And so it seems.

Market watcher Mercury Research said last night that Intel has pinched some 80.5 per cent of the X86 processor market so far this year, clawing back gains AMD had made over the previous twelve months.

And this came on top of the poor financial results the smaller firm posted earlier this month when it delivered a loss double the size of its expectations.

There has been much talk on our own Letters Pages about where it all went wrong for AMD and, undoubtedly, from the ballsy position hard-talking Hector had guided the firm into over recent years, it all seems to be going a bit Pete Tong.

And a wander down London's Tottenham Court Road yesterday served to underline the problems AMD now has to face. Yoyotech, for example, is an outlet catering for what we've come to term the "enthusiast" market. Its customers are well informed and their level of knowledge about exactly what they want to buy is startling.

These geeks and, indeed, geekettes have until recently been natural AMD buyers. Their choices, while based on wanting the best and fastest technology, have been geared towards AMD because of the exclusive cachet the firm has occupied. These customers got an added buzz from buying AMD because it also proves they're not following the crowd.

But over the past three months all that has changed. Yoyotech's MD, "CK", told us: "Here, it used to be all AMD. Say 80 per cent AMD and 20 per cent Intel. Now it's all going towards Intel. We had the store divided into AMD processors and Intel processors, and AMD motherboards and Intel motherboards. And the AMD sections were twice the size of Intel's. Now Intel's processor section is bigger than AMD's and we only have one section for motherboards and now that's labelled motherboards! It's changed totally," he said.

INQUIRER readers have complained that AMD prematurely dropped its 939 processors to move to AM2 and their complaints are echoed by CK. "These guys invested, say, £1000 in 939 boards and processors and what happened? AMD pulled it? They feel they've been left in the lurch."

The consequence is that AMD has been seen to have abandoned its core audience. You might argue, as in fact I'm about to, that the firm, in racking up some success, got too big for its Mexican-heeled boots and deserted those very customers on whom its success had been built. Forget the corporate space for the moment, where different parameters apply. In the high street and on the web, geeks were buying AMD and they were proud to do so. And now that's all changed.

And here we come to the killer blow. AMD salesfolk may have been dancing around their hot tubs when the mighty Dell seemed to crumble and signed on the dotted line to allow AMD chippery into its boxes. But there's been only one winner out of that relationship and that's Intel.

Some months down the line Dell has been swallowing AMD's inventory and those guys and geeks who were nipping down to places like Yoyotech to pick up their AMD kit find they can't get what they want. "I haven't known it like this for years," said CK. "We can get all the Intel chips we want. They're coming in as soon as we want them, yet, often, we can't get AMD for love nor money. "

Just at the point where Intel was gearing up a "better", faster technology which it could deliver in massive volumes and, indeed, at lower cost to itself, thanks to its smaller nano-footprint, Dell moved to swallow up all the chips fab-constricted AMD could churn out. Sure, Dell now ships AMD-powered boxes to its customers but AMD buyers weren't previously Dell buyers and their profile means that they still won't be.

AMD's core customers have indeed been left in the lurch and they're certainly not going struggle on with previous-generation kit just so they can keep an AMD sticker on their custom-made cases. They're going to buy Intel.

It's almost as if Intel and Dell, long-established buddies after all, cooked up the scheme on purpose. All it would have taken would be a medium-term view and a few nods and winks and AMD would be back where it's historically been, sniffing around picking up the scraps falling from its mighty rival's table. µ