How is this more competition? AMD is going to release more processors based on a bad design, and this going to make life more difficult for Intel?
The i7 ass-rapes anything AMD can produce, and there's really no way for AMD to compete. It's not just better, it's so much better, and it's not even any bigger. AMD has a seriously bad design on their hands, so more iterations of this bad design are not going to really cause Intel to lose sleep. AMD will get the crumbs Intel does not want, like a scavenging dog hiding under the table hoping something will fall.
When the i5 is released, and moves downstream, AMD will have to move even lower on the food chain. They should stop trying to compete against the Nehalem, for the simple reason they can't.
I'd like to see them put some real effort in dual cores, real dual cores, not sodomized quad-cores that are too expensive to sell profitably as a dual-core. Although a PoS design, the Phenom II comes closer to the Penryn than it does the Nehalem, and with a big cache, and some high clock speeds, they might eek out an existence there until they can come out with the Bulldozer, which hopefully can compete in a meaningful way.
They should try to win market share where the processor doesn't matter. Where the processor is important, Intel will win because it's much better. Much better. But, if they can make the processors cheap enough, they can still sell them cheap enough and make money. They also make good integrated graphics platforms, so that gives them a real advantage over Intel in the platform. But, really, they should forget about performance and focus on cheap right now. When the Bulldozer comes, then move back up. With the pathetic Phenom II, it's just not going to work. It's amazing it's the same size as the i7, and gets destroyed by it by such a wide margin. It's shameful.