Hurts people? Haha, that's funny, I highly doubt that, it takes alot to hurt my feelings and I'm pretty laid back as they come... Iit's just most people like myself have a problem with when I smell BS, it's kinda like smelling marketing schemes, they both usually stink.

Okay, I find this laughable:" the Athlon 64 is an inferior processor"??? If that is such the case then answer me these questions... Why doesn't Intel incorporate a on-die memory controller on the "Cores" that would give Intel's a major boost and totally overcome AMD in performance? Intel's complete marketing mentality of trying to keep thier bottom line on chipsets completely keeps them from doing it that's why! Why don't they update that relic of a memory system/FSB to the free, bandwidth superior solution and open design of Hypertransport??? Because again, thier marketing department RULES that company, they will never accept Hypertransport, conceding to thier arch-rival's solutions! They will go down in flames to produce thier own first!(as what has already happened once with CSI, it was originally planned for Tigerton but it got cancelled along with CSI and was pushed back to 2008!) Thier aging FSB can no longer hold a candle against the Hypertransport's bandwidth in Opterons setups in 4-way and especially 8-way. Why did Intel do a dual package processor instead of designing a true dual core processor from the start like AMD did with the K8? Becuase they got caught with their pants down again with the coming X2's and quickly sandwiched two Prescott cores into a flaming Pentium D so they can say ME TOO, ME TOO, WE'RE FIRST, WE'RE FIRST! There is a reason AMD is making HUGE strides in the server markets, desktop markets, eating into Intel's market share, gaining in stock price on the market and it's because of these FACTS.

While the Pentium M is a huge step forward for Intel compared to the dismal effort that was the Pentium 4, dressing up a Pentium 3(which was admitted by Intel's own people mind you) and give it some low power tweaks here and there with some performance enhancements does not equal what I consider a new "technology" or a "innovative" processor. Granted the same could be said of the Athlon 64 in some ways, but it's evolution is a huge step compared to it's predecessor the K7 thanks to the intergrated memory controller and hypertransport bus. IMHO Intel needs to start over from the ground up with a new microarchitecture if they want to regain thier previous "glory" period, but they know they don't have time to do it now, as AMD is on hot on thier heels marketwise. Perhaps in 2007 or 2008 they will finally get thier act together.

Contrary to yours and others opinions, AM2 will be far from a dud. The first benches were surprisingly done on Tom's Hardware(a well known lacky of Intel's Marketing department basically) with Tom admitting the motherboard was very cripped and with a engineering processor sample with obvious things still left to fix on it before production. Hardly a respectable measuring stick much less useful information reguarding it's performance at release date. FWIW, most benchmark programs are hardly anywhere relative of real world performance,(much less the roof it's done under)it's something I do actually care about when it comes to any kind of benchmark, anything else not independently done by a unbiased review site is worthless IMHO. So far we have yet to see the real numbers. Also, if you think AMD is just releasing this as a "stopgap" for DDR2 will also be horridly mistaken, alot can be tweaked between now and the date of release to gain performance, the 90nm shrinked Venice/San Diego core socket 939/754 processors are a testament to that. So if you think for two seconds AMD is going to let out a chip that will be inferior to it's predecessors, much less it's competition, I have some lovely beachfront property to sell you in Nevada.

About AMD's manufacturing capacity, FAB 36 has gone online as of this year producing 90nm and later on at 65nm. FAB 30 is still online cranking along with a deal with Charter that AMD signed last year to help keep up any unexpected peak in demand. Something most people don't realize either about AMD's fabs, they are some of the most advanced in the world with far higher rate of working silicon in comparison to most FABs due to the methods of thier tooling and very advanced machinery. This allows them to shift a process (like what happened with 130 to 90 nm) without shutting down the FAB and allowing for continued production even with high yields, something that surprisingly Intel has yet to learn how to do with thier many fabs. This is a big reason for alot of the increased Dell rumors this year and another reason AMD is making alot of big wins and deals with retailers/corporations since last year.

So in short, yes, AMD and both Intel will survive, that is without a doubt. But Intel's dubious claims as is your fool hearty views are yet to be proven in the real world experience. Thanks to Intel's continuing enviroment they promote within thier company's politics of letting thier marketing lead them, as opposed to AMD's ideals of letting the engineering team lead them, I surmise that things will be no different from this year than they were last year. Expect to see Intel loose more market share again this year and some people get surprised when the "Cores" aren't all that and a bag of chips when the AM2/F1/S1 sockets are released and in the wild. Thanks to Intel's long history of doing all it can to establish it's own monopoly within the semi-conductor industry and seeking to destroy all it's opposition in the market, along with it's legions of rabid fanboys touting them as the 2nd coming of Christ over the years, I can't say Intel didn't have it coming to them this time. They've been king of the hill too long and had it far too good at the expense of their peers in the market, people are now waking up and realizing this.(the recent anti-trust lawsuit against Intel has really made this aware too) Times are changing. IMHO it's time Intel stepped aside, end thier fruitless escapade of crooked monopoly practices and lackluster technology so more scrupulous, inventive, ingenious people in innovative companies can lead the way in the market, not just AMD.

