[citation][nom]de5_roy[/nom]since amd hasn't been able to provide much (if any) competition for intel in the cpu field lately, so why not intel vs arm? anyone who forces intel to compete and drop prices is welcome as long as users win.[/citation]
While i agree that competition IS a good thing for us users... I have to disagree with the first part of your statement. APU's are gobbling up the market from Intel, ( at least they are in my country - DK, btw.) so i'd say AMD is pretty competitive ATM.
Right, they
didn't do a good job at BD. SB ate it completely. But that is only the ever-so-shrinking desktop market.
For laptops, which are on the rise, AMD's APU's are much more attractive, since they are so cheap - adn they get the job done.
Sure, their CPU power is weaker than the SB - by a mile - but buying a laptop with a weaker CPU, but a decent/good GPU versus buying the SB with a strong CPU, but a crap GPU...The choice should be quite easy to make.
So - right, don't start the: "But you can buy the SB paired with another GPU in a laptop"...That's not really attractive for the average joe, because of the
even higher price.
If you are gaming on a laptop, (NOTE: YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!
) then sure, go ahead.
But that is
such a small niché.
No, AMD have done a good job by exploiting Intels weakness right there - and as a little bonus, they also hit nVidia at the same time.
Cheap APU's, which can multitask and play HD-content and smaller games for the average joe.