Interesting thoughts. And almost no posts of "Intel is just the best. AMD sucks". I must say, actual reasons and logic behind posts on a message board, it's kind of a new thing to experience :Þ
A common thread on that board and something that I've heard a lot of is that people are very happy with Intel chips on Intel chipsets (and conversely, stay away from the nforce boards for Intel chips). I've personally had some interesting results comparing SiS vs Intel chipsets from the same mobo manufacturer (very different stability with all components the same).
My point is this - will AMD break into the chipset market with their new fab? Although their funny lawsuit and actions seem to indicate they want more market share in processors, providing matching chipsets is already helping Intel and probably could help AMD as well (Intel is barely able to keep up with chipset demand). Could the new AMD factory be a home for new processors, with the older fabs being used for chipset? AMD seems to have enough of a raw processor power/benchmark lead to back off there and focus more efforts on chipsets (resulting in still better performance and better stability, while increasing revenue). I really haven't seen any hints at this in articles, I wonder if this is even being considered. Nforce is great for AMD, but could AMD do better themselves? I would think so! It would certainly take the wind out of Intel's "We're a whole platform company...just buy everything from us, it's really easy" strategy. Thoughts?
I'm just your average habitual smiler =D