Back in 2003, when AMD released the Athlon64 to retail, there were promises that with 64-bit processor capability, those systems purchased then would have clear 'headroom' future-proofing advantages over the 32-bit only processors that Intel was marketing. AMD never told the retail public that you needed a 64-bit OS and 64-bit re-compiled applications to make all those promises of future-proofing come true - or it was lost in the fine print.

What happened? Joe Public heard from Joe Best Buy that the 64-bit computers were clearly superior precisely because they were 64-bit. A lot of this was hyped up by AMD marketers and many sites (I'm looking at you Tom's) bought the message hook, line and sinker. The whole 64-bit message actually pressured Intel to add 64-bit extensions to their P4 processors, wasting valuable real estate, just to combat AMD PR. Even after Intel released 64-bit enabled processors, claims were made that they were not "true" 64 bit, even though Intel pretty much (totally legally) copied AMD64 (at the request of Microsoft as M$ did not want 2 separate 64-bit processor archs to optimize code).

AMD sold better in 2003-2005 in retail partially due to shading the truth about 64-bit.

And really, AMD's marketing made all computer users pay higher prices for processors as there was a significant chunk of real estate that 64-bit extensions took up that was totally unnecessary on the vast bulk of processors sold. AMD knew full well the bulk of the computers would go to landfills with their 64-bit circuits never ever firing. And they laughed all the way to the bank.

How's that for an anti-AMD rant? Still think AMD is the noble underdog?

Dang, but the economy is bad everywhere, not just for AMD. The new Phenoms seem good and I've seen the new 9850BE hit 3.5Ghz! So not to bad oc. Just another quick question. What about all the money made from making the ATI GPU in the 360. Those are still selling strong. Also the chipsets seem to be good, it's just the proc. division not doing amazing.

Ruiz should be included in the 10%, but he probably won't be. Tool.

AMD made a gross profit of .785 BILLION in Q4'08, which is 44% of sales.

Ok, the bad news is their overhead was 90 million higher.

So, cutting 1600 heads should put AMD squarely back in the black, while still selling for 1/2 the average selling price of Intel.

This was an important step for AMD. I'm not sure what Intels next plan is - settle?

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