How like you to overlook the reason it knocked Intel back on its heels. Entry and great success in the server market, dominance in the consumer enthusiast and HPC markets, and temporarily,though fitfully, profits while boosting their capabilities in a field requiring very high fixed costs.
Knocking Intel on its heels was not the main accomplishment, but it was nice to see it happen to a company sucking billions out of customers for only marginal improvements. If it weren't for AMD's competition, you know darn well C2D and C2Q would not exist.