onlyaman said "See what happen when there is no competition. AMD we need some imba CPU to compete with i7"

The way i see it is that AMD needs a new architecture to compete with Intel's newest line up, but i don't see that happening. The second possibility is they make major improvements to the current P2's, but i don't expect that either, we will likely see only small improvements. These two situations represent the best case scenario for AMD.

Here is what i expect will happen over the next 1.5 years. When Intel's 32nm chips come out, they will gain on AMD, pushing AMD into the "discount CPU market", it will be similar to the situation before the Phenom 2's were released (but not as bad), where the 6000+ was one of their best chips for < $100. How bad it actually gets for AMD depends completely on Intel, they may not be able to push prices down that much, or may not want to.

Then, if all goes well for AMD they will release their 28nm CPU's roughly 1 - 1.5 years from now. Note that this means they are skipping 32nm to move half a node size smaller to 28nm putting them ahead of Intel. By then we would all hope that they would have a new architecture (in the past 10 years they have only made small changes), but again i don't expect anything new.

What i expect is for them to beef up their offering by producing chips with at least 8 cores. This will put them roughly in the same situation they are in now (and probably a bit better).

The two things that i would need to know to get a better idea of what the future has in store are:
1) how will the weaker i3's and i5's compare to core 2 quad, and P2's
2) how well does the core i7 scale up? will having 6 or 8 cores give any real benefit?

I don't even know why i wrote this here... guess i just felt like it.

See what happen when there is no competition. AMD we need some imba CPU to compete with i7

IIRC, the 45nm dual core Havendale is dead. Intel will be selling 32nm dual core graphics-on-die Clarkdale instead.

- the moron.

When the Pentium II was released Intel had the LX and one other chipset. For the 100MHz bus PII/PIII came the BX chipset. Then finally for the PIII with the 133MHz bus came the i810, i815, i820. Now for the Pentium IV and Core Duo/Quad chips there are numerous chipset lines. Intel should limit it to 3 at the most. One for value, performance, and enthusiast segments.

Why confuse the market when they are producing excess inventory as it is??

Until the economy picks up there is no value in putting out a chip that directly competes with their 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 series 45nm Penryn based cores.

They are profitable and still selling well ... and I assume there is inventory to burn.

It wouldn't pay to EOL the LGA775 socket just yet.

The i7 parts are higher end, and i5's overclocked could damage sales on these parts.

The decision is purely a financial one ... and a good one at that.