So it's June...

[AmEv]

Ehoh.


What other competitors are there...?

[RogueOpportunist]

Well the Cell chip was supposed to revolutionize computing as we knew it... But it's still a 1 trick console pony... ARM is making progress in the mobile segment with their Cortex chip and I could see them eventually working their way into the desktop market but I can't see them ever going toe to toe with Intel for high performance... I dunno, I had high hopes for AMD but at this point I have to admit I'm a little concerned.

I don't think AMD could ever "die" but with all this money tied up in R&D for BD I could see it crippling the company if it flops... and with all these delays and postponements I have a feeling they are seeing the same thing.

[slaveofconvention]

I actually also had a Cyrix PR133+ system which I bought second hand and lost in a burglary.... I can honestly say, I didn't mind it going lol

[x88x]

nVidia also keeps flirting with making desktop CPUs, building on the success they've been having with Tegra, but I haven't actually seen anything really concrete. I do really hope AMD survives if BD is a flop though....and not just because I'm a bit of an AMD fan. If they go under, Intel would have no competition in the CPU market...which regardless of your opinions on Intel I think we can all agree would be a very bad thing.

[AmEv]

No competition=Price it whatever the heck you want=Computers become ridiculously expensive.

[x88x]

Yep. I mean, Intel's prices are pretty high as it is, imagine how bad it would be if they were the only option.

[AmEv]

Well, soon, people won't buy new processors because they simply aren't able to.
Then the processor market crashes.
Then the whole computer market crashes.
People will be left with 5-year-old machines as the newest ones.

I must say, the Lego thing was chuckle-worthy.

[RogueOpportunist]

That's why I don't think AMD would ever "die" like some people speculate, there will always be room for them in the budget market and the fanboi support only grows that much stronger when AMD is the "underdog" so I think the company has at least some stability, plus no matter what happens with the latest battle in the CPU war AMD always has ATI to hold them over in the event something goes really wrong.

[dr.walrus]

I didn't say the heaviest processing loads are all graphics, I said they're mostly being shifted onto GPUs. Ever since GPGPU stuff really took off, most of the things that have historically been the biggest non-gaming CPU consumers (rendering, video processing, etc) have been being moving to GPGPU because they benefit tremendously from the processing style of GPGPUs.

My point was, rendering and video processing ARE graphics. UI is all graphics. Pure number crunching? A relatively small amount of what a desktop actually does.

[mDust]

http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/c...ue&prid=705184

So what's happening with that? It's been pretty low-key for 5+ months...

IDN if they're really dead in the water just yet - sure the current state of play isn't good - there's no denying that, but the Classic AMD comment? From my memory, Classic AMD moves were things like the K6 processors outclassing the P3's for a fraction of the price, then the 462 XP processors ourperforming the current P4s and finally the first Athlon 64's making what was left of the P4's go running crying for mummy.....

I'm a partial AMD Fanboy - or I used to be - actually I'm a performance fan lol - I had a K6-200, then a K-6 2 450, then a 1700XP and one of the 754 64 3000's - my current machine is an intel Q6700, and an intel 2600k system is very much in the works....

The only time they've really done the too-little-too-late thing I can recall was the failure of the Phenom to really compete with the i7.... or am I wrong here with my recollections?

Both companies are doing fine, but they aren't really competing for marketshare lately. Instead, they have split the market into power-users and normal folk who like the higher performance:price ratio albeit with less overall performance.
I read a few reviews on the K6 vs PIII...K6 was faster for office programs and general use, PII and PIII outperformed it in graphical content and gaming by a huge margin.
Likewise, the P4 dominated all due to more and faster cache. The Pentium-Ds were unrivaled unless we include blowtorches...but that is still a close call. Core 2 were faster. i7s are faster. If history repeats itself, the next gen Intels will be faster. Every once in a while an AMD chip would score higher fps in some games, or score higher in some random synthetic benchmark for unknown reasons, but I don't recall AMD ever outperforming the Intel flagship of the time. In fact, a lot of the reviews I read compared mid to high level Intel chips to the latest and greatest AMD chip and the performance was usually about the same. An example of this. That review compares the AMD flagship with the similarly priced i7-950 which have similar performance.
It's also generally been AMD playing catch-up with Intel for the last decade. Intel has been blazing the technology and performance path for too long now. Bulldozer is a good example...AMD is incorporating technology that Intel has been using for years. But it's not coming out for another 6 months apparently...which is also about the time Ivy Bridge releases...that's what I meant about 'too little too late.'

I'm fine with AMD manufacturing lower priced chips but it's my opinion that they should also produce some higher priced, high performance chips again....regardless of whether or not 90% of users need them. When I want to build a high-performance computer, I'd like more options than extreme-priced Intel chips. Intel can get away with charging $1000 or more for their aging high-end chips because there's no competition there. Maybe in 5 years I can look at options from nvidia.