Computex has become a platform in the tech communty’s town square for Intel and AMD to publicly flog one another.
Rumors swirled earlier this week when Forbes reported that AMD and ATI were considering a merger. Some vehemently disagreed with the prediction. Ryan Shrout of PC Perspective wrote on Wednesday that a merger between AMD and Nvidia would make more sense, because "Nvidia chipsets are the better of the AMD marketplace for the desktop segment" and has "stronger technology coming up the pipeline". Meanwhile, Charles Demerjian of the Inquirer is absolutely convinced the merger will take place, saying that GPU and CPU technologies are becoming so intertwined that it’s a necessary move for AMD to continue to compete against the better-financed Intel.
All this seemed to be laid to rest by another Inquirer article saying "important people from both camps" had denied any talks or plans were in progress for a merger. The next day however, Tweaktown had news from Computex saying that anonymous sources in Intel considered the deal to be "very likely, even inevitable". Is this serious analysis, or public relations smoke to drive a wedge between AMD and Nvidia, whom Intel considers its biggest threat?
Escalating from gossip to action that same day, Intel announced 60% price cuts on its Pentium processors. Within hours, word leaked that AMD was similarly slashing prices on their 939 and AM2 sockets. Both companies finished down on Wall Street yesterday; Citigroup forewarned of their burgeoning price war and its negative effect on profits. TG Daily further explains the price war, citing a new report last week of "slowing growth" for microprocessor sales, AMD’s low margins, and Intel’s continued efforts at reorganization.
It looks like this skirmish is only the beginning of pricing phase that bodes well for consumers… unless they own stock.
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