While Intel had announced awhile back that they would be making a Core 2 Duo chip AMD said they were already working on a Quad-core. Then more recently Intel announced that they would be making a Quad-core chipset as well this year so whats the difference.
Well they both are planning to release the same kind of chip but mid 2007 AMD will launch a faster chip with a different design. Both chips proposed to come out later this year will feature 2 dual core chips packaged together. Then the AMD coming out later will feature 4 unique chips on a single die which promises even better performance.
Despite a recent increase in AMD sails and a deal with Dell for them to start selling AMD's in some of their packages, Intel is still the leader in the market by a large margin. Last quarter AMD had a reported new income of $89 million which was up from $11 million the year before. Intel had a decline in sales but still managed to get a net income of $885 million down from $1.19 million.
Some people attribute Intel's decline in sales to their chip naming conventions. Before you had Pentium, Pentium I, Pentium III, Pentium 4, and Pentium 4 ht. With these chips you knew which one was better then the got into Pentium D and extreme edition and gold edition and no one had any idea which of the chips was the best one to buy. Also the increase in sales for AMD could be a factor of all the buzz around an AMD and ATI merger which would just mean better across the board performance in gaming. I would like to see when they roll out their next chipset and how well the graphics card and processor work together. It sortof worries me to because I am an Nvidia man myself and I wouldnt want to see AMD make it so that they dont perform as well along with Nvidia as they do with ATI.