AMD CPU's prices rising

[Lakeuk]

On Scans Today page they mention that come 10th Apr AMD are going to increase prices between 2-4% on major of cpu's, is there too much demand that is allowing AMD to up the prices?

[AtomicFuse]

hmmm, I know is that the AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors will increase their price by a few pounds but the AMD Semperon chips will reduce in price by a similar value. I would't say we all have to buy our AMD Processor within the next 6 days though!

[moose82]

Hehe, yeah AMD have the opposite problem to Intel (who are reducing their prices btw...)

Basically AMD now have a lot of credibility with Value Added Resellers (VARS) and Retailers alike.

This means demand has outstripped supply. We the consumer are demanding more than are being made currently. So to make as much money as possible with the chips they currently have they up the cost to the channel (distributors) This cost is then propagated down to the end-user.

The other effect is to lessen demand for a bit. They will lose marginal market share to their competitors but it will let them re-align the balance between supply and demand. (ie. you should be able to get hold of the chip you want within a reasonable time period)

With the advent of their new processors just around the corner (I imagine their cost/chip is going to go up as they cram more and more into the same(ish) area) raising the prices now on their current architectures should mean that they make normal margins when their new processors launch.