AMD Opteron likely to provoke Intel server price war

AMD ROADMAPS show that the firm is positioning its ever growing family of server products while it is also, we believe, following Intel's pattern of printing slower frequency, but server capable processors with the desktop Athlon64 acting as the flagchip.

However, these system prices, compared to the Xeon system prices we've seen recently, indicate to us that AMD will attack Intel to the tune of several thousand dollars per box.

We suspect this may well precipitate a server price war in 2003, just as the introduction of the Athlon XP precipitated a desktop processor price war. It's clear that, as Intel anticipated some time ago, AMD is taking aim at the Xeon with these typical system prices. µ

DP/MP systems	Q4 2002	Q1 2003	Q2 2003	Q3 2003	Q4 2003
$25K+ MP			S MP 2.0, 1.8	S MP 2.2, 2.0	S MP 2.6, 2.4
$10K+ MP			S MP 1.6	S MP 1.8	S MP 2.2
$6K+ MP			S MP 1.4	S MP 1.6, 1.4	S MP 2.0, 1.8
$6K+ DP			S DP 2.0, 1.8	S DP 2.4, 2.2, 2.0	S DP 2.6, 2.4, 2.2
$3K+ DP	T2400+	S DP 1.6, 1.4	S DP 1.8, 1.6	S DP 2.0, 1.8, 1.6	S DP 2.2, 2.0, 1.8
		T2600+
-$3K+ DP	T2200+, 2000+	T2400+, T2200+,T2000+	BAR 2800+	S DP 1.6	S DP 1.8, 1.6S DP 1.6
				BAR 2800+
			S DP 1.4	S DP 1.4	BAR 2800+
					S DP 1.4
			T2600+, 2400+, 2200+, 2000+	T2600+, 2400+	T2600+

See Also
AMD forecasts prices for Hammer (Opteron) servers
AMD's "Venus" Sledgehammer looms into view
AMD names five mobo partners for Sledgehammers