News AMD exec "would never buy" AMD

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/01/15/amd-exec-would-never-buy-amd/1

In a filing with the FTC, Intel has unearthed a 2004 e-mail made by AMD's then-vice president Henri Richard stating that he would "never buy AMD for a personal system."

 

Seems to me that maybe he was saying it in the sense that; ''our products are not competitive enough right now, we need to do something about it'' and not so much bashing his own company. Regardless, how can Intel use this as proof they weren't a big competitor at that point? They were pretty much the only and certainly the next biggest manufacturer of desktop CPU's and quoting mails from inside AMD is beside the point. Down with the Intel scum!

 

yeah he was just being honest..

 

Looks taken out of context to me. What he was prolly saying is that objectively, to joe public AMD isn't attractive while Intel is. Intel has a load of marketing behind it, ans is the 'de facto standard' while AMD had very little marketing, wasn't the de facto standard, which made joe public nervous. It's not that different from a CEO saying that his own web site sucks, and it needs an overhaul.

Of course due to the halo-effect of the Athlon64 AMDs have started to appear in OEM PCs far more often. However, if they didn't so utterly trounce the Pentium4, AMD would be where they were when the Athlon64 was first around - in one or two PCs at PC World at most. Harsh, but it's the way the market goes - brand name often matters more than the product itself.

 

i read this a few hours ago on tomshardware i dint realise that custompc was slow with news?

 

Normally vice-versa!

 

It would be honest if it were today, but in 2004, AMD was ahead of the game.

 

Either this or that guy didn't know anything about CPUs. Who'd choose P4 over A64?

 

Taken out of context or not...woooops!

 

???
2004 is exactly the time people should have bought AMD CPU's. The Athlon 64's were vastly superior to the Netburst based Pentium 4's.

 

Couldn't agree more with Henri Richard. Used Phenom II and it was dog poo next to my Core i7 lynnfield that replaced it. Fact of life is that Intel is the performance leader.

 

Yeah, but we're talking about what he said in 2004.

 

But it still applies today

 

It's a bit unfortunate that an employee of a company who should be attempting to look objectively at that companies position can't do so without finding it used against them 6 years later!

 

It doesn't still apply today, it only applies today (and rather recently). It has literally just been said several times that back then AMD was the champ.

Gotta agree with you Greentrident. Besides, no one actually knows what metric Richard is basing this objective assessment on. He could in fact be pointing out the fact that looking from an objective viewpoint, it would seem Intel is more popular and a better choice, which is exactly what the case is about since the only reason they were more popular was the dirty tactics Intel used, when they clearly were not the better choice. The quote makes no sense otherwise.

Personally, I would like to see the full quote in context before I start making assumptions.

 

U are right Skiddywinks, I had an AMD Opteron 170 at that time... and it rocked, now I'm waiting on Bulldozer (AMD) or Sandybridge (Intel)...

I really like the Bulldozer idea...

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/Bulldozer/CoreUpdate/bulldozer.jpg

 

What this shows is that the then Vice President clearly had his own agenda and had no real interest in the company and the products themselves. If he had, then being in such a high position within the company would have given him ample opportunity to direct and guide AMD to improve, instead he took the easy option and put down the company and products and then left. It is people like this working for companies all around the world from small businesses to international corporations that bring a company down and thwart genuine progress.

It takes vision, hard work, determination and above all, belief in the company and product. If employees, no matter their station do not exhibit this, then they are simply dross and holding the company back.

 

<3 the blind AMD fanboyism in this thread.

AMD moved ahead with the T-Bird 1400, some of the later XP cores, and the A64 but didn't push hard enough to move beyond cheap machines and a fanboy niche. Aside from that, Intel have had the better products, and my cash.

 

Someone made an oopsie!

Regardless of whether the chips were competitive or not - The fact that one of the execs was openly admitting that they didn't think they were making competitive products is hardly going to make AMDs case any easier to argue.

 

I remember reading this and what he was talking about was platforms and brand penetration. Think Centrino. On both consumer and especially corporate side, Intel had a MUCH stronger platform than AMD. As for brand value, AMD had little to none in 2004. Even now it's little known.