I'm shocked. How can a company be so stupid?
I speculated about it in december when i made my thread about the release of the 9600 BE and sadly AMD made every mistake they could. (
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/246610-10-phenom-black-edition-announced-2007)
1. They used the B2 stepping. That's borderline insane.
2. They priced it way to high.
I've read this article and the conclusion was quite familiar. AMDs CPU products are no longer competitive at their current price. That is quite alarming.
(
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3153&p=11)
(
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/dualcore-shootout_11.html#sect0)
A good way to see the real value of something is ebay. I've monitored Phenom prices there and if the bidding starts at 1€ it usually stops at around 140-150€ - no matter if it's the 9500 or 9600. This indicates that people are not paying for the performance of the processor but for the product name or better "they buy it just to have it". It's like someone bidding 450€ for a Pentium D 840 EE. Most core 2 duos are faster at stock than those PD EEs but they get bought because they are unique, like collectors items. The same is true for the Phenom.
The gap between 2 and 4 cores and the performance difference between the two is seriously messed up. A x2 (windsor or brisbane core) CPU costs me roughly 50€ while a Phenom CPU costs close to 160€. That's quite a steep increase considering a performance increase of about 5%-10% comparing core to core.
Intels Q6600 costs about 190€ while a 6550 or 6750 cost only 130€ or 150€ (The E6600 is no longer sold by Intel!). They perform on par core to core but the markup is not nearly as high as that seen with AMD.
I know the platform of AMD is a little cheaper. A feature rich am2+ board is cheaper than most comparable socket 775 boards, but that shouldn't and can't outweight the odd processor prices.
The power consumption is another issue and another field AMD has lost to the competition, that needs to be taken into account regarding the price. (See links)
What should a Phenom cost? What is it really worth? 120€ (175$)? 140€ (200$)? Or more like 100€ (145$)?