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

To: Paul Engel who wrote (53575)	3/28/1999 7:53:00 PM
From: Rocky Reid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572776

Somewhat off-topic : AMD chips and ACID Being a Mac User, I am not that familiar with Intel and AMD Chip Compatibility issues. Are AMD K6-2 processors compatible with, and will they run the same apps that Intel PII processors will? I am thinking of buying a new low-priced PC (possibly an eMachines) that features an AMD chip. The App I am most concerned with running is a music/audio program called ACID. Does anyone know if the 300mHz AMD K6-2 chip run this App reliably? etower \| 300k: $399 AMD K6-2 300MHz Thank you.

To: Paul Engel who wrote (53575)	3/28/1999 10:20:00 PM
From: A. A. LaFountain III	Read Replies (9) \| Respond to of 1572776

Re: K-6-400 pricing free fall If, as you report, the K-6-2 400Mhz part is in "free fall", there would probably be three possible reasons: 1) It's a dog product that no one really wanted, but was buying only because it was the only game in town and now some reasonable alternatives from other vendors have reduced demand; or 2) the vendor has started flooding the market with additional supply; or 3) demand for MPUs in general has shifted to a lower growth rate and has adversely skewed the pricing for this particular part. Now, based on my own statistically insignificant sample just last weekend (went to Circuit City to buy a Presario 5240 [K-6-2 400 w/64MB, 10GB, SuperDisk, etc. for less than $1K, which seemed pretty compelling to someone who bought his last system for over $3K for a screamin' 486 ALR with 4MB and 120MB HDD], was told it was out of stock; asked the guy if that was because the ad was a mistake and they were unable to get the system due to AMD's "well known" production problems; he said no mistake, that they had sold out the store's stock and it would take two days to get more from the warehouse; system arrived two days later; am now converting ALR box to boat anchor), I doubt that it's #1. It could be #2 (How do you like them apples?). Could very well be #3, which would make life pretty sucky for every MPU vendor (and every DRAM vendor and every HDD vendor and...well, you get the idea). So, question #1: given 1,2 & 3 above, how much do the answers change if you substitute virtually any other MPU for your observation (even Intel's parts)? Answer - probably not at all. Question #2: Given the PC market's projected unit growth of (was 15%/now being recalibrated downwards to around 10%) on a base of around 90 million units, total MPU growth for the PC market (ex servers) is therefore projected to be about 9 to 13.5 million units. Yet it appears that AMD alone has a shot at supplying nearly all of the incremental unit growth. Why wouldn't an Intel bull be focusing less on perceived AMD product shortcomings and instead have his or her fingers crossed that AMD's pricing remained strong, since all that the "weak" AMD pricing does is reduce the available revenue dollars for Intel as long as AMD is able to produce the parts? The point is clear and rather overpowering - until the bandwidth constraint facing the industry is cleared up, consumers such as myself are being offered more machine than our needs compel us to buy. With the reduced stimulus to pay up, we're letting the vendors come down to us. AMD's increased product competitiveness has hastened the process, and while you can rant and rave all you want about Intel's superiority (which I don't believe anyone on this thread has denied), the buyers have voted with their dollars and their judgment is that the AMD product portfolio is clearly closing the performance gap. So the investment question is not about products per se, it's about the two companies ability to generate profits from these trends. More importantly, it's about the range of incremental profit shifts that are likely to be experienced over the next several quarters. Maybe you're right about Intel's ability to crush AMD or AMD's own ability to minimize the opportunity. But it sure seems to me that at this juncture, with virtually every institution in the land sitting on tons of INTC and with virtually no institution owning AMD, the probability tree favors an outcome with a higher valuation on the up-and-comer. And I would further hold that the overwhelming percentage of investors who view AMD's record as proof-positive that it will once again fail to attain respectable performance is an indication that the outcome is more likely to surprise on the upside than the downside. The contention that the second largest producer of the most important product since penicillin has no investment value at any price is the dumbest thing I've heard in over twenty years as an investment analyst. It sure smacks of opportunity. - Tad LaFountain

To: Paul Engel who wrote (53575)	3/29/1999 12:51:00 AM
From: Craig Freeman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572776

Paul, with K6-2s so cheap, why hasn't someone like VIA figured out how to put several of them on one motherboard? Craig

To: Paul Engel who wrote (53575)	4/7/1999 11:01:00 PM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572776

Hi Paul. I haven't talked to you for awhile. I have a special application which is solely dependant on the FPU. It gets little or no benefit from dual CPUs. According to Tom's Hardware page the fastest FPU currently available is an overclocked Celeron, and the Celeron is a hair faster than a PII or PIII at the same clock speed due to the faster L1 cache. I've heard rumors that the K7 will beat the Celeron/PII/PIII. Do you know if that is true? If so I may hold out for summer. Are there any INTC chips in the works with a faster FPU other than Merced? Otherwise I will probably go for the Celeron. Also, do you know which Celeron is most likely to overclock to 500? The 400? Thanks, Carl