[CyclopsSlayer]

What was already almost ridiculously low pricing has gotten lower...

AMD CPU pricing 9/6/06

[AgentJ]

Thats about what they are selling for now if im not mistaken. Except for the AMD 5000's...

That FX-62 sure is expensive still.

[rabb1t]

I seriously want to slap someone over at AMD who said 'oh we are going to discontinue all the 2x 1 meg cache lines because they are confusing' since they have now added one back in.

[Fozzik]

If they said they were doing it to avoid confusion...that was the "press" answer.

The real reason they did it was because they were having a large surge in demand for small-server opterons. All production of the dual-core 2x1MB cache chips got the big O stamped on them and went in servers. They needed the extra capacity...so that's what they churned out of the fabs for a while. Now they are likely calming down a bit, and can offer some 2x1MB cache chips to the desktop market again, in the low-volume high end.

[Gargen]

Originally Posted by rabb1t

I seriously want to slap someone over at AMD who said 'oh we are going to discontinue all the 2x 1 meg cache lines because they are confusing' since they have now added one back in.

I think it's part of AMD's overall response to Conroe combined with a big push from AMD over the past year to increase total production. AMD has spent the past 8 years trying to convince the general market that they belong. Spending the last 3 years on top seems to have done that. Since they are already going to lose the top spot to Conroe and they finally have the market respect to not have the top CPU and still be considered a major player, they can make some more business oriented decisions (as opposed to pure performance decisions).

Moving to a smaller cache leads to much more efficent manufacturing as it increases the yeild per wafer. This not only reduces cost/CPU, but increases overall CPU production. I'm a firm believer that Dell not using AMD CPUs has always been a matter of supply as much as anything else. AMD already had enough demand for the amount of CPUs its fabs could produce. The move to smaller cache, along with ramping up it's recently opened new fab and contracting out CPU manufacturing to other micro-processor manufacturing companies has probably created a significant boost in total production over the past year... and now they have the supply to feed the 800 pound gorrila of OEM computers (Dell). The increased efficency in CPU production also takes a big bite out of the sting out of cutting all of their CPU prices in half. Since high end CPUs have higher margins and low demand, they can easily afford to throw some 2x1MB chip out there. It also helps them keep from falling any further behind at the high end which is huge for brand prestige.

Reducing cache also hits AMD right in their strength... memory performance (that's a good thing btw as it mitigates the effect). Overall, it's seems like an incredibley good business move.