Apparently, folks in the market for a PC don’t care much about MHz or anything else in their system these days.
A recent New York Times headline suggests AMD has enough clout in the industry to end the longs standing chip wars between AMD and Intel with nothing more than another new marketing strategy. Further reading describes AMD’s new VISION strategy as a last ditch effort to compete. AMD executives justify the approach by suggesting today’s consumers no longer care about specs. Consumers only care about what the PC can do for them.
You can’t blame The NY Times for adding a little sensationalism. This ploy by AMD is getting tired. Sure, if you’re having trouble keeping up, it’s best to hide it from the buying public. Sure the retailers like it when they can market an item at a low price point without pointing out exactly what the consumer is getting… or not getting.
Anyone who has bought a computer recently can’t help but notice the increase in system specs and yet at the same time there is something missing. You guessed it, the size of the engine. The tag at the store shows the amount of memory, size of the hard drive, but what sort of power does it have? That question is getting harder and harder to answer, especially for the average user buying an AMD based system.
VISON is the name but what a misnomer. It is supposed to give a rating related to performance for the whole system and not just the processor. Don’t let the fact that AMD now owns its own video card company, ATI, escape you. Their continuing second rate performance on the CPU front coupled with lots-o-cash tied up with the ATI purchase, guarantees this approach to marketing their products.
If you have any doubts that the whole VISION thing is a farce, just ask yourself what the word “BLACK” tells the average consumer. While AMD Vision Premium, and AMD Vision Ultimate, may give the consumer at least something to relate to, I’m not sure AMD Vision Black tells the average consumer anything. While the consumer may not know everything about L2 cache or clock cycles, the correct information would at least give us something concrete to compare or research.
Check out the levels of performance AMD is peddling to consumers.
- Vision Basic = uh…….basic
- Vision Premium = Does the word “Premium” tell you anything about digital media consumption?
- Vision Ultimate = Does the word”Ultimate” tell you anything about digital media creation?
- Vision Black = Does the word “Black” tell you anything about anything?
Maybe marketing executives think the public is stupid or maybe they are just seizing the opportunity to hide information that could negatively influence their position and sales. Either way, when information is hidden, the consumer loses .
When I buy a house I don’t want to make my decision based on Ultimate House, Premium House, Black House and I don’t want to buy a Basic TV, Ultimate TV, Black TV. Please release me from today’s consumer crushing marketing tactics. If you want to sell me something, tell me what it REALLY is.
_______________________________________
Reference
