Clock speed is life?

AMD's been on a real roll the past two years, not only has their Athlon line held its own in performance against Intel's Pentium III processor, it's now competing head-to-head with Intel's next generation Pentium 4 processor and coming out ahead in the majority of the benchmarks despite operating at a significantly slower clock speed. If only one lesson can be learned from the Athlon versus Pentium 4 battle, surely the most predominant one must be that clock speed doesn't always win battles.

Last March's Athlon 1.33GHz launch may have seemed like another ordinary processor release to most, but to us the launch marked a dramatic shift in processor pricing strategy. For the first time in history, a processor manufacturer's flagship product was offered at an extremely competitive price. In fact, to deem the price offered by AMD for the Athlon 1.33GHz as "competitive" would be an understatement. At $350 the Athlon 1.33GHz was priced over 60% less than any other processor we could remember in recent memory, and processor launches from both AMD and Intel haven't been the same since. It will be interesting to see how history records this period, will it simply be a blip on the radar justified as necessary due to poor market conditions, or has the course of processor pricing changed as we know it? If the latter holds true, hopefully AMD will get the credit it deserves.

Our Athlon 1.4GHz

Processor pricing

In any case, today's launch of the Athlon 1.4GHz ups the ante one more time. Priced at merely $253 in quantities of 1,000 units, AMD has positioned the Athlon 1400 near the Pentium 4 1.5GHz in pricing. Let's take a quick a look at the latest prices on the rest of AMD's Athlon lineup:

Athlon Prices in 1,000 unit quantities (source: AMD)
	05/03 Price	06/05 Price	Price decline
Athlon 1,000MHz (200MHz)	$160	$160	0%
Athlon 1,000MHz (266MHz)	$176	$160	9%
Athlon 1,100MHz	$179	$179	0
Athlon 1,133MHz	$197	$179	9%
Athlon 1,200MHz (200MHz)	$199	$199	0%
Athlon 1,200MHz (266MHz)	$219	$199	9%
Athlon 1300 (200MHz)	$230	$230	0%
Athlon 1333 (266MHz)	$253	$230	9%
Athlon 1400 (200MHz)	N/A	$253	0%
Athlon 1400 (266MHz)	N/A	$253	0%

We excluded the Athlon 900 ($140) and 950 ($149) from the table above, as prices have remained unchanged on both processors. In particular, the first thing you'll notice regarding the new price structure is the 9% price reduction in 266MHz processor prices. While these processors used to carry a small price premium, AMD has decided to discontinue that strategy.

A quick glance over Intel's Pentium 4 prices reveals that AMD has paired the Athlon 1.4 and 1.3/1.33GHz with the Pentium 4 1.5GHz, which is priced at $256. Meanwhile the Athlon 1.2GHz is priced similarly to Intel's Pentium 4 1.3GHz and Pentium 4 1.4GHz, which are both going for $193. Keep in mind that these are all bulk prices directly from the manufacturer. Actual street prices tend to be less than these bulk prices for AMD processors, and traditionally a little more for Intel CPUs (although if Pricewatch is any indication, the latter is quickly changing).