What Happened?

Ever have that feeling that someone with a Heavyweight title just put you in a coma?  And when you awoke from that coma everything you thought you knew was no longer a reality?  That was the same way I felt when I realized how bad Intel was kicking the crap out of AMD’s booty all over the CPU market.  And as a long-time fan of AMD, I’m sitting here wondering… just what the heck happened?

The last time I checked, AMD processors were dominating the work/gamer market.  Their processors were doing more per clock cycle than even the most expensive Intel out there, and still cost only a fraction of the price.  Everyone I knew owned AMD.  If you had an Intel chip then everyone around you “in the know” told you how gyped you were.  You were lacking the juice that AMD packed.  It was stone-written knowledge.  So I ask again, what in the power of Greyskull happened?

It all goes back to the beginning.  Back to that original Pentium processor.  It was the gateway to all modern processors and still is the basis for everything on the market today.  Back then, AMD and Intel were in bed with each other.  Intel had to produce mass quantities of its Pentium chip, and to do that it brought on AMD to help manufacture these puppies and get them to the ever-demanding IBM titan.  But Intel screwed up and gave AMD the right to clone them down to the last inner register.  Every single piece.  And when the big split happened between AMD and Intel, AMD kept on making Intel clones  and making a killing off Intel’s base technology.  The difference was that AMD was doing a better job, making processors that were faster and cost less.

It wasn’t until the day of the Pentium 4 that Intel finally managed to revoke all rights from AMD  in the mid 1990s that they began to wisen up.  They went their own way with the Pentium 4, spawning several editions of it, and AMD went on to create the Athlon.  But in the race to create the fastest clock speed, AMD was still miles ahead with better production per clock cycle.  Suffice to say, AMD had the whole world in their pocket.

But then there comes a day when the father must look at the son and say, “You know what, you little bastard, it’s time to hunt your own game and stay off my land.”  So Intel got smarter.  With the speed of processors almost tapped out, they decided to throw down the dual core processor.  AMD soon followed suit with a remake.  But the race was over.  Intel had obviously done a little more research, because even the most expensive dual core AMD couldn’t come close to the basic Intel Core 2.  And now, with Intel wisening up to what the world wants, and AMD dragging ass behind, they have introduced the Quad-core, and now the i7, which promises to blow AMD right out of the water once again.

And I only sit here wondering what is going on in the heads of the AMD rulers?  At every turn right up until a mere half-decade ago they had managed to shoot Intel’s ducks out of the sky and offer a better looking bird… and now this?  I have nothing but disappointment for what has become of AMD recently.  My hope is that they can redeem their good name and get back on top.  But now, whenever I go to a LAN party or when I am bragging to my friends… I don’t mention my AMD setup.  I ask you, AMD, how does it feel to be shunned?  Time to pull it together, I think.

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