jaymz9350 wrote:
Bertster7 wrote:
jaymz9350 wrote:
Not necessarily. You are correct that they make Core 2 chips all at once and not specific models but they also make what they need. Just because a chip is marked as an E8400 doesn't mean it's any different (other than the multi) than the E58500 just they had a high demand for 8400's so that is what they made.
What?
That's not true. What Cyborg said originally is true. If a chip passes their standards for a 8500, they won't make it an 8400. The margins might change slightly due to market pressure, but that's about it.
I would seriously doubt there is a single e8400 that can't pass the standards for an e8500 as there is only 166 mhz diff. that would mean they wouldn't make any 8400's because they are up to 8500 standards. It is no uncommon for pc parts to be sold as a lesser grade than what it can be, memory and even video cards are both examples.
Whether you doubt it or not, it's what happens. I know this to be true. A mate of mine works in CPU design (for ARM) and we chat about this sort of stuff a lot.
It gets pretty complicated, but ultimately it's all about the quality of each chip - they never, ever badge a CPU as a lower grade than it should be according to their pre-determined criteria. They do alter those criteria with different fabs and market forces can have an impact on that - but not a great impact. The manufacturers would much rather have more higher end chips that they can sell at a lower price than not, here's an example:
Let's assume a wafer produces 300 CPUs, of which 80% are usable. That gives 240 usable dies. The manufacturer then separates these by grade and goes about making these raw dies into actual chips. All these chips cost an identical amount to produce (let's say $30-40). It is in the manufacturers best interest to sell these for as much as possible because the production costs are identical.
These figures are pretty much in line with the fab costs for Yorkfield CPUs. Let's take a look at a few different scenarios:
10x QX9770
20x QX9650
But we'll ignore these top end CPUs as they don't have much bearing on this, since they are the cream of the hand picked CPUs.
50x Q9550 - $550
60x Q9450 - $330
100x Q9300 - $270
That'd be around what I'd expect they'd get as yields. Which would net them $27500 + $19800 + $27000 = $74300 from a wafer.
(if you're wondering why the number of Q9300s is so high, it's because CPUs with half their cache disabled have significantly higher yields)
20x Q9550
70x Q9450
110x Q9300
11000 + 23100 + 29700 = $63800 from a wafer.
That's a difference of $10500, which equates to about $50 per CPU. They could cut the price of every CPU by $50 and still make the same profit - which is exactly how they look at it (or rather, lower the price by $20 and make an extra $30 on each CPU). Lower prices across the whole CPU range and bigger profits for them.
The manufacturers would have to be mental to do it any other way. There are whole teams of people dedicated to working out the optimum efficiency of these things. They don't just decide what they need and badge it as such.
As for it not being "uncommon for PC parts to be sold as a lesser grade than what it can be", how about some examples?
Last edited by Bertster7 (2008-07-31 14:57:21)
