Believe it or Not..."Tiny goes AMD".

[Son of Zeus]

Any comments???

"Tiny goes AMD" By: Andrew Thomas Posted: 21/09/2000 at 12:41 GMT
The dominoes continue to tumble as yet another OEM jumps from the good ship Intel Inside [Shurely "good ship Mixed Metaphor"? - Ed]. Tiny, one of the UK's largest PC outfits - with more than 130 stores and turning over $600 million last year - is adopting Athlon and Duron processors across its range.

The system builder, until recently a jewel in the crown of Intel UK, says the move comes as a result of its engineers' evaluation of the latest technology.

Neil Stevens, Tiny's Marketing Director, said, "We started offering AMD systems this morning and half our sales today have been AMD. We don't want to stay 100 per cent Intel - Duron is better value than Celeron and Athlon offers better performance than Pentium III.

"We held off adopting AMD until now because we weren't confident about the chipsets and motherboards. But now VIA has got its act together and the platforms are stable. AMD now has a reputation for quality and performance."

Tiny plans to pitch Celeron at the entry level, with Pentium III and Duron battling it out in the mid range and Athlon in high end systems. Stevens added that Tiny has no plans for Pentium 4 this year, referring to the forthcoming chip as 'very expensive'.

"Users can choose between a brand name or value for money," he continued. "By using AMD chips we can offer better graphics, sound and printers at no extra cost to the user."

Rival UK OEM Evesham has seen sales of its systems moving from 75 percent Intel to 75 percent AMD in the space of 18 months.

"AMD is doing extraordinarily well. Our best seller is a £959 AMD system," said an Evesham spokesperson. "It's probably down to review success - all our prize winners have been AMD systems.

"At the very high end and in business systems, there's still a touching faith in Intel. We weren't affected by Pentium III shortages for the simple reason that we're not selling enough of them for it to have become an issue," they added.

Robert Stead, European Marketing Director of AMD added, "AMD is extremely pleased that the UK's largest PC manufacturer has chosen Athlon and Duron processors for its Multimedia PC product range."

'Extremely pleased' is a refreshing example of understatement from a chipmonger. ®

[ReddDogg]

I see you have been out dreaming of getting some AMD technology (refering to an earlier post where you said the dealers down under don't care amd products because they don't think they will last).

I Don't blame anyone for switching to the AMD wagon, they cost less, the perform better. I will admit though, I would take a PII over an original AMD K6 processor, but that is like not price comparison, just quality. Everything else that is comarrable in processors speed, I take AMD products.

Thanks for the info SOZ, very interesting to read.

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Joe Redd
MCP

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg,

actually my new system is still some time off yet. I posted this out of interest in the feedback it might generate. But there is a bit of loose change floating around in my bank A/C at the moment that I might consider investing AMD's way.

They seem to be looking for capital. Will they use it to buy up Transmeta? Now that would produce some interesting possibilities.

Personally I don't consider the AMD processors prior to the new Thunderbird/Durons to be of the same quality as their Intel counterparts. But I believe that there were other factors at play then that gave them a reputation for being worse than they really were.

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

P.S.
Intel are far too successful & innovative to not have a few aces up their sleeve. AMD may have them "punch drunk" at the moment, but it's still only round 3 of a 15 round bout. Intel will come out swinging.

[ixl]

Originally posted by Son of Zeus:

I think this is excellent news. Though I had never heard of "Tiny" before and that topic header sure sounded funny. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif

actually my new system is still some time off yet. I posted this out of interest in the feedback it might generate. But there is a bit of loose change floating around in my bank A/C at the moment that I might consider investing AMD's way.

It's great news for the market.

They seem to be looking for capital. Will they use it to buy up Transmeta? Now that would produce some interesting possibilities.

Why would they need to, given how well they are doing with their own technology?

Personally I don't consider the AMD processors prior to the new Thunderbird/Durons to be of the same quality as their Intel counterparts. But I believe that there were other factors at play then that gave them a reputation for being worse than they really were.

So you don't believe the AMD chips were as high in quality, or you just don't think the market thought they were? I guess it also depends on what "quality" means in this context.

P.S.
Intel are far too successful & innovative to not have a few aces up their sleeve. AMD may have them "punch drunk" at the moment, but it's still only round 3 of a 15 round bout. Intel will come out swinging.
I would certainly not count them out. But AMD has been pummeling them with solid blows for over three years, since the first K6 beat the PII to the market in early 97...

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Charles M. Kozierok
Webslave, The PC Guide (http://www.PCGuide.com)
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...
Note: Please reply to my forum postings here on the forums. Thanks.

