Playing with the hand you've dealt yourself
Just as it did with graphics before it recently got its act together there, AMD is having to play with the hand it's dealt itself in the CPU market. It doesn't have the products to compete at the top-end so it's focusing on things like value and bang4buck.
Additionally, Buxton was keen to reiterate the "balanced PC" message it has been stressing for most of this year. AMD thinks consumers may get confused by what it perceives as Intel saying the CPU is more important than the GPU on one hand and NVIDIA insisting the opposite is true on the other.
Only AMD offers the Full Monty of CPU, chipset and GPU and it is eager to turn that unique offering to its commercial advantage. The problem so far has been that, while its chipsets and GPUs have been looking good, its CPUs remain an Achilles Heel above a certain performance level.
"By bringing down opening price points we are ensuring that a first or second time PC builder consumer can make a balanced PC that's fully HD ready," said Buxton, referring to AMD's 780G chipset, which is currently leading the market in integrated graphics (only to be bettered by its recently announced 790GX). "Good-value CPUs coupled with the latest chipsets allow some nice incremental upgrade opportunities," he said.
So, unsurprisingly, Buxton wanted to stress that AMD offers good entry level opportunities for amateur system builders, with a quad core and a decent integrated graphics not costing much and with the option of upgrading to discrete graphics still open.
This is the only sensible strategy when you only have the CPU products to compete in the low and mid range parts of the market, but it's a challenging one to execute when your competitor can utilize the kudos that comes with being the fastest. Ironically, that's precisely what AMD is hoping to gain from the launch of its ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 today.
