Sounds to me like someone is ‘in bed’ with Intel. That or they just broke up with AMD. Hey Joe, don’t let your personal life interfere with your reporting.

AMD has been the underdog before. They’ve made a few mistakes and have learned from them. I personally prefer AMD chips over Intel any day. I know they’re not the absolute fastest thing around, but for the price, who cares? Plus it seems to be easier to put AMD systems together because although there are plenty of options for components, there isn’t a bazillion different choices like for Intel systems.

I once tried to spec out an Intel Core 2 Duo system on Newegg, and I quickly got lost in the maze of parts. And as I wandered around trying to find good combinations of parts, I realized that the price was not looking favorable and quickly shifted gear back to an Athlon 64 X2 system.

I don’t know if the ATI merger is a good thing or not, and personally I don’t really care much about it because I will take nVidia (motherboard and graphic card chipsets both) over ATI any day. Always have, probably always will. However, I do know that it is WAAAAAAAAAAY too early to make any intelligent claim about the effect it is having on AMD. Two companies don’t just merge together instantly and hit the ground running.

My company recently went through a merger process of a much smaller scale than AMD/ATI, and it took over a year for the dust to settle. Even now, more than a year and a half later, the finer details are still being worked out. Honestly, give it half a chance, and I bet AMD will get back in the ring again and put up yet another good fight. And if nothing else, it’s always more fun to cheer on the underdog. Remember, if we lose AMD, Intel will reign supreme, and chip prices will go through the roof due to a monopolistic stranglehold.