[Son of Zeus]

"They seem to be looking for capital. Will they use it to buy up Transmeta? Now that would produce some interesting possibilities."

"Why would they need to, given how well they are doing with their own technology?"

Charles, sounds like those 10,000,000 Forum postings u have been flat out doing lately have kept u away from all the juicy gossip re AMD & their acquisition plans etc currently hurtling through cyberspace. I'll get back with more details & links but basically (speaking off the top of my head) AMD want lots of money, fast, via share issues or whatever.

The question is why? Speculation abounds that they want to buy out Transmeta? Why...well their software based code morphing skills which result in low power, low heat CPUs would help solve one of AMD's long standing problems, being that they run too damned hot!!!

Transmeta has also been after cash since buying back the rights to their intellectual property & whatever else they sold to Motorola or someone, somewhere. This is a risky business strategy which gives them back their freedom, but makes them ripe for a buyout from anyone with the $$$. No, not me. I have a bank credit of a mere 30 odd million. Not nearly enough.

Alternative views are that they will expand their fabrication plant in Austin, Texas...good news for u & your local economy??? Or the rather boring thought that they may merely wish to write down their exposure bought on by the Dresden, Germany plant opening.

All that from memory will get back with full details & links for further reading. But don’t worry Intel owners & investors Intel haven’t survived this long without having some long-term contingency plans which they will surely action soon. The marketing of the P4 is yet to swing into operation. Hold your breath...I’ll bet round 4 is just about to start.

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

[Son of Zeus]

Charles & everybody,

These weren’t the actual links that I was looking for but they do touch on AMDs possible courting of (& canoodling with?) Tramsmeta as well as AMD’s plans for world domination ie. architecture, and platform designs etc.

Check the AMD Zone URL: http://www.amdzone.com/ for why now is a good time to buy; if u are in the market for AMD shares.

Also try The Register URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/index.html for more good industry news & rumours.

Taiwan rumour mill churns on
By: Adamson Rust Posted: 21/09/2000 at 09:25 GMT

Taipei Gather together 800 engineers and you're bound to hear all sorts of rumours and speculation, some of which may be true but what way does anyone have of knowing?

For sure we bumped, yet again, into a Trancemeta senior official in the Hyatt, but no one knew exactly why he was in town. He certainly wasn't there for the Via gig, but in the course of our investigations we unearthed all sorts of messages, so to speak, in the bottle.

AMD's ultralight notebook, on their slides, but with no chip against it, increased to fever pitch speculation that the firm might snap up the smaller fish in the little pond, to help complete its product portfolio. And people were peddling scurrilous rumours that as Transmeta had committed to DDR memory, the boys from Rambus might spoil their little party by slapping some kind of suit on them. As our Mister Crisp doesn't work at Rambus any more, we were unable to go straight to the horse's mouth and extract a denial on this one.

Elegent. Nice name, nice product, shame about the spelling. The 256K browser is flashed into the BIOS and allows the Information PC to be just as bare bones as necessary for the job of filling the gap between a $199 system and a $499 system. When we chatted to some nice chap about the product, we discovered that its offices were just round the corner from Via's HQ in Fremont. Unfortunately, we were misled. In fact, Elegent seems to be in some Via startup corridor in the same building. But Elegent and Via appear to have some 10 design wins already for the Info PC. Things sure do move fast in the industry.

The guy from Qualcomm started his interesting presentation today by saying: "Lots of people have asked us what is the connection between us and Via, and why are we here." He then spent another 30 minutes not talking about the connection, but did say that Via and Qualcomm have one thing in common, and that is TSMC. "Not many people know this," he said, "but Qualcomm is the world's largest fables company and we shipped our 100 millionth chip earlier this year." Ideas for the future include a portable Karaoke phone, one to many interactive chat rooms including live video feeds and videoconferencing on your mobile. Andy Grove was obviously 10 years ahead of his time.

The wooden Aqua Marina unit from FIC was still on show on its booth today but an important piece of marketing collateral was grabbing the punters' attention. You couldn't really make this up, but the piece of good stock paper, which certainly wasn't there yesterday, has a picture of some chick with butterfly wings, stepping into a whirlpool, strangely reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle and his faked fairies at the bottom of the garden, which turned the creator of Sherlock Holmes into a laughing stock at the beginning of this century. Which takes us, neatly enough, back to Trancemeta… ®

Another Register Post:
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And AMD wants to be a Gorillazilla, according to one slide, providing not just processors, but architecture, and platform designs. It wants to provide the highest performance at a competitive price in all segments. ®


Cheers.......Son of Zeus.