Analyst casts doubt on AMD claims to server superiority

WHILE FINANCIAL analysts at Handelsbanken were portraying doom and gloom for Intel, other financial analysts at Global Crown Capital Equity Research (GCRE) are portraying its future as sunny, and casting a shadow on AMD's claims to superiority.

See Intel "stuffed the channel" causing CPU sales collapse.

According to a note seen by the INQ, AMD's presentations yesterday failed to persuade David Wu at GCRE. He reckons Intel's line ups on all fronts will be superior to AMD in price performance per watt, performance and system performance per watt until the second half of next year.

He claims that bullish predictions on capacity AMD made presume that actual equipment is installed, while, he said, its 4X projection between 2005 and 2009 is based on shells, that is to say buildings that aren't kitted out.

He also said GCRE is puzzled by AMD's performance per watt claim because it compared Opteron to the ancient Paxville and avoided talking about the Woodcrest. AMD, he alleged in the note, decreased the Opteron total system power consumption by ignoring north bridge parts and increased Woodcrests by doubling the number of memory slots.

Also, he said, Torrenza, Trinity and Raiden do not have firm delivery dates. Because of that, he's saying Intel will have "product superiority" for four quarters and has put a price tag on INTC of $23, the message being buy now, reap the money later.

Yes, as the old annals of Chipdom truly say, when it comes to Tweedledum and Tweedledee you can be sure you're going to have a battle. µ