Intel and Advanced Micro Devices swapped roles in a third quarter that wasn’t as bad for shipments as some had initially feared, according to new data from Mercury Research. AMD had been making strides in the server market for several quarters, while Intel dominated the notebook market. But momentum swung the other way in the third quarter, with Intel regaining market share in server processors while AMD’s notebook processor shipments surged, said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research.
There is always enough place for any company to grow.
Well maybe not ever Transmeta:)
I’m actually surprised people would buy AMD chips for notebooks, when Intel’s are clearly better in that *particular* segment, and they are price competitive to boot.
>>I’m actually surprised people would buy AMD chips for notebooks, when Intel’s are clearly better in that *particular* segment, and they are price competitive to boot.
Superficially, that may seem so.
However, unlike Intel’s Core Duo and Pentiums for laptop computers, AMD’s present laptop Athlon, Turion, and some Sempron CPUs all have 64 bit extensions, giving these laptops the advantage of a life span beyond the 64 bit transition of all software. Only Intel’s Core 2 Duo for laptops is 64 bit too, but it is, so far, more expensive than AMD64 X2.
Another reason why Intel’s Core 2 Duos are not simply “better” in the eyes of hardware vendors, is that the motherboards they run on are more expensive, too.
Although many consumers don’t care about the fact that Core Duo doesn’t have 64 bit extensions, and Intel’s clever marketing convinces them it is the latest and greatest (except for Core 2 Duo of course), business and power users may indeed be interested in 64 bit capable hardware. After all, a fully working 64 bit operating system running 64 bit software offers tremendous speed, efficiency, and therefore battery life advantages.
edit: typo
Edited 2006-10-31 10:04
>>Only Intel’s Core 2 Duo for laptops is 64 bit too, but it is, so far, more expensive than AMD64 X2.<<
That’s why i was able to buy a laptop off Dell with an Intel Core2 Duo for 1,000euro including Tax and delivery the other week? If Dell can ship laptops that cheap I doubt the laptop version of Core2 is going to burst the bank for OEM’s.
And before you ask, yes i have loaded 64bit OS’s on it, namely Fedora Core 6 and Solaris.
>>Only Intel’s Core 2 Duo for laptops is 64 bit too, but it is, so far, more expensive than AMD64 X2.
>That’s why i was able to buy a laptop off Dell with an Intel Core2 Duo for 1,000euro including Tax and delivery the other week? If Dell can ship laptops that cheap I doubt the laptop version of Core2 is going to burst the bank for OEM’s.
I’m not saying that’s expensive, but how could we compare this in any useful way, since Dell doesn’t even sell anything with AMD CPUs in it yet? It also depends on what else is in that laptop.
If you look at the wider picture, AMD can simply offer 64 bit X2 laptop CPUs for a little less money than Intel. Where I live, you can get an HP Compaq with AMD Turion 64 X2 mobile, 15″ for about EUR 925, which is a brand still preferred to Dell by a lot of people. For similar HP Compaq models with Intel Core 2 Duo [easy to get confused with Core Duo, is that clever of Intel?] you pay more.
We could “I say you say” for a while here, which is not where I want to go, well all I was trying to say is that AMD isn’t really knocked out in the laptop field by Intel, as some suggest.
I’m surprised that you even say so.
There are some clear advantages with the K8 architecture, for instance the AMD64 extension and the embedded memory controller (The embedded memory controller was the reason for HP to introduce K8 based notebooks).
The K8 perform rather well, it has a low energy consumption (Remember Intel reports typical and AMD reports max consumption) and there’s no hazzle with the Centrino brand.
If you wan’t to sell a Core/PM notebook it has to be Centrino certified, otherwise you can just as well put a Centrino M in it, and save some mony.
Edited 2006-10-31 20:03
As a laptop user i ask,
* So what cpu does AMD have up its sleeve that can match, or even outperform the latest Centrino Duo in terms of
– Speed
– Power
– Power consumption
– Interactiveness with all the other chips and features in there (eg, wifi, etc..).
Will it exist? Does it already exist?
As a Linux user i ask,
* I already trust Intel with its performance and linux compatibility (mind you, i didn’t talk about support, just compatibility for now) How will AMD outperform this enough to make me switch, when i’ve had my share of hell trying to get ATI to work in Linux?
Almost all the AMD notebooks out there now come with ATI graphics, leaving a few not so good AMD+nVidia ones.. That alone puts me off this completly.. A CPU isn’t everything in a notebook.
>As a Linux user i ask,
* I already trust Intel with its performance and linux compatibility (mind you, i didn’t talk about support, just compatibility for now) How will AMD outperform this enough to make me switch, when i’ve had my share of hell trying to get ATI to work in Linux?
I suggest, trivial as its effect might be, you send a message to AMD telling them that as a Linux user, you would really like to buy a laptop with an AMD CPU and ATi graphics card, but as Intel’s compatibility is simply much better, you go for the competition.
If they get enough such messages, in the end they might see the light. In effect, the problem is ATi, not AMD, so there’s reason to hope things will much improve pretty soon.
BTW, Intel’s performance superiority (see above) should not be overstated, since AMD64 and Linux are still a very promising couple.
Even though a lot of people look down on the Sempron’s, they are quite capable chips. They Are really just cahche limited Athlon64’s. Most think that buying a laptop with a Sempron is like buying one with a Celeron. Thats not true. Even though they are both cache limited chips, the Sempron is a workhorse. I’ve owned both a Celeron 2Ghz laptop and a Sempron 3000+ 1.8Ghz laptop and my AMD runs much more like a desktop in terms of speed, whereas my Intel bogs down with just a couple apps open.
Don’t mistake the Celeron for the Celeron M.
I do own a Celeron M driven notebook, and it is a workhorse. It performs just as well as a PM, in most cases, it just do not feature enhanced speedstep.
But yes, the Sempron is a great processor