Lou,

You are clearly biased, whereas I am not. I have owned AMD stock before many of the people here even knew what the company was, and still have a nice collection of antique AMD processors. Your weird remarks about the Pentium III are either ill-informed or made to confuse, since the Athlon is nothing more than a badly designed Pentium III, if you want to take a high level view.

The reality is, the Pentium III was arguably the best processor made. AMD knew it, Intel didn't, and now they do. The Athlon is almost completely without innovation, as is the Athlon 64; they are very closely Pentium III offshoots. That the Pentium M is, and the Merom is to some degree simply point to the obvious fact that x86 design has hit a mature stage and a Pentium III type of architecture is what works. The Pentium 4 tried to be radically different, and failed. The Merom will be more different, particularly with the extra integer pipeline, but it's really very similar just a bit better. So, they all vary in the details, but from a high level view they aren't very different at all. Certainly the Merom is no closer to the Pentium III than the Athlon 64, which is limited to three pipelines like the Pentium III.

So, I don't view that as a bad thing at all. The Pentium III is still the processor I use in most of my servers, because basically the Athlon/64 and Pentium 4 suck. The Athlon not so bad, but it's still poor when it comes to efficiency, although both have gotten a lot better recently.

A lot of uninformed people think the on-die memory controller is a clear choice and is quite innovative. It's neither, it has important trade-offs and has been done many times before. Even in the x86 world this is true, with the NexGen 5x86 being made with a on-die memory controller. Prior to that, there were computers on a chip, with even the memory on the processor. It is nothing new. In terms of tradeoffs, think about a video solution that needs memory. This has to actually go to the processor for the memory controller, which is really quite poor for a number of reasons. Of course, cost is worse too, because if the memory controller is bad, the whole thing has to be thrown away, not just that part. Heat dissipation for the processor is higher too, from the extra transistors. Now, if we used those transistors for something else, say, cache, how would that help the performance? How about reacting to changes in memory design. AMD still hasn't created a DDR2 processor, that's waiting until June. Intel has been there for quite a while. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying an on-die controller is overall bad, I am only pointing out it's not all good. I'm of the opinion it is more good than bad, but it's easy to see why not everyone does it. Also keep in mind, even without the on-die memory controller, the Pentium M generally outperforms the Athlon 64, clock normalized, in integer. At the very least they are equal.

With regards to the AM2 socket, I mentioned the performance would improve, but the fact is, it won't be much better than what is currently available, if it is at all. This isn't new technology and AMD has had a long time to work with it. It probably isn't even about performance, but more about logistics. The industry is moving in that direction and also DDR2 modules use less power and are generally easier to get in large memory configurations. So, not only did you misrepresent what I said, but even without it, you're on shaky ground. If you think it'll be a major leap in performance, you're better off keeping that ocean front (not beach, as you could have a lake, for example, the Salt Lake, with a beach) property in Nevada.

If you're not easily excited, why the overuse of exclamation points and triple quotes?

Your remarks about AMD fabs is absurd. They are lagging badly behind Intel in manufacturing technology, a fact even AMD admits. They discard the importance of it by saying the design innovation is more important, which is simply nonsense but they have nothing better to say. The fact is, the Pressler is somewhat competitive now despite being a really sucky design because of Intel's vastly superior manufacturing capability. Intel is already producing silicon on 45 nm too. You know, you should take AMD's perspective and simply discard it as unimportant, even though it is, rather than sound completely ridiculous by implying AMD is better at it. It just comes off as uninformed and biased.

Your closing paragraph further dilutes any points you make. You sound insane and totally biased. A little history for you, Intel made the first microprocessor. IBM chose Intel for their first PC. AMD has lived parasitically off of Intel's designs and instruction sets almost its entire existence. AMD whines and moans and litigates to try to stop Intel, instead of just shutting up and beating them in the marketplace (which we've seen they can do, at least at times). Intel has created some of the worst processor and instruction sets ever made, but has also created a lot of innovations. For sure, they would be overpricing processors big time were it not for AMD, and luckily AMD is around to keep them in check. But, forget that absolutely stupid diatribe about how Intel is evil and non-innovative and AMD is some saintly company. It's childish and naive. AMD doesn't innovate much at all, Intel does. The Itanium and Pentium 4 are far more innovative than anything AMD could make. It's not about bad innovation though, which Intel does a lot of, but using what works and what is known in successful ways. That's what AMD has done. Hypertransport is nothing new, this type of technology has existed for a long time. It works well though. Trace caches are very innovative, double-pumped ALUs the same. They were in a processor that didn't work though, so how much value did they really have? The Itanium is much more advanced than the Athlon 64, but is it better? Certainly in floating point, and maybe in the future it will show something in integer, but overall, I think most people would say no. So, forget that innovation nonsense, AMD doesn't represent it. Intel does. It doesn't necessarily mean a better processor though.

I think you know the Merom is going to be better, it is already becoming common knowledge on the net, and you can be sure that people have the silicon now. You are panicking, because you know with each passing day, it gets closer, and your beloved AMD has no answer for it right now. You hear the footsteps get louder and louder, and there is no escaping it. The big, evil, slow footed Intel is about to step on the AMD cockroach and this frightens you terribly. The Merom is coming, the Merom is coming, and the world is coming to an end. AGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!