














Comments     Threshold


RE: Not good
By Eris23007 on 12/5/2007 6:33:48 PM , Rating: 2
The way I remember it, nobody wept for Intel back in the bad old Prescott days. Much the opposite, it was barely restrained glee that the big dog had gotten knocked off the top spot.

That's all fine and good, but why should those of us who care about CPU performance give AMD a break for their "hardships", which I would personally term "piss-poor execution"? They weren't unlucky - they made their bed, and now they have to lie in it. They chose to spend their money on the ATI acquisition instead of increased R&D budgets, and now they're living with that decision.

As Dr. Evil would say: "Boo frickin' hoo"

RE: Not good
By Moishe on 12/6/2007 7:53:35 AM , Rating: 2
Intel has never been the underdog and they DID take advantage of their lead to rest on their laurels. Nobody weeps for the guy who had everything and lost it due to his own complacency.

I think it's similar but honestly I think AMD tried (and failed). I truly don't believe this was a case of laziness on AMD's part. I could be wrong though.

Intel is the best for a reason. They have the money, the market, and the people to make the best processors and they've got nothing but themselves in their way. AMD has themselves, money, market and everything else in their way. For AMD winning is an up hill battle, it's simply not that way for Intel.

RE: Not good
By 1078feba on 12/6/2007 11:08:22 AM , Rating: 3
I agree with you on priciple, but, sure seems like AMD has gone out of their way to make all sorts of just stupid mistakes.

The ATI acquisition, though a forward-looking and fundamentally sound decision, could not have possibly been more ill-timed. They had a really strong toe-hold on gaining market share at the expense of their biggest competitor and then inexplicably changed a winning game plan. Even with the knowledge that Larrabee is upcoming, they could have waited a few years to ensure that Barcelona would at least keep the market share they had gained, vice ending up in a price war that led to a new round of debt sales. Does anyone really think we would be discussing this L3 errata if all the ATI money had gone into Barcelona R&D?

I also have to wonder how much better ATI discrete cards would have been if that division hadn't been saddled with being the bread-winner in the family.

Why not just buy controlling interest in ATI, and then gradually keep buying more ATI stock until you get to the point that full acquisition doesn't require such a huge one time outlay of cash? That way, they could have had enough influence on ATI's chipset division to ensure that Spider would still become a reality, yet retain enough cash to properly fund K10 development. There was a wide variety of differing paths to take to get ATI, yet they chose the one, that while may have provided instant gratification, was also probably the most myopic.

I sure hope they get their act together. I so miss actually having "choice" when it comes to enthusiast procs. Let's face it, right now, the only difficult decision to make WRT buying a new proc is WHICH Intel fits your price/performace range.

...and this comes from a guy loving his 939 FX-60 (OC'd to 3.0, ;) )


Related Articles
