[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]I hate to say this but, if AMD did not catch up in1-2yrs, which they are admmiting themselves that they are not completing with Intel. At this kind of rate Intel move, AMD main core business will be GPU, not CPU anymore.[/citation]
I think it's important to look at the bigger picture though. CPU speeds have vastly exceeded what any average user needs. By a huge amount. But at the same time, CPU speeds alone can't net what things like GPGPU computing can (in terms of performance). In theory, the APU is a great introduction--it will (hopefully) encourage software producers to adopt the hybrid hardware package and implement things like OpenCL in a much wider form than currently.
Other than that, the APUs are fine. Not bleeding edge performance, but so few people need that, and it's not even priced to be bleeding edge.
Intel has made significant gains with the HD4K chipset, but unless you're buying a higher end IB CPU, most mid-range IB CPUs will be getting the HD2500 (IIRC--like the i3's and some i5's, I think...). Kinda defeats the purpose since most people who buy high-end CPUs will also be doing graphically-demanding tasks (most--of course not all).
This financial forecast is...a handjob from the analyst to intel. AMD might have missed some financials, but they're making progress. And even being a hardware enthusiast, I have to side with AMD--the desktop market is slowly dwindling. Why bother making huge R&D investments to win the CPU clock performance battle if few-to-none of the consumers really care?