Everyone who is human has opinions and bias's, its all part of being human. I usually don't even bother reading forums, simply because nobody is really intrested in having a good, constructive debate. Whats different today is after reading Omid's article, I wanted to see what everyone was saying about it. I found the normal back and forth Intel/Amd chatter. I will admit upfront that I am, and have been since the fabled K6, an avid AMD user and promoter. With that said, I do have respect for Intels chips, and some of the other technology they attempt to pawn off on us. In Intels quest to diversify its product portfolio it lost its focus on the CPU market. Intel has never been in danger of loosing a large bit of its marketshare to AMD, simply because AMD has only 1 FAB dedicated to cpu's (Fab30), compared to Intels numourous (Didn't look up the actual number, sorry). AMD does have an additional FAB, now dedicated to Flash (Fab25) along with a few joint ventures with the likes of Fujitsu. AMD is not a recent upstart company, which began with the introduction of the Athlon. They have been here as long as Intel. Looking back at the best of the previous generation of cpu's, AMD always rose the bar on Intel, after the fact. The AMD 386-40 was a great chip, and if it wasn't for the pesky 486, it would have been the fastest chip around. Then AMD decided to go a new direction, try to catch up to Intel, a bold task indeed. They aquired NexGen to help develop the K6 chip (The K5 was a feeble attempt). With the K6 and eventually K6-2, everyone was hopefull that AMD would finally bring something worth having to the table. Many people were not happy with the results of the K6 family, but in all regards it was a success. You do not get from a 386 to the Athlon in one huge step, so looking back, I just looked at the building blocks. The K5 was the first real step away from replicating Intel chips. This was further evident with the K6. With the K6-2, AMD made its first bid at bringing something totally new to the plate. With the very poor performance of the K5 and K6 chips, AMD brought out 3DNow in attempts to bridge the gap some. Thus starts the true innovation and creative start of AMD. Another chip came out, which I thought was very impressive (K6-3), yet another building block to the Athlon. The reason I bring this all up, and go into the detail which I have is simple. Not everyone knows the history behind the Athlon, or AMD for that matter. AMD is vital to the computer industry, because without AMD, we would all be paying 2000+ for value computers and 3000+ for a power system. Not to mention the fact that we wouldn't have the performance we have now. If it wasn't for the Athlon, Celeron wouldn't exsist (Intel attempted to market the Celeron against the Athlon in order to avoid direct competition between the Athlon and the Pentium II/III). Without AMD Intel would continue to neglect the CPU side of its business to expand its product offering (This is evident on the amount of money spent on R&D of CPU's vs Other Products). Without AMD's success we wouldn't have a choice of Chipsets, and probly wouldn't have as many chipset features as we have now. The reason AMD gets so much chatter in the business world and in the News, is because despite its underdog position, it drives innovation and value in the computer industry. No doubt if the positions were reversed AMD would be doing the same thing as Intel, in which case I would be a firm Intel supporter. It doesn't come down to what performs better, or what is the best price/performance option. It comes down to the fact that everyone gains from a healthy and innovative AMD, even Intel. Everyone should step back and truely look at how we got where we are with CPU's and Computers. Why must everything be based on the latest/greatest? Why does everyone flame the forums without looking at the entire picture. I support AMD because I like having a computer industry thats on fire, where everyone is pushing hard for the best product. I am disheartened by people who believe that AMD has failed. In my eyes AMD is a great success, how often does one company drive an entire industry as an underdog? Company's wide and far are signing the dotted line for x86-64 and Hypertransport. Why? Because AMD didn't disregard the years of development that went into x86 products when bringing a 64bit platform to the table. Without AMD, we as consumers would not see 64 bit chips in our computers for years. As it is, we'll have one this year (Clawhammer). Who knows if this will succeed or not as a platform? Who cares? AMD built the chip to scale well, run cool, be economicle to produce mainboards for, and run our current programs fast, and give us the option for the future. It doesn't matter if you use Intel, AMD, Via (C3), Transmeta or if you have a Mac. You are benefiting from AMD. That is why you should be a "Fanboy" of AMD.
I look forward to hearing your comments about his.
I look forward to hearing your comments about his.
<b><i>"A penny saved is a penny earned!"</i></b> 
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