AMD price cuts revisited

AMD revised its OEM price lists to take effect, yesterday, October 16. The new prices pave the way for 1200MHz Athlon and 800MHz Duron parts, which ship officially today. That's what AMD is telling the OEMs, at any rate (it wants to make their Q4 "go with a bang").

Incidentally, we revealed details of the new price list on October 5 (story: AMD chops chips by 50 per cent)

Our copy said the price cuts would take place on October 9, but we warned there would probably be a delay in timing. We were right.

However, in doing the math, our hardware editor Andrew Thomas made a crucial mistake when he wrote: "the 850MHz Athlon drops by more than 50 per cent from around $350 to $165". Unfortunately, it was the 900MHz chip that was $350. The old OEM price for the 850MHz was a somewhat less hefty $282. Which makes the percentage fall much less spectacular. Oops. We're sorry for that.

But it doesn't stop there - the figures and percentage drop cited in this article were lifted by Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jonathan Joseph - without credit- for a bearish report on AMD, the amateur sleuths at community financial BB Silicon Investor discovered.

Here is what he wrote:

"The cuts will be steep, brokers tell us. For instance, a mid-grade 850MHz Athlon could drop by more than 50 per cent from around $350 to $165, while the low-end Duron 600 could move from $79 to $53."

It's never nice to be found out: you now know that The Register can't count; you also know that Mr Joseph is ungracious. (Not that we mind in this instance - we prefer not to be a pawn in the chip/ideological/money wars, so anonymity would have suited us fine.) ®

Readers - where would we be without them?
Thanks to everyone who sent us the Silicon Investor links alerting us to the errors of SSB's - and our -ways.
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=14540859
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=14541151