Don't assume that if AMD had a single high benchmark part at the top of the stack that somehow it would increase revenue. The reality is that people buy the best product for their budget, they don't care about benchmarks on parts that they can't afford.
Answer this simple question:
If AMD had a part that beat the 990X by 50%, but cost $2000, would that make you more likely to buy a $300 AMD part if the equivalent $300 Intel part was 10% faster?
I you answer yes, then you are, well, I will be nice and not say it. If you answer no, then you are like 99.999% of the rest of the market. They buy the best part for their budget.
UNfortunately yes, I wouldn't but most people I know would, people are stupid and I think thats something AMD really doesn't factor in anywhere near enough
The Skoda analogy is apt, people are stupid, if Skoda and Ferrari got together to make a £30k car thats actually brilliant value, and they both sold them in a shop, almost no one would buy a Skoda version they'd buy the Ferrari branded one.
I didn't say it would make them revenue, and it would be cheap. Designing a 16 core Zambezi from the ground up, complete with quad channel memory controller, chipsets, mobo's, thats what I regard as "expensive", while having Asus/Gigabyte build a couple single slot boards, and putting the chips in them I most certainly regard as cheap, free, no, but you're talking magnitudes in cost away from designing the chip, you're basically repurposing an existing product.
While very few people buy 980x/990x, they do get bought, they might be pretty awful value, but people buy them. When flat out performance is required very few people choose AMD, and when it comes to buying a back up rig, or a gaming rig, or their parents computers they are indeed more likely to buy an Intel chip.
Lets say someone starts a thread today, they ask for the fastest chip available, everyone says a 2600k or a 990x, lets say its for something that is way faster on a hexcore than a new quad so they recommend the 990x.
100 other people view the thread, and read correct statements like, Intel simply can't match AMD, the statement is in reference to the fastest chip available, but those guys who read that want low end computers, but they've just read AMD aren't even close, thats what most of them go on, then they go and buy an intel chip or an intel rig without even looking up AMD options.
With regards to politely not calling me stupid, unfortunately, the naivety of AMD keeps hurting them(and my stock, though thanks to the market crash I'm up about 400% and counting
). The problem is, you're basing the entire thought process on everyone KNOWING how fast one chip is over another. That simply doesn't happen, people read Intel is faster, correctly, and they'll quite happily assume it holds as fact and never, ever look up AMD performance before buying their computer.
90% of people I know, friends, family, people at uni, people at school, people at work, none of them know anything about their computer except the pretty high numbers being higher or sounding better than their last computer. Every single one of them knows about "intel inside", most don't know what AMD chips are, how fast they are, or would go into any store asking to see AMD based computers.
The amount of people on EVERY SINGLE computing forum who have to be convinced AMD would offer a better rig for a given price(up to a point where at the moment they aren't very competitive) is astonishing.
From memory you're a server guy, who also posts on several enthusiast forums, go into a general PC store and ask them what questions customers ask them about computers, or go undercover and ask for recommendations.
SErver guys know their hardware and know exactly what they need, enthusiasts often know what they want but are often swayed by who has the faster chips available, the average user, the massive majority of the market, knows smeg all about anything.
The other issue is, server guys know how much performance they need, most home users, and enthusiasts DO NOT, people upgrade from old i7's to Sandys for gaming, and wonder why they don't get a performance increase in games and why using firefox is no faster. The general user is an idiot, and buys from a perspective of brand recognition and pricing, not actual value of what they are buying.
Nice consumption at rest, in the load it had such fame is not, but given the number of cores and capabilities, it could wait. Significantly increased memory bandwidth, the Sandy's but far from being, Bridge run is still leaps and bounds. CPU works great on my Gigabyte board, including Turbo! Support in the BIOS! The performance will not say anything .... I can not. Bye, bye ... info will gradually dropping ...
