This entire article discusses nothing. It's someone's opinion and that is all.
From what I read the entire sole backing factor of this is that the LGA775 socket has the locking cover over the CPU which means they dont come loose during transit.
Are you kidding me? That may be a GREAT feature, but how about the stupid 775 actual heatsinks? .... the four clips that go directly into the board and unless done properly can bend it etc.
Compare. AMD: Yes no clippable cover over the cpu but better heatsink mount then Intel. = Should not come loose during transit. Intel has no pins, AMD has pins (again makes the connection longer into the socket).
Moving onto performance, since when are AMD unreliable? ... Socket A series? ...... By todays market standard both are equal. Power vs Performance, AMD uses usually less then Intel, Intel uses slightly more but also had a bit more performance. Therefore both cpu's are fairly balanced.
Where I work, we built computers according to customers requirements. We actually used to sell 95% Intel, after 3 years we are now selling about 60% AMD, 40% INTEL. Intels are better for heavy duty stuff like video encoding, autocad etc. AMD's are better for everyday usage and for the price on the X2 6000 series, you cant beat the performance vs price factor for 90% of customers.
Now look at the i7's ..... they cain in peformance but also fail at scaling in game resolutions. AMD Phenom II, not as fast..... but faster in other ways.
Intel got fined because "they have money" .... they have "money" .... and thus can employee more people, give more away, charge more money.... they are a big company, with alot of market power. The point the EU's fine wasn't anything to do with AMD other then there were one of the complaining parties.
It's about how they used 'unhanded' tactics to deal with big business.
As for all the System Builders out there who winge at AMD and back Intel for their various reasons saying how Intel offers this and AMD doesn't.
1. Any company you turn your back on cannot help you
2. If everyone ignores AMD products are available how is AMD ever going to make enough money to make courtosy calls to resellers? give promossions etc.
3. OLD FUDDY DUDDIES/KNOW IT ALLS. So stuck in your ways you cannot take a step back and validate a product for what it can actually do.
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To top off this discussion. The entire article comparing reasons to use Intel and not AMD is actually pointless.
Reliability. Motherboards, Ram, Hard Drive, CDROM's, PSU are 99.9% more likely to go long before a CPU.
More examples:
1. ASUS P4S800MX, P4 3.0Ghz overtaxed the mobo, dead.
2. Use of seagate hdd's, fail. (.7 faster, .7 going to fail quicker)
3. Norton (any version) .... does it matter what CPU you have?
4. AMD Packaging vs Intel ? ... No difference.
5. Intel's FAN vs AMD's FAN = No difference.
6. Power consumption = virtually the same.
7. Performance Differences = Both CPU's offer surpreme performance each in their own area's over their competition cpu's.
8. Price. E8400 or X2 6000+. Performance vs Value = AMD
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At the end of the day, in my sole opinion. It's about what your customers require....
Once upon a time my boss used to be embarrased to sell AMD. He was always of the opinion everyone knows Intel, they have TV Ads.
Now he's neither here nor there. He's taken the approach of using us techs what to use for various applications. He realised the only problem that existed with selling AMD's wasn't AMD but his attitude towards their cpu's. We've found fewer problems with AMD setups with the 780G chipset compared to the Intel's with the G31, P31 & P45's etc.
AMD offer a platform, cpu, video, chipset....
Intels market share will fall either way, because their CPU's are too expensive for most.
I personally own a Phenom II Quad 3Ghz, 8GB RAM, RAID etc... the other tech at work owns a i7 2.66 clocked to 3ghz, same sort of setup. There is virtually no difference other then he had to goto a expensive x58 mobo, ddr3 and buy a exp cpu.
And compare his to mine, 780G chipset built for Blu-Ray, 12 usb ports. i have HDMI, DVI AND VGA on my mobo......
The winner ultimately is AMD for CPU choice. You buy Intel only for bragging rights..... but it doesn't mean it's going to be faster for everyday usage.
Sorry for the long post. Perhaps mine should of been the article huh.