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

To: Petz who wrote (47715)	1/28/1999 7:14:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1572366

Intel To Cut Celerons Again, Push Up 433 Launch ____________________________________________________________________ Intel To Cut Celerons Again, Push Up 433 Launch (01/28/99, 4:14 p.m. ET) By Mark Harrington, Computer Retail Week Even as it prepares for the high-profile launch of the Pentium III, Intel continues to fortify a position at the low end by accelerating price drops on existing Celerons and pushing up the launch of a 433-MHz Celeron to March, sources said. Intel told computer manufacturers this week that the recently launched Celeron 400-MHz chip will drop to around $130 in quantities of 1,000 on Feb. 7. The new 366-MHz Celeron will drop to $90, while the 333-MHz Celeron will drop to $70 and the 300-MHz Celeron will drop to $60. The prices apply to the new, 370-pin versions of the Celeron, which use a socket form factor that includes 128 kilobytes of cache on the chip. The modular versions of Celeron, in so-called single-edge processor packages (SEPP), are priced at $140 for the 400-MHz, and $100 for the 366-MHz. Separately, a source said Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel will introduce the 433-MHz Celeron on March 21, months ahead of a previously planned June launch date. It will be priced at $168 for the 370-pin socket version, and $175 for the SEPP. The March 21 date is expected to allay concerns that the launch of a new Celeron will detract from that of new Pentium IIIs, which are scheduled for Feb. 28. Intel has called the PIII launch the biggest in its history. A 450-MHz and 500-MHz are expected. A fall price sheet for the Celeron line did not project price cuts for any Celeron chips until April 11, when the 400-MHz was to drop to $185, the 366-MHz to $149, the 333-MHz to $105, and the 300-MHz to $95. At the January launch of the 366-MHz and 400-MHz Celerons, Intel acknowledged a dissatisfaction with its low-end retail market share for Celeron, and indicated a redoubled commitment to correcting it. "We certainly will move as aggressively as we can in that part of the market," an Intel spokesman said. "You will see higher speeds earlier than expected. And it's a safe assumption that anytime you see [a company] bring out newer parts earlier, it does affect pricing on the rest of the line." The moves this week are clearly aimed at correcting Intel's low-end woes. One PC maker welcomed the moves, saying his company will aggressively market Celerons. But at the same time, he noted the market continues to be driven by K6-2. He said he's using the Celeron as a differentiator, and said the price cuts will help reduce perceptions that it's priced higher than non-Intel chips. techweb.com ____________________________________________________________________ I guess Intel is hoping PIII and Xeon sales will offset the Celeron price drops. The article says Intel has a commitment to gaining marketshare back in the low-end of the market. They lowered prices more than expected in January, but I guess those didn't convince the consumer enough so Intel has to drop prices again, and earlier than expected. Also, the January price drops haven't fazed K6-2 sales at all, according to that PC maker. AMD - The release of the K6-2 450MHz would be very helpful right now.

To: Petz who wrote (47715)	1/28/1999 7:33:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Respond to of 1572366

<He didn't worry that both Visual C++ 5.0 and Photoshop 4.0 are OBSOLETE VERSIONS, or that no one in their right mind would shell out an extra $1000 to run multiprocessor versions on a single CPU.> I'll bet there are more people out there using VC++ 5.0 and Photoshop 4.0 than those using the latest versions. Buying new systems for the same software is safer than buying new software with new systems. And besides, what makes you think that the newer versions of VC++ and Photoshop will run any faster on a K6-3? <On business Winstone 99, the K6-3-450 is 20% faster than the Celery 400> Petz, I already corrected him on this. You can expect Intel marketing to start de-emphasizing the importance of running your word processor or browser at high speeds and emphasizing the importance of those gee-whiz FPU and KNI-intensive applications. <All the graphics benchmarks (2/3 in the highend test) and gaming benchmarks are also useless> Then you can go back to his Quake 2 tests in his initial K6-3 preview. The best advantage the K6-3 450 achieved over an overclocked Celeron 450A is on the crusher.dm2 timedemo, where the K6-3 got 41.1 and Celeron (and Pentium II 450) got 39.1. That's it, a 5% advantage, and Quake 2 is the ideal case for 3DNow acceleration. Most other games out there with 3DNow support can't even achieve the same results as the ideal case, and it has been six months now since 3DNow's introduction. <Obviously, there's something wrong with Anand's benchmarks.> With all the traffic that Anand's web page gets these days, you can bet that Anand will be hearing it from someone who will call him "Celeron's teenage love." The point is that finally Anand is including High End applications into his benchmark mix. Obviously, no business in their right mind will be buying huge volumes of Pentium II 450 MHz boxes if all they'll do is Netscape and Microsoft Office, yet AMD is hoping this is exactly the case. Instead, businesses are willing to pay the huge price premiums for the latest Pentium II systems in order to run some of these high end applications. Then again, I could be wrong. Pentium II CPUs are still selling like hotcakes compared to the Celerons. Maybe there really are a lot of businesses out there buying 450 MHz Pentium II systems just for word processing, e-mail, and Solitaire. Either way, AMD has their work cut out for them. Tenchusatsu