The nattering negativism of this piece, particularly the title, leads me to believe that the author is on the Intel payroll in effect if not fact, and likely owns a chunk of Intel stock. What is the point of publishing this? Are you trying to drive down AMDs stock price, sap their research and development budget, and ultimately drive them out of business? AMD is probably the only company preventing Intel from becoming the Microsoft of hardware. Do we need another monopoly? I think not. You should be encouraging competition, not disparaging it!

"Dollar for dollar is the Intel setup better?"

Why yes, it is.

AMD has had to cut its prices in order to compete with the thorough performance drubbing Intel inflicted upon them. Prices for "comparable" chips from each manufacturer are within just a few dollars. The only problem is that the higher-priced chip "equivalents" from AMD suffer an even greater loss in performance in comparison with the Intel chip they are trying to compete against. The fact that AMD lowered their pricing drastically accomplishes little (or nothing), unless you're counting the hard-core AMD enthusiasts who are loathe to switch out of sheer stubborness (actual price/performance ratios "be damned").

Here's a link to thorough testing from The Tech Report where they put the lineup from each manufacturer against each other:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q1/cpus/index.x?pg=1

Their final (inescapeable) conclusion?

"The fact that Intel retains the overall performance crown comes as no surprise. As we said at the outset, AMD has no real answer to the Core 2 Extreme X6800 among its dual-core processors."

As a gamer, I will use a CPU from whichever manufacturer gives me the best edge at a good price. AMD used to hold that honor.

I'd be very surprised if desktop hard drives only gained 4tb space in 6 years. I'd guess more like 15-20tb drives in 2013

We'd better hope AMD doesn't die. If AMD hadn't provided Intel some competition, we'd still be running Pentium IIIs. Competition breeds advances and without AMD chips, advances will languish. When I had a Pentium 300, I remember being told by a person with inside information that Intel had a 1 GH chip ready, but they were biding their time, introducing slower chips to encourage sales both now and when they finally introduced the 1 GH chip. If there had been competition then, Intel wouldn't have been stalling. I don't ever want those days back. I'm buying AMD, not because it may be absolutely the best processor, but because without them Intel's introductions will grind to a halt.

I am sorry to say that anything amd puts out is the generic form of the product. Intel has always put out a Premium product and is outpacing amd in just about every category. You can hope for the best but as for me I will never get burned by that amd cheap juck again. My home and work network will be Intel based as long as I am the Network Administrator.