Intel is trying to re-invent its brand. For instance it has dropped its Intel Inside slogan and is now running with Leap Ahead. Personally, I think they should have brainstormed some more.

And if you're going to change slogans, you might as well rename your product lineup while you're at it.

They've been slow on the 64bit front, and have taken a black eye from AMD on it.

Problem with Intel is, they got so dominant in the CPU space, they had the nerve to say people didn't need 64bit computing power. They lost sight of the fact that people don't want to be dictated to, just served what they want. AMD served and was rewarded. Are they better, probably not, but they are actively trying to serve what their customers want, and thats more power, and customers appreciate the effort.

Plus Intel was so focused on dominating that one space, they missed out on the cell phone and digital appliance space. And even with all their money, they are having a heck of a time trying to buy their way into a competitive position. Mainly, because of all the dirty marketing tactics they used with PC companies, they've made other companies very wary of doing business with them. And now they aren't really innovating anything, they have just a bunch of ho-hum products. Sorry but I expect more from a company earning about $6+ billion a quarter. They might as well start out with some 128bit CPU's and see what happens.

The new Intel Skynet processor, yup, this'll end good.

Intel, we let our machines think for you.

Actually AMD processors have been outperforming Intel ones for years now, it's only recently that the word has gotten out and Intel is starting to panic a bit, thus this rebranding.

AMD performance has been marginally better for years mainly because they are tested with Intel biased metrics. If they got more vendor support from board manufacturers and Microsoft, they would probably be doing even better.

AMD was smart and went for the hardcore gamer market like at QuakeCon.
They knew if they could meet and exceed their needs, then they could probably meet the needs of the Big Tin makers. Intel was largely disinterested and said the gamer market was too small to be concerned with to develop anything of any real merit.

I actually worked at Cyrix, and Intel made a game out of that whole bus speed metric, and they dangled it over our and AMD's heads, and forced us both into using the PR rating system, just so customers could get a general idea on comparable performance.

When it came down to it, Intel only had more money and was able to tell the vendors who they were going to do business with if they knew what was good for them.

Too bad Cyrix went down like it did, they actually had a processor in the works that was in line with the direction AMD was headed in at the time.
When VIA took over, the geniuses fired all the design engineers before they found out the new processor wasn't fully fleshed out at Cyrix and work was being done at the designer's homes. Needless to say VIA screwed themselves.

I liked working there. Free cokes in the machines, and beer Friday.
Cyrix had a large beer vault that was locked up until Friday each week.
No cheap beers either. It was an opportunity to enjoy a perk and hobnob with the president and upper management of the company.

Thank you all.

You all have very strong points on the AMD Vs. Intel

As a computer tech, i have seen it all from the 286's on up.

Most of the systems i had back then where Intel, i also hadd 1 Cyrix CPU.

But then i found AMD and i can say that AMD has the best CPU's i have seen to date, Granted when AMD first got out there, they had a lot of problems with quailty control and had some bum CPU's.

But Unlike intel they learned from there mistakes and made them selfs a better company. They took to heart what people wanted and have made great Gamming CPU's.

Right now i Have a SMP Optron 244 System and love it.

128bit CPU's have a long time befor they come out, They haven't milked the 64 bit market at all. I mostly blame the major OS makers(microsoft for the most part). Granted Linux has been 64 bit for a while, but the major problem is software.

Zintac

[edit on 16-1-2006 by Zintac]

Just a bit of Intel trivia:

Intel had the 386, the 486 and when it came time for the 586, they changed the naming scheme to words (Pentium) instead of numbers, one reason being that numbers couldn't be copyrighted, whereas names can, and another company was using the same numbers. They wanted to be set apart.

I was there.

Yea, I sold 'puters @ Best Buy for a while (a really, really, really crappy job), and I watched Intel lose a lot of market share to AMD. Most of us pushed AMD because it outperforms Intel on everything but mathematic operations. The only software I found that runs better on Pentiums was CAD, and some other design related stuff.
That, and the AMD 64's headstart on Intel was seen running side by side with a top of the line Pentium (I believe it was a demo of Unreal) and the difference was staggering on otherwise identical systems.