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Not really. Intel can afford to drop prices on their Quads, if they want to push Quads as the mainstream CPU. I really don't see them doing it, but they can. Also, you can look at their present Core 2 Duo prices. The E6600 is priced more than the E6750. Why? To push the newer CPUs, with the newer features? Possibly.

If AMD puts the price of 3X close to Intel's Quads, I see Intel dropping prices on Quads to make the 3X CPUs almost a non-factor. Again, you just have to look at the prices today for their own dual core CPUs. The newer E6x50 series CPUs are priced lower than the E6x00 series CPUs. If Intel intros a new Q6x50 series, I see them priced the same way as the E6x50 series CPUs.

acutally, my guess would be that Intel releases tri-cores also to go head to head with AMD. It's brilliant really. and video cards have been doing it for a decade. Really, the benches are going to speak volumes about whether the tricores are really worth it. I suspect that with more apps getting optimized for multiple cores, that it will. As a person who works in a enterprise dev environment, we'd never be stupid enough to limit ourselves to just two cores, as it would leave things like 8 way procs and 4 way procs wasted. Just like the linux kernel used to be, we'd only care about a single threaded app vs multiple threads, 2 cores, 3,4, 8, we wouldn't care. We'd take as many threads as available as our apps need to handle that level of load.

That's not the only thing from 1993 I don't exactly remember.
I said there were conflicting reports. XBit has a story, ExtremeTech has a story. Fudzilla has ten.

And no I don't believe your 30% yields. Like I said before the data in the link was 1996 data. I would think that the process has improved by now. I scanned through it but didn't see an algorithm.

Actually, no. His point is completely different from yours. The problem with X3s is that, they don't fit in the existing price range. Even if AMD restructure the price range, it has to taken into account of profitability. This limited their options for adjusting price range. There is no way AMD can take several half a billion losts.

If Phenom X3s are positioned right, AMD can at least survive. Forget profitability; forget performance crown. Before AMD can crank up the speed, all the performance crown talk are pretty useless.

Again, AMD needs to take into account profitability. Since it costs a lot more for AMD to produce a Barcelona then Intel to produce two Conroe cores, AMD can't price Barcelona like Intel price Conroe/ Kentsfield.

Intel has a lot more room to adjust accordingly to AMD's pricing, then vice versa. If AMD drops the price, Intel will drop the price to the point where AMD can't follow, or outperform them.

AMD's real chance of making a come back is when Barcelona delivers the performance it was designed for, and that is when the clockspeed increases. At the moment, AMD does not need advertisement. They need solid product lineups, and precise execution. At the moment, I don't see any of them.

No, Intel will not likely to introduce a tri-core to compete. They just need to lower the price on their Quads, and in NMDante's word, "a tri-core becomes a non-factor".

If a Q6600 costs 250USD, while a Phenom X3 costs 280, which one will you buy?

Since Anand basically showed that K10 is on average ahead by 300MHz ( in his tests), then they can charge more for quad and a little less for tri. Another issue none of you seem to realize is that AMD AUTOMATICALLY saves money because most of their stock is 90nm desktops which are fabricated on 200mm wafers at 90nm.

Using 300mm wafers at 65nm gives them a little more than 2X the amount of chips per wafer (at the same die size).
If you take worse case scenario of 199mm for X2 and 283mm for Agena, that's about 30% larger with 120% + wafer area. If you take the beast case of Opteron at 223mm K10 is only 25% larger gain with 120% more wafer area.

By cutting back production at 90nm that should save even more money. Shipping Brisbane\Turion out to Chartered saves more.

Well, why don't you come up with your own links to justify your claim? Asking others to google it is simply outright saying, "I don't know what I'm saying, but I'm sure this happened. Go look it up".

[quotmsg]
I said there were conflicting reports. XBit has a story, ExtremeTech has a story. Fudzilla has ten.[/quotemsg]
Again, why don't you put the links up?

I said it numerous time already. Yield is a function of die size and defect density. The figure is just a graphic model of the yield function, with 1996 DRAM data points. They even provide the function at the bottom of the figure. Even the time has changed, the function is not going to change.

EDIT: For simplicity's sake, and for your own ignorance to see the data, I'll explain it step by step.

