Phenom X3 unlockable to X4??

[schmunk]

Reminds me of when people were converting the xp2500+ to xp3200+ (IIRC)

To this day...






<---------------------------

[Webby]

I have a Phenom II X3 710 (0904 batch) in the house but no SB750 motherboard to test it on

This sucks!

[TooNice]

It's all to do with marketing, market share and making the most of the chips they process.

Those are the perspective I am looking at though. If they can make a profit selling tri-core chips by disabling one core from the quads, and they only produce healthy quads, then it would mean that they can make a profit from just selling quads at tri-core price.

If that were to happen, their profit margin per chip may diminish, but they should be able to grow their market share by selling more chips. Granted there are a lot more if/else involved before we can determine if it is a more profitable short/long term.

It might make sense in the short term if there is a short supply of tri-core, but I suspect that in the long run, is it too wasteful of an approach. Remember the Radeon 9500? It was said that the very early ones were simply 9700 with half the pixel processing units disabled.

Later on, the binning process became more apparent. Ultimately though, the 9500Pro completely replaced the 9500. The 9500Pro was faster than a 9500 at stock there was no longer any way to mod it into a 9700.

So I guess the question here is, do the the infrastructure required to satisfy the demand of the tri-core? If they do, then it just doesn't make much sense to use quad-core for it IMO.

[Sputnik]

Those are the perspective I am looking at though. If they can make a profit selling tri-core chips by disabling one core from the quads, and they only produce healthy quads, then it would mean that they can make a profit from just selling quads at tri-core price.

If that were to happen, their profit margin per chip may diminish, but they should be able to grow their market share by selling more chips. Granted there are a lot more if/else involved before we can determine if it is a more profitable short/long term.

It might make sense in the short term if there is a short supply of tri-core, but I suspect that in the long run, is it too wasteful of an approach. Remember the Radeon 9500? It was said that the very early ones were simply 9700 with half the pixel processing units disabled.

Later on, the binning process became more apparent. Ultimately though, the 9500Pro completely replaced the 9500. The 9500Pro was faster than a 9500 at stock there was no longer any way to mod it into a 9700.

So I guess the question here is, do the the infrastructure required to satisfy the demand of the tri-core? If they do, then it just doesn't make much sense to use quad-core for it IMO.

I can see where your at but, You have to remember that marketing strategy does not always make common sense. I would guess they sell good quantities of both Quad and Triple core units.
Therefore it would be foolish to drop the price on Quads and get rid of Triple cores. After all the Triple core does allow them to use defective cores if necessary.
The current product range means that they can have 3 price bands, They can still charge most for Quads, So they keep their exclusivity and the Triples fit the unique market in between for people that want more than a dual core but, can't stretch to the price of a Quad.
It could be argued that they do most work on the dual core 7750+ because that is a Quad core with two cores disabled and it sells for the cheapest price.
The only people that will know the true figures will be AMD themselves and I don't think they would be willing to share this info.

A typical example of market share is when the Japanese electronics companies started selling TV's in the UK, They actually made little or no profit on them at all. However, It eventually put all the british TV manufacturers out of business so they have that product market to themselves now (or did).

[Main]

Ok, I was originally going to say something about yields and making the most of your stock and all that (which plenty of you have said already), but there's actually a much simpler explanation for this:

The X3's are a derrivative product, in that you make them by trying to make X4.

BUT

These are the new AM3 chips, and what don't we have on the market yet? High end AM3 quads...

So unless AMD are stockpiling the AM3 replacements of the X4 920 and 940 (which seems like a bad idea given the finanical situation) all of their AM3 yield, good or bad, are going to end up as X3's or the X4 810 (which has less cache so that is also probably hiding slightly duff parts).

[scaryjim]

Surely the eventual CPU package makes no difference to the silicon, though? Surely they're yielding Phenom II dies, and then packaging them into either AM2+ or AM3? That way all the current top yeild of Phenom II would be packaged into AM2+ to make the 920 and 940. No waste, no stockpiling, no unnecessary disabling of chunks of the die just because they don't have this core released on a particular socket...

Doing it the other way just makes no sense...

[Main]

Hmmm...that does make more sense, and has something you made me check that backs it up...

Take a look at CPUID shots of the AM2+ and AM3 Phenom 2's...they share the same RB-C2 revision...

[scaryjim]

Of course since they can do that, it would be interesting to see if they do package any of the bottom end parts as AM2+ only, or whether they intend to release all future Deneb-based CPUs as AM3 and trust that either DDR3 prices will come down sufficiently to persuade us all to move to AM3, or that budget system builders will be happy putting cheaper AM3 CPUs in AM2+ boards...

[iftiq]

I can see where your at but, You have to remember that marketing strategy does not always make common sense....

Indeed, also it's important to remember that the Desktop CPU market is basically a duopoly, Intel and AMD account for virtually all chips sold and in such a situation the producer's economics get all screwy so it may make sense for them to sell viable quad-core chips as tri-core.

[Sputnik]

Indeed, also it's important to remember that the Desktop CPU market is basically a duopoly, Intel and AMD account for virtually all chips sold and in such a situation the producer's economics get all screwy so it may make sense for them to sell viable quad-core chips as tri-core.

Which is the Exact point I've been getting at all along!

[Sputnik]

unless AMD are stockpiling the AM3 replacements of the X4 920 and 940 (which seems like a bad idea given the finanical situation) all of their AM3 yield, good or bad, are going to end up as X3's or the X4 810 (which has less cache so that is also probably hiding slightly duff parts).

It would make perfect economic sense for AMD to stock pile the AM3 versions/replacements of the 920 and 940 until all the AM2+ 920's and 940's are sold.

Otherwise everybody would buy the AM3 versions leaving them with a mountain of AM2+ units that they would have to sell at a huge discount just to shift them.

[Main]

Sputnik, it's not that I don't think it's a good idea to hold back the top of the line AM3 chips, since that makes sense in regards to selling product.

But it doesn't make sense to stockpile a future product when the market is declining as it currently is, since you have no guarantees the product you stockpile will sell. Also this is AMD, and they have to take more care in this regard because they have considerabely less resources than intel.