woolfe9999
Diamond Member
- Mar 28, 2005
- 7,153
- 0
- 0
I think he's right though.
AMD entered the x86 market independently in 1991, with the Am386.
Until 1999, they never competed with Intel directly.
So that's about 8 years of consecutive Intel leadership.
Then we enter the K7/K8/PIII/P4, which ends in 2006, with the introduction of Core2 Duo.
So about 6 years of 'struggle'.
And now we've had about 4 more years of consecutive leadership.
That's a total of 12 years where AMD wasn't competitive in the high-end at all, and 6 years where things were 'back-and-forth'... (So not total domination from AMD).
I would say the normal order is that Intel is the 'untouchable' performance leader. At the very least they were ahead 2/3 of the time that AMD and Intel competed directly.
That sounds about right, if we are talking about who had the performance crown during which period of time. But I would add that during that 6 years of "trading blows," AMD usually had the crown, and more importantly for us consumers, they usually had a commanding lead in dollars/performance. The fact is there was a period of about 6 years where I wouldn't even remotely consider Intel when building a new rig because you just couldn't get anywhere near the bang for the buck with Intel. I honestly think that is being overlooked by both sides in this discussion.
- wolf