What’s the matter with AMD? The number two chip maker in the whole world just posted some numbers that don’t reflect too kindly on its performance over the last few months. The big, bad Sunnyvale, Calif.-based corp lost $416 million last quarter; about $195 million of that was related to a corporate spinoff (see: GlobalFoundries). When put into scary percentages, AMD’s sales fell off 21 percent. Meanwhile, Intel, what with its Core 2 Duo and, more importantly, its Atom, continues to hum along nicely, expecting sales to rise for this same quarter. So what gives, AMD?

The eternal quandary for system builders has been much less quandarious (to coin a term) for the last year or so. Intel processor, AMD video card — anything else would be uncivilized. AMD’s 48xx series has been the only choice for a while, but the latest products from AMD and NVIDIA are a little less starkly separated.

For around $250 (the mid-high sweet spot), the 4890 and GTX 275 are remarkably well-matched — more so than any two equivalently priced cards from the companies have been for some time. So which do you buy?

As much as we like the giant-killing 4870 graphics cards from AMD, they have been around for quite a while now. It’s past time when more needs to be done than tape two together and call it “X2.” Luckily, they’ve had the successor to the 4870 in the pipe for a while now, and someone’s just gotten their dirty hands on one.

If you didn’t already have enough reasons to buy a Radeon 4870 in one of its many forms, well, here’s another one. AMD’s been trying to push sales of its graphics cards, hoping to lower inventory and get a little dough, maybe to offset the enormous loss they posted this last quarter.

Their strategy was to lower the 512MB 4850 to ~$120, and its big brother the giant-killer 4870 to an incredible $150. But their partners said “no thanks,” comparing the 4870’s performance to much higher-priced NVIDIA cards. So wait, it’s too good?

SATA 3.0 is about to bring the goods – and fast. Seagate and AMD partnered together to demo just what the hopeful revision will be capable of with a prototype Barracuda drive and AMD chipset. If Seagate gets its way. – you see, not all manufacturers are signed on just yet including Western Digital – SATA 3.0 will be a full 200% faster than the current generation while still being backwards compatible.

Video card technology seems to compete with CPU technology, both of them continuing to obey Moore’s law, and becoming faster and faster with each iteration. Many manufacturers have also taken to increasing the amount of memory on their existing cards to make them run better. Most the time, this results in at least noticeably better performance, as we’ve seen.

Currently, if you want a netbook, you’re going to get an Intel atom chipset. This is just understood. They are fast, have low heat and power consumption, and are the defacto standard. But AMD is looking to get in on some of that action, and they could be a serious threat to Intel.

AMD enthusiasts should mark February 9th as a red-letter day. Five new processors have been unleashed by the ailing but effective CPU company, and they look like a serious value. If you’re looking to upgrade your box right now, these new processors are pretty much the only reasonable option.

Plus, you can upgrade now with your DDR2 setup, and then move to a new DDR3 setup in six months and keep the processor, since it’ll be compatible with both. More deets inside.

While Intel is working on taking on the GPU sector (and may just have a deal with Sony to do it), its main rival, Nvidia, is looking to get into the x86 processor business. The video hardware giant is assembling a team from scratch to make a competitor to the Intel and AMD’s CPUs — but doesn’t seem to care that the technology is proprietary and must be licensed from the very companies they’re trying to overthrow.

A little creative thinking over at the Inquirer has led them to suggest that Nvidia may get left out in the cold come the new generation of gaming consoles. Intel and AMD are set to split the spoils between them, leaving Nvidia (in its glory and its ego) to play with the PC market, which, as we are constantly being reminded, is dying.

A Dutch retailer briefly lists a “Radeon 5870 X2,” along with specs — conspiracy? Coincidence? Sham? Legit? Or just a typo?

Well, check out the specs and then… you be the judge.

Although we were a little underwhelmed at what Fusion actually turned out to be (it got a lot of hype), the good news is that it’s helpful anyway, and it’s not bound to hardware. AMD doesn’t want you to do this of course, and the usual caveats of “at your own risk, etc” apply, but there is a way to make Fusion work on your Intel or (I should think) even VIA processor.

More bad news for AMD. They announced today that they would be reducing their workforce even further. This will be their third round of layoffs, and things are not looking good for the future. At least with Intel, NVIDIA, and other semicondunductor companies also feeling the hurt, AMD doesn’t have to suffer alone.

While it has been a sort of unspoken truth that AMD has ceded the performance cup to Intel over the last couple years, they’ve instead provided an extremely compelling value option, with their processors doing nearly the work of the more expensive Intels for far less money. The new Phenom II processor was to be the keystone in AMD’s new Dragon platform, and while the other features of the platform are still great, it looks like the new processor isn’t going to bring any competition to the table.

A lot of attention has been on Intel’s Nehalem/Core i7 lineup, but AMD hasn’t been slacking. They’ve been working on rolling out their next platform, which is really much more of a complete package than I’ve seen in a while. The new 45nm Phenom II X4 processor is designed to work with the Radeon 4000 series of video cards and the newest 790 series of motherboards.

They’ve got a real triple threat here, as when you buy into their whole little ecosystem, you get some serious benefits.