BaronMatrix
Splendid
You do realize that it will also affect AMD's quad core prices as well, which will in turn, make their already non-existent profit margins get only smaller.
Let's see, Intel has a quad selling for under $300, so AMD's 3 core would have to be lower than that, let's say $190. Where would that price AMD's quads? $250? $299? Then AMD will have to not price them so low, as to not compete with their own dual core products.
Not much profit there.
Add to the mix is that Intel will introduce Penryn in November, which would likely lower quads again a bit, so more profit margin is gone from AMD. How much money has Intel loss during this price war? How much as AMD? Who's smacking who around again?
Yeah, so let's undercut our own quad core sales with our 3 cores, and make even less per CPU. That's brilliant.
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.