My question is what if AMD goes bankrupt and suddenly intel has 100 % marketshare on the computing industry. Will they raise prices of all their processors to 2000 $ each? Should we support AMD from going bankrupt by buying their chips even if they are slightly worse? Intel microsoft of the pc consumer.... Hope this doesnt happen and i feel every chip i buy from intel it speeds up the inevitable

Provided that firms like Nvidia or IBM are uninterested in the techs AMD is holding.

As a consumer you should only be concerned about one thing and one thing only - that is price. In this case the best performance for a given price. Performance can mean different things like power consumption, computing power, etc.
If AMD bites the dust it will do so because it couldn't deliver. Survival of the fittest, if you want.
Once you bring other elements into the equation, like buying only from companies that have a monkey paw in their corporate logo, you cross over to the dark side of illogical beheavior and join religious fanatics, politicians, tv preachers, marketing people, fans and apple customers.

I would be surprised if the government would let them go under. Besides Bankruptcy doesn't mean the would go out of business, it just means they would flush their debt and reorganize the stuff they can't flush. So in short after their stock goes through the hit of filing BK, they should be in good shape because they will have much less debt. If they make it through the announcement then they would likely recover rather quickly.

I think the premise of the question is false.

AMD will not drop off the face of the planet and Intel will not instantly leap to 100% market share.

Even if AMD went bankrupt (very, very unlikely) they would continue to operate.

As for supporting them if they go to 2k a processor that would be a bit excessive. But I do think we win if we support them. Had they not been around the last few years with their 64 bit processors we wouldn't be enjoying the latest generations from Intel. We would likely be talking about rumors of the Pentium 3 is being replaced with a Pentium 4. AMD pushed Intel to pull out all the stops to gain back the performance edge. If AMD is not around Intel's R&D budget will likely shrink and we lose when that happens.

AMD will not go bankrupt. The worst would happen is AMD being restructured, and launch as a new corporation (at least on the management level). It will then release competitive CPU, and take on Intel again.

Its all part of the cycle.

I agree it's a reorganization of debt not a death sentence. Many companies that are still around filed BK at one time. I would be willing to bet that General Motors files BK before AMD does.

Even if AMD did die, they wouldn't have a monopoly (Via makes stuff, albeit slow)

Well... then AMD should buy out Via, they can take them down too while their are at it, and when Intel becomes a true monopoly, then the government will be force to split them up to have different companies to break the monopoly.

I'm pretty much at the point in.. who gives a frack? I want to be happy for a while longer for what I have, not have to buy something that will last 6 months, then wella... spend another fortune, whether its AMD or Intel just to run something smoothly.

I remember when I couldn't even afford to get a X2 4400+, not to mention I didn't even have a 939 MB which today isn't even supported, which prolly is a good thing.

I doubt that other companies would just let AMD disappear completely - a company like IBM could buy them to get themselves a foothold in the x86 market.

Yep.

If AMD were to cease to exist (not quite the same as bankruptcy) then Intel would have a virtual monopoly on x86 CPU sales (VIA are competing only in small niche markets).

Unquestionably. They have done it before when they had more competition than now but had a virtual monopoly, of course they would when they had less competition and an even stronger monopoly.

I argued that point about 6 months ago.



Is it wise to pay $10 more for the same performance (from AMD) to save yourself paying $1000 extra 5 years down the road?

IMO it worth the 10 dollar hit now.



A lot of others seen it differently though.

even if amd's situation got very bad, i wouldn't be surprised if one or several companies step in to buy out amd to keep intel from becoming the only major manufacturer of cpu's.