[citation][nom]shqtth[/nom]Please oh Please oh Please someone fire that AMD ceo already. He is nothing but bad news for the company, and hes been screwing things up since he started.AMD could of easily caught up, especially when they sold GF off and with that 1 billion from intel, but that money magically disappeared.AND With the FX launch, he didn't have plan B. (faster clock Phenom II)Also since AMD decided to not make high end parts, they lost touch with the enthusiasts, and they need those people as they are the people who recommend AMD to other people. Call them the sales people.Anyways, AMD, if you want to go screw yourself, then please separate yourself from ATI, I want my canadian company back. The CEO and AMD can go F themselves together with the billions in stockpile, but give ATI back at least before you ruin it too.I think the CEO of AMD must hang out with his fellow friends at the board of HP, as both seem to be equally retarded.[/citation]
Plenty of wrong with this, unfortunately.
For a start, you can only truly judge a strategy once it's panned out. Looking at it midway through without knowledge of what RR is trying to achieve will obviously lead to people drawing the wrong conclusions. Some say those engineers were the company's life blood - what if they weren't? It's like sacking a football (soccer) manager after a few games because the team aren't performing - you give the manager time to bring in his ideas and attempt to make things work.
AMD had to pay to get out of contract with GF. They still are paying, and they still will be for the forseeable future.
A faster clocked Phenom II wouldn't have been the right idea, either. If you've made an architectural choice, you stick with it. Phenom II is old, in ways it's inefficient, and it lacks modern ISA support. K8 really needed to die a death after a long period of service; it was great against the Pentium 4, but you always needed core-count-plus-1 or a higher clock speed to match/beat Core 2 (Penryn). Expensive.
Enthusiast sales are all well and good, but they do make up a fraction of AMD's actual sales. What might do AMD more good is to ignore the mid- and high-end desktop market altogether - focus on server and mobile APU. Considering the A10-4600M is approximately two-thirds the performance of the A10-5800K for a third of the power, you can see why APUs belong more to mobile devices. AMD is also supposed to be readying its Jaguar APUs, the lower end of which could do well in perfornance tablets and even Ultrathins/Sleekbooks if they chose to throw them in there. If AMD spreads themselves too thinly they won't have enough product available for next-gen consoles, and they have had a hefty presence in that market.
Finally, your comments regarding ATi - has AMD at any point made their graphics division less competitive?