I'm grateful I was able to pick up one of these, it's a speedy chip indeed. This round of AMD vs Intel kind of reminds me of the battles for top performance in the 90s, each side trading blows with another 100MHz and a bit more cache every few months. It was an exciting time and it's great to see AMD pulling ahead again.
> "Our goal is that leadership product in every segment, and I'm not going to talk about unannounced products," replied Intel's Jim Johnson, Corporate VP and GM of Client Engineering.
I wonder if Intel actually has something new in the pipeline. I was holding out for their new chips before starting a new build and the new "Core Ultra" line didn't impress me, but it's also clearly a new chiplet design that will be around for a while and should have room for improvements now that the big shift to chiplet is underway.
>in the 90s, each side trading blows with another 100MHz and a bit more cache every few months
AMD was uncompetitive during whole nineties, their very best and most expensive K5/K6/-2/-3 chips were losing to Pentiums/Celerons in everything but simple word processing (Winstone). Only the very last AMD CPU of 1999, $799 Athlon 750 $799 was finally competitive against $803 Pentium III 750. You must be thinking of 2000-2006 when AMD beat Intel to 1GHz, 64bit and dual core.
Thanks, rasz! I was still a kid during that time so unfortunately I don't have first hand experience. I will happily defer to your experience!
My comment came from a couple of post-era experiences:
* The Am486-DX4-100 benches nearly (or just a bit below) the Intel DX4-100 in my own testing. I thought it was less expensive at the time, but I haven't checked prices
* The K6-3 was able to match early Pentium II performance for a lower cost, at least in my personal testing. I have a modded K6-3+ at 600MHz and it exceeds some P2 CPUs in Phil's benchmark tests, though naturally it's not a part many people had around back then
* AMD 386-DX40 was also apparently a high performing part and I'm happy to have acquired one recently, though I'm unfamiliar with prices and I have little to compare with. Just received some new parts (external battery & 128MB CF cards) to help me get into testing this platform
Those other landmarks you describe are definitely very interesting and noteworthy, though! It was quite cool to see AMD first to 1GHz, 64-bit, and dual core. One of my favorite retro rigs is a maxed out AMD K7 system, the last of their 32-bit platform and in my opinion the end of the 32-bit era, though Intel kept pushing 32-bit parts for a while.
I've been an Intel fan for most of my life, but as I get older I'm finding a lot of appreciation for AMD and my main PC is AMD for the first time ever as of the 9800X3D release. :)
AMD Am486-DX4-100 released in 1995 while 1994 $516 Intel DX4-100 was already a weird product considering 3Q94 prices:
Pentiums 100 MHz $964
Pentiums 90 MHz $707
Pentiums 66 MHz $525
Intel DX4-100 $516
Pentiums 60 MHz $418
Intel DX2-66 ~$200
and was highly discouraged https://books.google.pl/books?id=PITtFPwTaWwC&lpg=PP1&hl=en&...
By 1995 when Am486 DX4 shipped it went straight to low end systems together with Cyrix selling their own $60 DX4-100, TI $66 DX2-66 $70 486DX4-100. Mainstream 1995 was all about socket 5.
First retail K6-3 in the wild showed up in Japan in March 1999 listed at $295 https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/990313/p_cpu.ht... Thats full Pentium II 400MHz price or over four Celerons 300A. By January 2000 it was down to ~$85 https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20000108/p_cpu.... while Celeron 300A ~$57.
It wasnt some local Japanese price glitch. Poland September 1999:
Pentium III 450MHz 1260 $308
Pentium II 400MHz 943 $231
Celeron 366MHz 348 $85 (300A missing from the list, but was still available and selling cheaper)
K6-III/450 1108 $271 lol
K6-III/400 877 $215
K6-2/400 397 $97
K6-2/350 230 $56
I dont know what AMD was doing with K6 prices, had to be some financing scheme with huge under the table discounts for OEMs. Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Packard Bell, IBM and Time Computers all pumped out very cheap low end AMD K6 systems. At least with introduction of new socket AMD finally stopped smoking crack. June 17 2000 https://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hotline/20000617/p_cpu....
Celeron 533A 10,570 $100
Duron 600MHz 9,990 $95
K6-III/450 24,800 $236 !??!!?
K6-III/400 14,800 $140
K6-2/550 7,949 $76
K6-2/533 5,970 $57
K6-2/500 5,350 $50
K6-III+ released in 2000. In games K6-III+ overclocked to 600 MHz matches two year old Celeron 300A overclocked to 450 MHz.
While filling in the low end segment is great for less wealthy consumers, its not what I would call being competitive :) K7 finally put AMD on even footing.