Clock speed doesn't determine effectiveness...

this worries me as well. i use AMD chips on in my computers for about 3 years straight because they were faster, cheaper and overclocked better. then last couple years they did a switcheroo and i was using intel all of a sudden. i was hoping it would just continue going back and forth like that ad nauseum like nvidia and ATI used to but those days appear to be over.

Nvidia isn't that bad.

And I don't think AMD will stop producing graphic cards.

Before anyone says it, I run an AMD PC. the Phenom II X4. I don't and wont buy an intel based PC anymore. Gonna try and take care of mine for as long as possible.


-trira: we know this, but Intel knows that not everyone knows that and still thinks high processor = power.

Couldn't this lead to intel getting trust-busted? Except under special circumstances, monopolies aren't legal AFAIK.

The government can't do anything about a monopoly that forms due to the competition leaving the market.

The entire reason that AMD is so great is because they offer(ed) great price/performance in their CPUs. Back when the Phenom II and "i" series first hit the market, the Intel processors were astronomically expensive, and the Phenom II provided great performance at a price that was about 1/3rd of that of Intel's (if memory serves).

Oh well...I guess my next build will need an entire overhaul of the motherboard, RAM and CPU... :cold:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-Still-Committed-to-x86-Whatever-That-Means-237441.shtml

That tells us almost nothing! Except that they won't abandoned it completely, though who knows how much they might cut and reduce. I've always gone with AMD, I don't recall ever having an intel processor.

It tells us that they're doing the same thing HP did: restructuring their company and shifting priorities. Intel's doing the same thing. Mobile computing is a gold mine, so Intel wants in. It's only logical that AMD would want in considering one of their competitors (Nvidia) already has a large share of the market and their other competitor (Intel) is trying to bust in with their name. If AMD doesn't do anything they'll become obsolete and die. Honestly I see this whole thing as outrageously blown out of proportion: AMD isn't leaving the PC market and Intel isn't going to have a monopoly.

Hopefully, but the way they worded it makes it seem too ambiguous for my tastes to be this hopeful.

Whenever I hear about suspect goings on at AMD, I can't help wondering about the influence of "The Man Who Killed DEC" being on their board of directors; hard to know if he'll have the same effect, but having witnessed the meteoric demise of the world's 2nd largest tech company under his stewardship (which, incidentally, was probably the worst regime I've ever worked under), I think I can be forgiven for having my suspicions.

Indeed. How many households do you know with only one desktop computer but multiple mobile phones, tablets, etcetera? And how many with just one mobile device and multiple desktops?

My house has 3 desktops, 1 server, 1 netbook, and 1 smartphone (I don't count my girlfriend's Blackberry as a smartphone). I'm sure I'm an unusual case, though.

Yeah, the desktop market is pretty saturated while the mobile market is growing quickly, so everybody is making a mad cash grab at the mobile market right now. I'm sure it will level off a bit, but it's also a lot easier to justify building planned-obsolescence into mobile devices, so I'll bet there will always be more device turnover there.

Also, loads of people buy a desktop and keep it for a few years (or a decade, even), but upgrade their smartphone every year or two. So not only is the market growing, it's also got a higher turnover of devices.

'Course, this is all anecdotal, so the real figuresmay be different. But given the actions of various companies, I'm probably right.

EDIT: The higher frequency of upgrades would be because telephones have become so central to so many lives, while microcomputers have kinda stayed in the background for a large chunk of the population. Plus, your much more likely to see the fancy new thing the Jones' have if they carry it almost everywhere.

I am well aware of this. "Clock speed isn't everything" is something I tell most of my friends. That said, it's a huge determining factor in the overall performance of the CPU. Internal architecture can have just as much of an impact though. AMD had been on par with or better than Intel in this area for years, but clearly something has changed in the last year or so because most places I used to frequent that were huge AMD fans have all gone sour on them. Not just because of Bulldozer either. So either way, I find this news out of AMD very worrying and I don't relish the thought of having to switch to an Intel setup that's going to cost me significantly more money for no good reason.

As long as someone keeps developing PC CPU's.

Although, won't this drive premade computer prices up?