When it comes to manufacturing tech, yes they most certainly are. Intel is almost always 1 process ahead of them. For instance, Intel has been manufacturing on 45nm for how many months now? AMD has yet to release a 45nm cpu. Keep going back and you'll see that AMD is consistently behind Intel in this area. Intel released 65nm back in the Presler/prescott days, a time AMD was still on 90nm. AMD did not release a 65nm CPU until Brisbane, ages and ages after Intel.
The larger processes AMD is using costs more to manufacture, because yields are lower. That is part of the reason they are losing their asses in the stock market. Their manufacturing tech is behind, making their margins much lower.
K8 does not, in any way, perform better than Core2 in day to day use. If it did, you were comparing a really low end Core2, to a higher end AMD. IF anything, it's in gaming that you can't tell the difference. CPU makes little or no difference in 99% of modern games.
Might just be me but some of my friends who've switched to intel have said the same thing. No we ARENT talking about benchmarks. We are talking about general use, example loading times for windows etc.
Yes, AMD's low atm is partially due to weak advertising... its one part which really is their achilles heel. Back in the K8 days I didn't see AMD even bother to advertise its products to a substantial extent, even though Intel CLEARLY was crapper. However, the consumer didn't know that. The average consumer didn't even know about the performance difference; how their low ends were faster than even intel's top end...
That is one example of why AMD is suffering at the moment...
ATi since the merger, well has just gone quiet in terms of advertising.
Funny how the actual company doesn't really matter when it comes to the financial standpoint