Of course they game the money. AMD continuously had the better CPU solution during this period. It was more performant, cooler and cheaper. Why wouldn't the world's greatest PC manufacturer use them? Especially between the Athlon64 launch when Intel was dwarfed by AMD's CPUs and the beginning of 2007 when the Core 2 Duo shipments ramped up.

I was perpetually amazed that AMD had the BEST CPU out there for 1 year, then 2 years, then 3 years ... but they never gained serious market share. If ATi would have the better GPU, the balance would immediately change in its favor from 40 / 60 to 60 / 40 . This never happened with Intel and AMD .