ssj12 said:
the Core i7 920 isnt expensive at all.. heck it very competitively priced vs AMD's best. Still even the Core i7 965 dropped in price a bit. Plus there are still Core 2s that destroy AMD's Phenom II range in the same price range. Still AMD doesnt need x86. They could switch sockets to ARM. Their Geode processors already support it. It is just that Microsoft doesnt support ARM with the main Windows OS so Windows will need a new version inorder to work. Windows Mobile works on ARM though... |
I said "Source: Intel" for a reason. Even though the Core i7 920 is only ~$270, Intel only expects 1% of CPUs this year to be Core i7. That second statement is plainly false. The X4 940 is slightly faster and more expensive than the Q9400; same with the X4 920 and the Q8200; and the X3 720 destroys the E8400 at a similar price.
AMD does need x86; not even Intel with all its market power has managed to successfully switch architectures (remember Itanium?). AMD don't have the market power to make the change to an ARM version of Windows because it would break compatibility with all current programs. Plus AMD would lose the R&D on their entire processor line and have to rearchitect from scratch for eventual weaker performance (Geode is EOL for a reason). That would take maybe 3-4 years and be competitive... with the Pentium 4. Meanwhile they could not sell a single chip (as Geode is dead).
No, AMD losing x86 would destroy them.
