AMD's problem isn't performance-per-$. It's performance-per-watt (on servers and laptops), and overall a huge die size disadvantage (315mm^2 vs 160mm^2) that makes it difficult to profit.

And there is no foreseeable way for AMD to catch up on these metrics.

By all means if it's tested faster than the same priced Intel CPU in the game you want to play then buy it, just don't expect them to be solvent for much longer.

That would mean leveling the 6-core 12 threaded Intel CPU then. I am pretty sure most PC enthusiasts would switch if AMD made a 6-core 12 threaded CPU with greater single core performance since it would automatically make it faster than the fastest Intel CPU. If you are saying you need 2 more cores and faster per core performance, that means you won't switch unless AMD is at least 33% faster at the same price? (8 faster cores vs. 6 slower cores?)

Regarding those benchmarks, it really depends on the game as you said. If someone's budget is only $500 for the GPU and CPU, it's way better to get an FX8320 ($170) + HD7970 ($360) than to buy a Core i7 3770K ($325) and a GTX660 ($200). For most gamers though i5 3570K @ 4.5ghz is probably an ideal sweet spot between performance, price, future proofing and power consumption.

Ever since I joined VGChartz, I've only see you post how AMD is near bankruptcy and that it's basically inevitable. I mean if you are that confident, you must be shorting their stock or buying puts, or are just an Intel/NV shareholder? Regardless, what does AMD's solvency have anything to do with comparing products consumers will buy? When was the last time you had a CPU fail on you?

FX8320-8350 for $170-200 are actually superior to Core i5 3570K for CPU-intensive work. To get more performance you'd have to get a more expensive 3820/3770K.

For gaming, i5/i7s are still better.

The biggest issues is power consumption in overclocked states.

System power at load

i7 3770K @ 4.8ghz = 244W

i5 3570K @ 5.0ghz = 267W

FX8350 @ 4.8ghz = 364W

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/11/06/amd-fx-8350-review/7

For someone who does a lot of work on the PC and some gaming and doesn't overclock, FX8320-8350 is actually superior to the i5s.

CPU Charts 2012: 86 Processors From AMD And Intel, Tested

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-performance-comparison,3370.html

Here is a more realistic test for PC enthusiasts:

Core i5 3570K $225 @ 4.8ghz + HD7970GE (and in Crossfire x2) vs. FX8350 $195 @ 4.8ghz + HD7970GE (and in Crossfire x2):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HGpFoeubEU

CineBench 11.5 multi-threaded CPU rendering = 7.63 vs 8.26

Unigine Heaven 3.0 = 47 fps (92.9 fps) vs. 47.3 fps (92.5 fps)

Battlefield 3 = Both tied at roughly 160 fps in Crossfire (Single results I excluded since they seem way too high for the FX8350 leading me to believe it's an error)

Dirt Showdown = 89.23 fps (125.54 fps) vs. 100.79 fps (110.33 fps)

F1 2012 = 90 fps (79 fps) vs. 88 fps (78 fps)

Max Payne 3 = 85 fps (100fps ) vs. 80 fps (85 fps)

Sleeping Dogs = 49.3 fps (98.6 fps) vs. 45.8 fps (89.6 fps)

Other than power consumption, the performance is pretty close. 

Of course. Because anything else would be a side-grade/down-grade.

I am MORE than happy to spend $1,000 on a processor if it means I'll get tangible improvements, AMD doesn't release such a chip, they don't get my cash.
(And mark my words, I have had plenty of AMD processors since the K6-2 when they hit the right price/performance.)

It would be utterly stupid of me to downgrade to an AMD FX when I'm pretty much at the top of the performance stack CPU-wise anyway.
Heck, I probably won't upgrade to Ivy-Bridge-E unless Intel throws a couple more cores at it, I don't see the point spending another $600 - $1,000 on a processor for a 2-10% performance increase when I could drop in another GPU for less and overclock my CPU harder.

In the mobile sector, AMD's performance per watt is actually rather competitive because of the resonent clock mesh found in AMD trinity which allows it to scale in clockspeed rather well whilst keeping the power consumption down, with Llano you may have been right.
As for servers, AMD is answering that segment with ARM based chips, but they could also use Kabini or Brazos for that too. (There is a reason why AMD bought Seamicro after all!)

