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AMD Carves Turion, Athlon 64 X2 Prices For Holidays
By Mark Hachman

Advanced Micro Devices lowered prices on its Turion notebook processors as well as its Athlon 64 processors for the desktop, in a bid to steal market share as the holiday season begins.

AMD sliced its Turion prices by 26 percent, while lopping off about $100 off its highest-end AMD Opteron X2, its dual-core part. AMD also streamlined its overall product offering, eliminating the 3000+ and 2800+ parts from its Athlon 64 family, together with the desktop-replacement (DTR) line of its Athlon 64 notebook processors.


Purchasing for the holiday season generally begins in September and October, continuing through November, when the sales cycle actually begins. Prices offered by AMD and rival Intel don't reflect volume purchases that can bring the price down further, and actual PC sales prices can also be affected by rebates and other volume discounts.

The third and fourth quarters generally produce the most revenue for PC companies, especially as the personal computer has morphed into a consumer-electronics device. During the fourth quarter of 2004, AMD reported sales of $1.26 billion, which fell slightly during the first quarter 2005 to sales of $1.23 billion. AMD lost $30 million and $17 million, respectively for the two quarters. AMD's processor revenue contradicted the holiday sales theory, however, growing from $730 million to $750 million from the fourth quarter 2004 to the first quarter 2005.

Although the Turion filled a niche in AMD's product line within the thin-and-light notebook market, its launch of the dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 is regarded as the future direction of the company. AMD cut the price of its top-end 4800+ X2 from $902 to $803, a difference of 11 percent, while trimming the price of the 4600+ from $704 to $643. Cuts on the 4400+ and 3800+ were modest; the company discounted both chips by about $30 or so, to $507 and $328, respectively. However, AMD trimmed the 4200+ by $74 to a final price of $408, a difference of 15 percent.

AMD did not offer any additional discounts to its Athlon 64 line.

AMD offered significant discounts on the Turion as well. Within the ML and MT categories, AMD sliced the price of the fastest ML-40 and MT-40 chip by 26 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The remainder of the Turion line received less severe cuts, leaving AMD's cheapest MT-28 and ML-28 chips at $145 and $150, down from $154 and $159.

Intel, AMD's closest rival, did not announce any price cuts.