You and I speak the same language. When Gordan Moore and the other few
dozen ground breaking founders invented the x86 microprocessor I was
only months into puberty. If Science Fiction were a fact and AMD and
Intel were to change places no doubt AMD would be the 800 lb. gorilla
breaking the law. I'm a pragmatist not a fanboy and I know from decades
of past experience that if Intel drives AMD into the ground and there's
no longer any choice then ALL consumers will suffer. Whether you happen
to be an Intel VAR or not. Intel must not be allowed to drive AMD into
the same place Cyrix is right now or we will all suffer with mediocre
and extremely high priced products forever. Well you know, decades at
least. Anybody who doesn't understand the reality of the situation is
failing to learn from the lessons of the recent past. Those who fail to
learn from the past are destined to repeat it and as complex and
expensive an undertaking to create microprocessors is that lesson could
be a very very long time lesson indead. In short, I like progress and
without the competition there will be none. Thank you for the thoughtful
response. :-)
maccrawj wrote:
No flame war, just some opinions & observations FWWI. Dunno where
Duncan is coming from on this.
AMD nearly ruined an already ailing ATI when they acquired them and
made numerous wrong decisions during the the process, this I believe
has been documented. Currently ATI drivers that had been improving for
years are in the crapper again.
Now I have issues with AMD & Nvidia for various reasons. Yet chose an
ATI over Nvidia. Chose an Intel CPU C2Q over AMD X2 & Phenom, Intel
X48 chipset over Nvidia both for performance & compatibility reasons.
I'd repeat both choices (with i7/X58) today until I see the market
change *radically*. Scanning the archives will show I was set to go
the other way in all cases until I did the research.
LOL, even Intel doesn't take their video offerings seriously and they
were a key player in the "Compatible with Vista" whining to lower the
functionality bar along with Dell. Businesses make deals for
exclusivity or elevated status all the time while pushing the limits
anti-competitive law until it pushes back. As famous man once said "it
all depends on what is IS". There's not absolute control over this
kind of practice real-time and it's a convoluted definition of what is
IS.
So in the end a legal decision will not refine the law any, only
stands to tweak nature by assigning "blame" & "damages", lets big
government flex it's muscle, and ultimately doesn't make Intel the
devil vs. AMD the saint. The resulting financial loss (which intel
logically are trying to minimize) will be nothing more than the cost
of doing business to them. Even if they hadn't played "dirty pool"
post-Prescott they'd still be on top now. Fact is AMD is has worked
out to be the low-end-to-mid solution, Intel the mid-to-high for more
reasons than cash incentives. Next year who knows?
As to the EU, et al they are so socialist leaning that they ARE
hypersensitive so likely to come to same conclusion, fact. Good or bad
I am not judging, just observing. Too little/too much control, both
are bad and the properly ratio is fluid & subjective.
Stan Zaske wrote:
Dude, I don't want to get into a flame war with you but 3 countries
have independently concluded that Intel bribed manufacturers to
freeze out AMD in their distribution networks with so-called rebates
and to delay the release of AMD based products. AMD didn't make
crappy PC's with their products. They made some missteps along the
way (Phenom I) as Intel did (Netburst) but AMD didn't attempt to
bribe manufacturers to give preference to their products. Intel did
and next March we're going to see Intel get spanked again in US court
this time. The Ati division of AMD makes excellent GPU's and I
predict that nVidia is going to have a rude awakening in the 4th
quarter when DX11 high performance cards come out. Larrabee is going
to get spanked by both camps when Intel realizes that using x86 to
make a video card is another netburst dead end. ;-)
maccrawj wrote:
EU thinks anti-competitive the minute a company is successful &
dominates based on customer choice.
I say "look at all the crappy PC's that could have been made with
AMD chips these past 5 years (and some have been)! It's not been
good for AMD these past ~5 years and it has a more to do with AMD
than Intel, just look at them fraking up ATI.
Stan Zaske wrote:
Yeah, Intel has been in the news a lot lately and their poor
decisions are costing them dearly. Japan, Korea and now the EU have
concluded that they are anti-competitive. Next year I believe AMD
will get their shot in court and I predict that Intel will again be
held accountable. Imagine all the money that AMD lost over the past
5 years because of Intel's bribes to PC makers. Beginning to look
like the GM of the semiconductor world minus the threat of
bankruptcy of course.
