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To: Bilow who wrote (80079)	12/2/2001 8:41:21 AM
From: dumbmoney	Respond to of 93625

It's going to be time for me to buy a new motherboard for my PC. I've never got one with a graphics accelerator because I just don't play 1st person shoot-em-ups, but I'm thinking about an nForce 420 when they come down in price. Before, I've just gotten stuff like cheap frame buffer graphics adapters, if anything. I want it to be fast enough for light engineering design work. I'm a little worried about what monitor types and resolutions would be supported by an nForce. But I'm not looking for it to be a solution for more than a year or 18 months anyway. Any comments? The nForce is a great solution for consumer PCs. Much nicer than the Celeron/i815 dreck. Note that it does NOT support memory ECC, if that's important to you. You might want to look at the Tyan dual-Athlon board (the newer bare-bones one, not the bells-and-whistles one). That's probably what I would go for if I were buying a system today.

To: Bilow who wrote (80079)	12/2/2001 1:10:10 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93625

Re: . I'm a little worried about what monitor types and resolutions would be supported by an nForce. But I'm not looking for it to be a solution for more than a year or 18 months anyway. Any comments? Hi Carl, Even the very inexpensive SiS 730 integrated chipset supports up to 1920x1440, so the nForce should be fine. Nvidia has been charging so much for the chipset that it isn't compelling on a cost basis yet, but I think you're right that the cost will come down. My 2 cents would be that even though the reviews we've all seen don't show any significant performance benefit for nForce at this point, even when configured with 2 DIMMs for a 128 bit memory path, it could well be that nForce will show improvement as the drivers mature. Besides, it is such an interesting product from a technical standpoint. On another note, do you have any sense of current flash pricing at the component level? Flash is very important to AMD, and appears to be gaining importance at Intel as Intel dedicates more FABs to flash production. Both companies claim superior technology, and I was wondering if one or the other is receiving a price premium in the marketplace. Regards, Dan

To: Bilow who wrote (80079)	12/3/2001 9:03:01 AM
From: dhellman	Respond to of 93625

Hi Carl, J. Osha upgrades MU on Hynix and growth asuumptions Micron Technology (MU, $27.16, C-2-2-9 to C-1-2-9) 02E d$0.01 • Confirmation of earlier reports that Hynix and Micron Technology are considering some type of strategic alliance is good news, in our view, for the DRAM business. In particular, we believe that the rationalization of capacity that may result from any Hynix/Micron deal is good news for Micron. On that basis we are upgrading our intermediate-term rating from Accumulate to Buy. Our price objective is $55, which is based on a normalized multiple on our 2003E revenue. Our current model shows calendar year 2002 revenue at $3.2 billion, with earnings of $0.16, although that number is biased downwards by expected losses during the first part of the year. • Our global DRAM model shows Hynix at about 17% of capacity, in bit terms, for 2001, with that number declining to about 15% in 2002. Hynix has several advanced fabs in Korea, as well as one in Eugene, Oregon that we believe Micron would be interested in. We believe that Hynix is looking to sell its less advanced capacity to another party, most likely in China. Any tieup or asset sale between Hynix and another company should result in a significant reduction of Hynix’s memory output, as we believe no new owner will be interested in running DRAM in Hynix’s less competitive fabs. • Although it’s possible that a deal could be as simple as Micron swapping its shares for the Hynix stake held by creditors, we believe that Micron is interested mostly in acquiring Hynix’s more advanced assets. We also believe that if Micron sees a way to take older Hynix capacity offline – even if that involves some financial incentive from Micron – that Micron would be willing to act. • Some investors may be concerned about the potential integration challenges if Micron does choose to buy some portion of Hynix’s capacity. However, we would point to the excellent job Micron has done of digesting the fabs it purchased from Texas Instruments to ally any such worries. Micron has, in the past, been savvy when it comes to buying assets at good prices, and we do not think the company will do a deal that it cannot handle from a manufacturing standpoint. We also note that we believe the more advanced fabs in Korea, and Eugene are competitive. • Our current global model shows DRAM bit production growth next year of 55% - that is a worst-case estimate that does not assume any meaningful industry rationalization. The number could be under 50% if Hynix is sold or rationalized, and 50% is far below the long-term 70% rate of industry shipment growth. Over the near term, the industry is expected to continue to struggle with too much inventory, but we note that October SIA statistics show the second consecutive month of 100+ YoY bit growth, which indicates that inventory is being worked down. Once inventory workdown is completed, the DRAM business faces the possibility of undersupply, we believe. (J. Osha) dave h

To: Bilow who wrote (80079)	12/4/2001 12:19:08 AM
From: Jdaasoc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Even with the recent price rises in DDR (which are supposedly temporary due to demand), RDRAM is still more expensive than even registered DDR. From pricewatch, I see 1 512 MB or 2 256 MB DDR registered DIMMs for Tyan Athlon MP motherboards running about $110 to $130. 2 256 MB RIMMs for 2+ GHZ P4 or P4 XEON are about $160. Premium is not that much for people looking for 512 MB or 1 GB DRAM workstations in the $1,800+ price point. Not going to argue that both platforms is part of niche market. As long as DRAM manufacturers wanting to post real profits from operations, I do not see this price structure changing much to the down side.