchmark evaluations across the web compared to the XP line. Every year consumers are getting more savvy and educated, and this Radioshack and Sam's Club peddling of core clockspeed isn't going to cut it for long. Many already questioned how a Mac G4 at 800 core clock could keep up with the latest offerings from Intel or AMD...Apple's been using IPC in its cpu designs forever, and now so is AMD. It's about time. Sure in selected benchmarks the XP runs faster some of the time... shrug The current XP's won't run faster than Northwood, and Intel has a lot more headroom to ratchet up the frequency of the Northwood than AMD does the XP. Unless AMD comes up with some serious speed in the next year, Intel's CPU speed is going to so outstrip AMD's that any comparison is meaningless, and once again AMD will be catering to the enthusiast on a budget.

To: stylepts who wrote (149283)	11/24/2001 3:37:28 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

StylePointedHead - Re: "AMD is finally building a reputation for itself...a brand name. " Looks like AMD is building in reverse - their market share declined last quarter and PCs based on AthWipers have all but disappeared from retail store shelves. AMD's AthWiper results in unstable PCs - and the internet is LITTREED with horror stories about these miserable machines. That is how to build a Brand Name - with garbage products? Face the facts. Don't make them up. Paul