Can AMD Still Compete in High-End Chips?
PC enthusiasts love competition–especially at the high end of the hardware spectrum. When a company launches a new flagship desktop CPU or graphics chip, we throw ourselves into the benchmarking minutiae, looking to see how it compares with its most current competitor. To us, this is fun. Of late, unfortunately, we haven’t had much to sink our teeth into. On the CPU side, AMD hasn’t had a competitive high-end product since Intel launched its Core 2 Duo processors in July 2006. In graphics, similarly, nVidia has enjoyed a stranglehold on the top spot for a long time, as AMD-owned ATI’s recent Radeon HD 2000 line launch did not produce a high-end competitor to nVidia’s GeForce 8800. AMD’s inability to push the envelope has had some people suggesting it has abandoned the enthusiasts who helped put it on the map so as to focus on the more lucrative mainstream. Clearly, AMD acquired ATI to better contend with Intel in mainstream markets, where vendors like to buy all-in-one packages that h
