I admire AMD's engineers who really did go the distance with a alot less money.
When we moved to Austin in late the late 90s there were commercials on the local new wave/rock station that said if you want to work at a really 'rockin' place that was cutting edge with really cool people send your resume to AMD, I mentioned it to my husband, but he was at IBM many years and had tried to buy and AMD based processor PC from Gateway a few years earlier and been unable to so he didn't have a lot of good vibes about Gateway or AMD, but those commercials did recruit fine engineers and opteron and athalon were the result. They were cool commercials.
I find AMD's management despicable. Their marketing reps less than zero.