Compute this: Compute barely matters to SoHo consumers except where implemented into games or video encode/transcode applications. Gaming performance and extras above and beyond Direct3D DO matter to these consumers, and the shills at the other forum can spin like gyroscopes, but they won't change those basic facts.

This is my thoughts, and its the big view. (i am tired/very sleepy but i will try to get it across even if it lacks polish.....sorry)

AMD underestimated Nvidia ........Bad. The sweet spot was AMD trying to pull a one two knock out, low blow after blow. Intel had stripped nvidia of their chipset business. This single act cut 25% revenue from nvidia. Worse was the revenue was at the backbone of all their profits. The future for nvidia wasnt so bright. AMD sought to have the ultimate edge. If nvidia became irrelevant AMD would completely dominate PC graphics. This wouldve made them much more significant than they ever had been.

The sweet spot strategy was an attempt to undercut a competitor that was just dealt a devastating blow. AMD planned to own the GPU market by selling in the sweet spot, expecting nvidia to be unable to do much but lose out. It was time to flex and block out the sun of an already hurt opponent. They could sell their highest performing chips at low profit sucking the last bit of life they could from nvidia. Or so they thought.

Nvidia was in a fight they could not win with intel. AMD knew this. The most popular nvidia product in the consumer market was their chipset. It helped make nvidia a well known name. Their chipset with the igp was extremely popular. Without the nforce chipsets, the future of nvidia was very unknown. It wasnt a good scenario. As bad as it looked things didnt run off the cliff. The loss didnt happen immediately. Nvidia was able to soften the blow.

The sweet spot strategy wasnt sustainable for AMD. They expected nvidia to not be able to respond. They expected to get results immediately. They had one of the best architectures of all time: the extremely capable 5800 series. Selling it in the sweet spot they thought it would cripple nvidia. They expected nvidia was unstable and they added massive pressure......

meanwhile nvidia was very busy making new revenue sources. They carved out new markets. They would prove brilliance. AMDs goal was to have the ultimate edge by being the only name in high tech computer GPUs. Nvidia strove to be successful in every way possible. To find ways to use what they had to their fullest. To survive and strive molding to whatever was necessary. Being proactive and excelling.

Nvidia was able to compete with AMDs sweet spot and without their chipset. They went on to make some of their largest profits while AMD reduced their graphics division to almost no profit at all. AMDs strategy resulted in them making less profits with radeons then ATI ever had. AMDs sweet spot is over. It got them very little in the end. Nvidia found many ways to make money and survive. They are well past the low point and they made it without much of a slow down at all. AMD is left playing catch up. A failed strategy that set them back, way back.

AMD has a history of putting all the eggs in one basket.......then dropping it. Its happened over and over again. Now its APUs. maybe it will pay off, maybe. Nvidia has learned to reach out in every direction all at once. They have learned how to survive and how to respond quickly. They have been very impressive and the groundwork is already laid for so so many possibilities. They will survive no matter what is to come. I believe the best is yet to be seen from them.......


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sorry if its not together right. I am really tired but wanted to share this. I will be very busy for the next week but i wanted to get this out cause its very relevant to the topic.

Sorry, some things I simply do not agree with.

nForce did very well for nvidia, that is true, but that is largely because of AMD failing to have a credible chipset for their CPU's in their own right, something they still don't have in my opinion, and a massive reason why aside from performance issues few are willing to purchase AMD cpu's.

As for being the backbone of nvidia's profits, sorry, but it never was. It was a supplementor to nvidia's profits for sure, but not the backbone. GPU's are nvidia's backbone and what they turn most of their profit on. Even with GeForce FX they made a profit from their GPU's.

The whole intel thing is just massively incorrect. Intel wanted AMD out of highend CPU's. Conroe and its successors was one part of acheiving that goal, the other part was removal of the chipset that made AMD attractive to consumers in the first place. nvidia didn't necessarily have a problem with abandoning AMD, so long as they could make chipsets for intel to fill the gap created, something that intel didn't allow, and ended up with them paying nvidia 1.1 billion dollars as compensation because of intel's unfair business tactics.

And, really, the whole sweet spot thing just further exposes AMD/ATi's rotten, corrupt core. They are patently incapable of competing fairly. They always have to be jackasses and try to fight dirty. Of course, what goes around comes around, and the only people they end up hurting are themselves..........

they'll skip steamroller too -- they'll be needing excavator to try and get out of the hole they've already dug (they'll reuse parts of piledriver to extend excavator's reach ). Of course, it will still go horribly wrong anyway, Management will instruct excavator to dig ever deeper, instead of backfill the crater.

Excavator -- very witty!

So how long before Intel steamrolls them in APU's too?

Project Denver could possibly deliver a better "APU" than anything AMD can produce, "ha" "ha".

Hmm. Well, all I can say is that the good news is that AMD backed off the high end in terms of GPUs and look at them now. Give them a few years and maybe they'll make another run at it. They're smart to scrap Bulldozer. I'm surprised it took them this long to realize that it wasn't worth putting more money into.

So they're smart, but it took them too long to realize. That would make them, un-smart. IMHO