The problem is, AM2 was not designed to boost the Athlon64's performance. It was to get DDR2 in and move DDR1 out. AMD was not designing AM2 chips to boost performance. The only real big thing was keeping the performance level at what they had on Socket 939 platforms. The writer is quite ignorant of this reason---the primary reason for the move to AM2. I'm just as happy as the next guy that Intel is offering a much more competitive product, but the fact remains: AM2 was not meant to stick it to Intel. Right now, Intel does have the lead. However, lets remember that AMD has had a streak for about 2-3 years where they were soundly pummeling Intel. Call Intel sluggish, what have you, but the company isn't just going to roll over and play dead for AMD. They did the best thing any company could do (legally) to the competition: produce a better product. I have no doubt that AMD will come around with a better product in the future, but it's not AM2. It may very well not even be AM3...that I don't know. What I can say is that they won't sit idle for Intel to continue gaining ground. Secondly, look at DDR2 prices. They've been dropping, while DDR1 prices are creeping up. Yes, there is fluctuation, but DDR2 has been out long enough that it is going to drop in price to reasonable levels.
I think it's because people didn't see the real advantage of ditching what they had just to get some DDR2 ram, which up until recently didn't offer much of an advantage anyway. When AM2 came out there were no whiz bang CPU's that offer much higher performance specifically designed for AM2. And Intel's Core 2 Duo looming just over the horizon (at the time AM2 launched) didn't help either concidering it's early test results were amazing. But as BB said, AMD won't just throw up it's hands in defeat, they've got 4x4 and probably a few more tricks up their sleeves to even the odds perhaps.
I do agree on the CPU part, but, like I said, AM2 wasn't designed to do much more than pair the Athlon64 with DDR2.
The K8 is near the end of its productive lifespan I think. Yes, it is an excellent CPU architecture, but to compete with Intel in an extremely rapid changing industry, AMD needs to bring a new core architecture to rival the Core 2 Duo. As we've seen, the indsutry has moved from maximum clockspeed and IPC to a higher Performance Per Watt, and multithreading capabilities. Highly efficient, parallel computing could be the way forward for new CPUs now. With the current architecture and SOI technology, the barriers are being reached in terms of scalability.
