ADMIN: Delete this post if innappropriate to post links to commecial blogs.ZDNet has an interesting story about what's going on with management over at AMD which may explain much about the ATI vs. nVidia debate, and why ATI has lagged. (It all starts at the top.)Just found this interesting reading, in light of all the new and upcoming choices in video cards being discussed here.<< http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9364&tag=nl.e539 >>

Ruiz has been very unpopular lately - many blame him for AMDs downfall, for their financial situation and for the problems with the Phenom CPU. Personally, I don't see how one man could be solely responsible for all of AMDs problems, both technological and financial, even if he's the CEO.. Still the change will probably be for the better.Dirk Meyer is apparently more of an engineer than a businessman...but this might be a good thing for a company like AMD. He lead the team that designed the original, hugely sucessful Athlon CPU, so he obviously knows what he's doing when it comes to the tech.AMD has two problems to solve, IMO - First of all, they need to stop losing so much money.. Secondly, they need to do what ATI (which is, of course, a part of AMD now) did with the 4800-series and launch a truly competitive CPU. They don't need to take the performance crown from Intel, they only need to release some truly competitive mid-range CPUs. So far, the gap between the Phenom and Core2 has only widened. If it goes on like that, the Phenom won't even be a viable choice for a low-end CPU because even Intel's slowest quad-core CPUs will outperform it.

>Personally, I don't see how one man could>be solely responsible for all of AMDs problems, both>technological and financial, even if he's the CEO.. Still the>change will probably be for the better.>I agree. And after many years in corporate management and marketing I can assure you that one man can be responsible. He is literally the rudder that steers the ship. AMD, and specifically ATI, IMHO, have been out of touch with their customers for a long time. The big money will be made in CPUs, true, but if they're going to devote money and resources to the video card division, they will certainly need to be more aware of what their target market wants, and what it's willing to pay. As far as rendering quality, ATI cards are miles ahead of nVida, but they keep choking themselves off with restricted data piplines to the GPU, and then charge an arm and a leg for it.

The Radeon 2900-series were a disaster.. The 3800-series fixed the most serious flaws but still weren't a viable alternative to the Geforce 9600/8800 cards that they competed with. The 4800-series finally got it right, forcing Nvidia to drop their prices and launch an overclocked 9800GTX card to compete. Yes, Nvidia still has the performance crown for now with the GTX280, but they are apparently selling very, very few of those cards. The mid-range is where cards are sold and money is made and currently, AMD/ATI has some very strong mid-range offerings with the 4850 and 4870. Those cards certainly are what the target market wants - Anandtech even called ATI "The Peoples' GPU Maker" in their review of the 4800-series.The CPU division needs to do something similar, releasing a $200 CPU that offers great performance while not consuming 140W of power like the latest Phenom does.