The yield function is

Y = [(1-e^(-AD))/(AD)]^2, where A is area of the die, in cm^2, and D is defect density, in cm^2

Now, according to AMD's slide:


It clearly stated that the defect density is 0.5cm^2. We also know that Barcelona has a 283mm^2 die size, which is 2.83cm^2.

Y = [(1-e^(-(2.83)(0.5))/((2.83)(0.5))]^2 = 0.286 ~ 0.29.

That means, with its monolithic approach, AMD can only yield them at 29%.

Now, BM, your turn.

Look at today's retail market - Intel Quad is $279 for Q6600 (2.4GHz). AMD's top dual 6400+X2 is $244, and the 6000+X2 is $170. So, for $30 more, you can get a Quad over the 6400+, and for about $100 you can get a Quad over the 6000+. You squeeze the X3 between both, and you are now eliminating the top dual core product from AMD, and possibly undercutting all the other dual cores (which could lead to price cuts, which won't help AMD). Even if the 3X is priced at $200, that's still only $80 more for a Quad.

AMD selling these things is fine, but I am just trying to see where they would be placed to be both competitive and not undercut themselves. And if rumors of bad yields is true, they cannot price these too low, or they will cost more to make than to sell.


But remember that Q6600 is only $50 more than the E6600, so for every C2Q they sell, they lose about 70% of the price of an E6600. Check out Newegg.

With these AMD will have EVERY market segment covered. A64 Sempron - entry level single core; A64 X2 entry level dual; Kuma - mainstream to high end dual; X3 - higher end gaming, image stuff; X4 - extreme high end gaming.

K10 has enough oomph to push most of AMDs prices up. The 8350 is a little more than the 8224SE so the 8360 and up will go for up to $2500. AMD did say in the YouTube video that K10 would be released at the original Opteron dual core prices.

It clearly stated that the defect density is 0.5cm^2. We also know that Barcelona has a 283mm^2 die size, which is 2.83cm^2.

Y = [(1-e^(-(2.83)(0.5))/((2.83)(0.5))]^2 = 0.286 ~ 0.29.

That means, with its monolithic approach, AMD can only yield them at 29%.

Now, BM, your turn.

283mm is not 2.83cm unless math changed. It's 28.3. The slide says BELOW .5 not at .5.

Here is a link with a different yield equation.

http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~cpatel2/ [...] _11_23.pdf

Do you really think AMD is yielding at 30%? This is their second 65nm design. I don't know but somehow I don't think it's that low.

AMD is smart, 3-cores is an opportunity.

1.) sell those defective quads
2.) get publicity by from as of now unheard core "design"

The biggest reason is for us end users is what if some smart hacking type person figures out how to "enable" that fourth core!!!

Turn it on make it run, suddenly there is a cheap as dirt Quad core everyone wants. After all, what is overclocking?? If not taking a slower rated chip that failed at higher speeds at default voltage.

Thats why most overclockers can just juice those suckers up and viola, a very fast stable processor. There's nothing to say a little bios patch and some extra juice won't bring that 4th core to life!!

Huh? are you guys with me???

In case you're so eager to prove this wrong, its mm^2 to cm^2. So 283mm^2 is 2.83cm^2

The slides says BELOW 0.5 RANGE. If AMD's defect density is 0.4cm^2, do you think they will write "below 0.5cm^2 range"?

Yet you failed to come up with a different yield. Want to provide the function as well as the calculations?

From the technical data, it says 30%. Phenom x3 exists for a reason, and definitely not because of "market demand". This was never part of their roadmap, so AMD didn't design a native tri-core.

Unless you can give me a different yield, with calculations and explanations, I'll believe 30%.

Hmmm, not to butt in here as it is really entertaining, I gotta agree with BM on that 283mm is 28.3cm. It's a simple conversion.

And, since converting 283mm is actually 28.3cm, if I did the math correct using the above equation (and I could be wrong as it's been a while for me), I come up with a minimum yield of about 86%.

Can someone else do the math? Someone else aside from yomamafor1 and BM, perhaps?

No, that's a linear conversion. Since we're talking square surface area, we need to divide not by 10, but by the square of 10.

Think about it, 10cm * 10cm is 100cm squared. 100mm * 100mm isn't 1000mm squared, it's 10000mm squared.

yomamafor1's math is correct.