![]() These two factors created an excellent opportunity for a certain ambitious Intel rival. But there were two problems: Itanium was only for servers and never came to desktops, and Itanium was not x86 and thus couldn't run x86 software. ![]() To this end, Intel introduced the 64-bit Itanium architecture for the emerging server CPU market in 2001. The x86 architecture at this point was only 32-bit, and obviously, 32 ones and zeroes can store much less data than 64. This ensured Intel wasn't going to be taken by surprise in the clock-speed race as it had been with Athlon.Īt the same time, however, there was a new race: the one for 64-bit computing. The company launched its first Pentium 4 CPU in late 2000, with its underlying architecture, NetBurst, designed for the express purpose of hitting high clock speeds, and each new generation of NetBurst would yield higher frequencies than the last. Pretty soon after AMD and Intel broke through the GHz barrier, it was Intel's turn to turn up the heat. Still, the Athlon became a legendary chip that put AMD on the board. Intel's Pentium III 1GHz launched just two days later, though it did have the satisfaction of being the better chip. In the end, however, it was AMD's Athlon 1000 that crossed the finish line in early 2000. Interestingly, Intel's Pentium III 650 (also clocked at 650MHz) couldn't match the Athlon 650, an indication that AMD's architectural design was better than Intel's.įor the new few months, AMD and Intel went back and forth and kept one-upping each other with higher-clocked Athlons and Pentiums, racing to break the GHz barrier. In the summer of 1999, AMD introduced the very first of its Athlon series of CPUs, named after the ancient Greek word for "contest." Pitted against Intel's Pentium III chips, which came out just a few months before, Anandtech found that it was the Athlon 650 (clocked at 650MHz) that was the new CPU champion. AMD CPUs were generally priced lower than Intel's in order to be competitive, and eventually, AMD decided it was time to go for the gold. ![]() AMD went from making Intel chips for devices like IBM's Personal Computer to designing and manufacturing its own processors in direct competition with Intel's. Intel and AMD were also just a few years removed from a pivotal legal battle that eventually decided in AMD's favor, granting the company the right to make its own x86 CPUs. These were some of the very first CPUs to be reviewed on venerable websites like Anandtech and Tom's Hardware, made possible thanks to the cutting-edge technology of the internet and the fact that people could buy individual computer components at retail rather than needing to buy a whole computer. The beginning of the modern era of desktop CPUs started in the late 90s as Intel launched its Pentium II processors and AMD its K6 chips. ![]()
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