JC heeft een bijna volledige transcriptie van de conference call waarmee AMD afgelopen woensdag de resultaten van het derde kwartaal bekend maakte. Eén van de meest interessante passages in dit verslag is de opmerking van opa Jerry dat de Duron momenteel 'onderprijsd' is. Met de lagere prijzen wil AMD de hoge kosten van de KT133 moederplankjes compenseren. Als VIA eind dit jaar de low-end KM133 chipset met geïntegreerde graphics op de markt brengt, hoopt AMD de marges op de verkoop van Duron processors te verhogen. Voor ons consumenten betekent dit dat de prijs van de Duron processors naar verhouding minder zal dalen, zodat het prijsverschil met de Celeron kleiner wordt.
Omdat de release van de KM133 en andere low-end Socket A chipsets van SiS en ALi nog steeds op zich laat wachten, verwacht AMD dat de productie van Duron CPU's niet de maximale capaciteit zal bereiken. Dit in tegenstelling tot de Athlon productie, die wel volledig is uitverkocht:
Somewhat dampening our joy in that achievement was the fact that the motherboard suppliers were initially less aggressive on pricing and marketed AMD compatible motherboards at higher prices than offerings compatible with our competition. Our ability to offer better speed performance in volume offset this disadvantage for Athlon systems, and we easily sold out our high end parts including hundreds of thousands of one gigahertz and faster devices. In the value space, however, we had to tempoerarily effectively discount Duron prices to offset the platform cost differential. Going forward, virtually all Athlons and of course 100% of our Duron systems will be socketed parts.
[...] We will similarly enhance speed distribution and product offerings in Duron, with an 800MHz Duron available this month. We continue to work closely with our infrastructure partners to provide the best performing PCs at all price points. The tardiness of UMA-enabled Duron compatible chipsets, that is with integrated graphics, will limit our ability to penetrate the lowest points with PCs except for select customers because we want to avoid excessive discounting of Duron The first UMA chipset supporting Duron will be from VIA, who is now expected to ship in volume in December.
Continuing excellent execution in both of our MegaFabs: FAB25 in Austin, Texas, and FAB30 in Dresden, Germany, should enable us to make 7.2 million 7th generation processors available for sale in the current quarter as previously projected. The aforementioned delay of an integrated graphics chipset for the low-end of the value space could have a dampening effect on Duron sales volume. Accordingly, at this juncture, we're not planning for unit sales to match our anticipated production capability. We do expect to essentially sell out our Athlon production.