Besides, AMD would rather sell you a "good enough" processor and a really really awesome IGP that can actually play games and has far superior graphics drivers to that of Intel.

You also forget that in general a GPU is far far far better at floating point calculations than a CPU is, so if/when HSA kicks off and the GPU unloads some of the CPU functions those "crap" AMD processors will suddenly start to fly, we are probably a fair way off from that future though, but it is getting closer as GPU's get more and more programmable and get closer to the CPU cores on-die.

Don't let the blind faith in Intel fool you, both of these companies only give a crap about one thing. - That is to get your money via the means of selling you products for as much money as possible, they won't send you flowers and cake as a "thank you".

If you the BEST possible single-threaded performance regardless of how cheap or expensive the processor is, go Intel.

If you want the BEST IGP or you want it cheap and provides "good enough" performance then AMD is the answer.

Sorry, I misunderstood where you were coming from. Of course since you already have a 6-core/12T CPU, it would only make sense to upgrade based on what you described. I thought you meant you'd only consider an AMD processor if it was faster than an Intel equivalent at the same price by at least 33% for your next purchase. In other words if there is a 6 core Haswell and a 6-core Streamroller, assuming the Steamroller was faster per core (which I doubt anyway),  you'd still need 2 extra cores just to leave Intel. My bad, I misunderstood your post. Even IVB-E doesn't sound like a good upgrade for you. Actually with 3x 7970s, a 5.5ghz i7 quad Haswell would be better than a 6-core IVB-E. There are almost no games that would work faster on a 6-core Intel than a faster clocked, higher IPC quad-core Intel CPU with HT. Maybe we'll get there at some point but I invision the exact situation of Haswell vs. IVB-E that happened with of i7 2600K vs. i7-990X. 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i7-2600k-990x_9.html#sect2

I can't see games suddenly using 8 threads in the next 2 years. I see no reason at all for IVB-E for gaming even if Intel makes it an 8- core offering. But if you use your CPU for things while gaming or other than games, more cores sounds nice :)

For a budget freindly build AMD definitely have some compelling options. Is streaming really something a lot of people do tho?

@BlueFalcon

I like AMD and wish they were competitive. If you look 'before' you joined VGChartz you'd see threads where I recommended their CPUs. But I am a realist. And I'm not saying anything about whether you should buy it.

@Permalite

Trinity is not competitive on pure CPU perf/watt. When you consider the GPU and assuming you would be taking advantage of it then yes. AMD's graphics are still ahead of Intel's.

ARM chips will not work out for them, because they aren't customising the core so they'll be selling the same or worse as what everyone else with more experience is selling.

I dimiss GPU compute out of hand. I believe it will never be relevant no matter its theoretical strenghts. HSA is the latest in a series of failed AMD initiatives along these lines -> Close To Metal, Torrenza, the R6xx tesselator.

Don't mistake me for an Intel fan. Their recent execution has been good but I desire a competitive market and some of their business practices remain questionable (MDF, ICC)

I think in reality the market AMD is good for (people who want some graphics performance but not enough to justify a discrete card) is very small.

@Soleron
I do understand your concern for performance per watt and while it would be great if AMD could lower their CPU TDP, to me it really makes no difference. I live in a condo where my electricity is included in the maintenance fees I pay every month. Once we consider that they are still using 32 nm, there is definitely room to for improvement even with existing architecture by shrinking the CPU die.

@rest
There were a lot of good posts in here. I sense there is a level of hesitation when it comes to enthusiasts and AMD in general and I do think it's justified. AMD should take some of that blame for all the talk they did before Bulldozer came out which came out overpriced and didn't deliver what they promised. However at current price points (I see the FX 8350 for as low as $169) I think they offer very competitive value compared to Intel. Once you consider that the type of CPU benchmarks we see on tech sites do not represent actual computer usage for most people and are very skewed to a single threaded performance, AMD's new FX chips starts to look pretty sweet. I for one don't want to have to think about closing every program I am running before playing a game of Crysis 2.

Another thing...

As and enthusiast and overclocker, I really enjoy playing with AMDs Phenom and FX series way more than Intels Bloomfield and Ivy Bridge. Overclocking Intel's offerings is a very sterile process which allows a user to overclock everything very easily. I understand someone that is a novice to overclocking liking this approach but I was done pushing the 3570k in less than hour. Boost multiplier, adjust vcore, select XMP for memory and done...

