Tell me why AMD would't be able to make a very competitive CPU in terms of instructions per clock/performance, power consumption and price?
While Intel will of course have lower power consumption, the gap won't be anywhere as big as it was with 32nm FX vs 22nm iCores. AMD beat Intel once in 1980's then had a 7 year reign over Intel from 1999 to 2007 or even 2008.
Bulldozer happened, so what... Pentium 4 happened to Intel.
I've never seen anything on GC impress me more than the Xbox except maybe Rogue Squadron. P3s were powerhouses, and the amount of physics driven gameplay in many Xbox titles trumped most of the GCs library by a pretty large amount. And as said by someone else, HL2's problem more likely stemmed from limited RAM, not the CPU. Also, the AMD chip originally set for the Xbox was no faster than the P3, however AMD did design the north bridge if I remember correctly, and it ended up still being used in the system.
Only Rogue Squadron impressed you on Gamecube? Really? You should have payed attention though I can't blame, you since you're one of people that don't pay attention to visual detail...
Best water on Xbox 30FPS;
Best water on Gamecube 60FPS;
Conker Bad Fur Day Xbox Fur 30FPS;
Star Fox Adventure Fox Fur 60FPS;
Geist on Gamecube says Hi!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-NHSEcWmg#t=385
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geist_(video_game)#Gameplay
Wave Race: Blue Storm says Hi! Too!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUjXJD90kkM#t=44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Race:_Blue_Storm
Pentium 3 isn't a powerhouse and AMD for Xbox if not faster than Pentium 3 then its a lower clocked one since AMD CPU's at that time were 10% faster in business applications and 20% faster in gaming applications at same clock speed plus consumed less and achieved higher clocks.
Pentium 3
733MHz.0.27 GFLOPS
PowerPC 750 CXe/FX
486Mhz 1.9G GFLOPS
Found this;
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=17791419&sid=10150c4cccbbff2099b0a934f260e1f7#p17791419
EA Canada managed to get 17M polygons per second with most effects from Gamecube with early development kit.
Half Life 2's problem wasn't the memory at all, that would't make game have low framerate... It would cause pop-ups. Reviewers and even Vavle confirmed that CPU was the issues because every time you kill a enemy then framerate goes down because of ragdoll physics.
[/QUOTE]As for Apple and ARM............mmmmm not anytime soon. It's certainly feasible they could be designing big ARM cores in secret, but what they have with Intel is just as good if not better for now. Apple buying AMD would be a cheap purchase, where not only would they gain access to AMD's CPU tech, but their graphics tech which could prove useful in making GPGPU a truly integrated part of computing. Apple has the cash and clout to make that a reality. Not sure how well dual FirePro D700s are working out for the new Mac Pros, but there is no doubt that there is a **** ton of capability there that hopefully Apple is investing time and energy into understanding and making use of.[/QUOTE]
Apple can't buy AMD, because if AMD was bought then AMD would lost x86 license. Apple could only invest in AMD if they wanted to. I would't be surprised if Apple switches all AMD, it would ease a lot of things. Dealing with only one supplier instead of two when comes to CPU and GPU.
Apple choosing AMD over Intel will only sow benefits for Apple, only dealing with one supplies for both CPU and GPU while also increasing profit margins.