Hey guys, I have a bit of a question here.
Is there anything besides the reasoning of, "You're my rival company in one of my other main segments" as to why AMD isn't/can't release chipsets for Intel processors?
I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand the finer details of business particularly well, nor am I saavy on the specifics on any of these companies' business models. Nonetheless, I can't help but think what a somewhat dire situation the PC industry seems to find itself in. For one, I don't see any VIA or SiS chipsets for any Intel chips, and I think they're beginning to fall by the wayside for AMD chips as well. I know that, in recent years, both of these companies didn't really deliver industry-shattering products (in fact, they were often considered of lower quality), but they were cheap and they filled a niche of people who wanted to build a budget desktop. Anyways, this pretty much leaves us with [Platform Brand]+Nvidia as the only chipset manufacturers for any given platform (AMD or Intel).
Maybe I'm off-base here, but... I basically don't trust anything Nvidia, mostly because of driver quality. I have seen more bluescreens on Nvidia-powered motherboards, usually involving some nv_____.sys in some way or another on damn near every single Nvidia-chipset machine that I've used in recent days. I really hate to sound like a fanboy, but... I can't really challenge my own experiences.
I'd love to have an HD 3200 paired with a Core 2 Duo Quad, and given AMD's current place as far as CPU's go... it seems like they might be able to make some extra bucks off of the overwhelming support for the Intel crowd at the moment. It doesn't look (to me, anyways) like they're going to regain the CPU performance or power efficiency crown ANYTIME in the near future, and so, it begs the question: Wouldn't the Intel platform really benefit from having AMD chipsets as an option? I know I'd love 'em -- Intel's chipsets are nice, but AMD's have some really kickass features, they're hella stable and get high quality driver revisions every month.