On the AMD side, things aren't as clear cut and there are more factors which can impact performance. I still play with my FX CPU from time to time a good 6 months after purchase, in trying to find that sweetspot. When I have some time I will try and disable 4 cores on the FX 8120, making it a quadcore which apparently reduces L2 latency as well as allows for up to 5.5 ghz overclocks. Let's see if it can beat intel on single threaded performance at max overclocks...

So to sum up my point...if you are a true enthusiast, I really believe that AMD platform offers a better tinkering experience.

The thing is AMD hasn't been competitive on the high end since at least 2006. If you were a PC gamer and cared about gaming performance and performance/watt in stock or overclocked states, there was no AMD CPU worth buying since Core 2 Duo launched. A realist would have realized once AMD went fabless, there was no way for them to ever catch up to Intel unless Intel made a mistake. What would happen if AMD's GPU division had to use 40nm HD7000 series against 28nm Kepler? They'd get smoked. The actual FX8350 design is good for MT tasks, but what fails it the most is the 32nm node. If AMD manages to improve IPC by 20-30% with Steamroller and shifts to lower nodes, they can make up a lot of lost performance. Essentially the upside for AMD is there but only if they can execute it.

Regarding APUs, I am not sure why you think they are irrelevant. The main reasons they are irrelevant now are the same reasons Vishera/Bulldozer are struggling - higher power consumption for OEMs/laptops which resulted in few AMD design wins and terrible marketing on AMD's part to the avg consumer. Most of the sales of PCs/Laptops are going to be APUs and SOCs in the next decade. It won't be $225+ i5s, FX8000 and i7s.

By far the vast majority of systems (Value and Mainstream) are buil5 with i3/A6-A8 products, with Intel obviously dominating. Less than 10% of notebooks and less than 6% of desktops sell higher end 8-core FX8300 or 4-core i5/i7 systems:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20121108145442_High_End_Personal_Computers_Account_for_Less_Than_10_of_PC_Market_Report.html

The overall market of performance PCs/laptops is tiny but PC enthusiasts tend to think it's much larger than it is.

If AMD improves the CPU performance of their APUs further and continues ramping up their GPU performance, with lower nodes they should be able to get the power consumption down to acceptable levels.  Trinity APU stop-gap Richland A10-6800K and especially Kaveri expected to launch by Q4 2013 will once again make AMD's APUs superior for budget gaming builds. The problem is the average consumer doesn't understand this.

The average person is the type who'll buy a Core i3 laptop/desktop and play basic games like Minecraft or something similar, exact cases where Intel CPUs are garbage in this price point.

The average consumer seems to care more about 10-20% CPU speed difference than 2-3x GPU speed difference for games they are actually most likely to play on their laptops. I mean Starcraft 2 is an absolute joke on i3/i5s, which is what Intel would sell at a similar price.

The irony is only top 10% of consumers would be better off with an Intel-based system. The average consumer would be way better off with an AMD-based system and an SSD for the same price it costs just to get an i5 with a mechanical drive. Think about it what type of tasks families might do on their PC? Recording videos of their kids at birthday parties and then encoding it, etc. Opening word documents for basic things, browsing the web with multiple tabs in the browser, viewing high resolution images from their digital camera/DSLR. In these cases a CPU with more cores and a snappy SSD would provide a superior performance to these users than an i3/i5 with a mechanical drive.

The only 2 reasons I personally keep buying Intel CPUs is because I overclock to the max where power consumption grows exponentially and I am a gamer where IPC is more important than # of cores. If I wasn't a gamer, I'd never spend extra $ on the Intel CPU since an APU+SSD, FX6300+SDD, or FX8300+SSD would be better for every day tasks 90% of the time compared to similarly priced i3/i5/i7+mechanical drive that would roughly cost the same due to Intel's pricing premium. The average consumer doesn't understand these things. They still think the CPU is the most important component in a system when it's the SSD and the GPU that will have the most impact for these 90% of users. 

Those Trinity game benchmarks would have been even better had AnandTech OCd the RAM to 1866 or 2133. There have been many sites pointing out that since APU uses RAM for GPU memory, overclocking it to 1866 gives the GPU up to 10% better performance compared to 1600.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2106/6/