AMD CPUs' excellent quality and Intel's agile efforts at relegating
the AMD K6-2 and III to the low end
I am in angst as to why the AMD K6-2 and
III seem to have been placed at the low end to the lower mid-range PC
market. Perhaps I am already able to answer this question on my own. And
maybe I am not.
However, if it were up to me to make the definitive explanation on this
matter, I would give three explanations for why AMD is beleaguered with
this problem:
First, I would cite AMD's apparent in-ability to keep with their
production schedules. My point here is that about a year ago, AMD had a
chance to get a leg up when they hit the mat (so to speak) and place
themselves squarely as the premiere mid-range processor manufacturer. But
because their production fell ill, they were knocked to the level of the
Celeron in both price and quality. Most of the more techno-savvy people
like myself know better. Those of us are well aware of the K6-2's
abilities, in spite of their FPU lagging behind the PII and PIII. Still,
Intel, with it's market savvy wisdom, managed to make most consumers--you
know, the ones that can't even program a VCR--think that Intel is superior
even in gaming. I know this isn't so, but I digress...
My second reason for this whole thing is the pricing structure forced on
the market by Intel with the price drop of the PII. Again, I place this
problem somewhat in AMD's lap, for they constantly tried to stay at least
25% below Intel to remain competitive-- to their demise, however, they
shot themselves in the foot.
The last reason here is that nothing drives hardware like software and it
is here that Intel has been the most competitive, mostly due to their more
efficient FPU and their proprietary DIB. Simply put, AMD doesn't have
those abilities in the K6-2 and III. Does that make them less of a CPU?
No. My reasoning is that AMD, with the release of their K6-2 and 3DNow!,
compensated greatly for the lag they had in their K6 processors and as a
result, they realised performance very close to the PII-400. That aside,
AMD marshalled the game developers too late in the price war to help place
them firmly in the middle tier market. With the word Intel well entrenched
in the gamers' minds and hearts, AMD just couldn't show their worth soon
enough and that has made it difficult for gamers and developers to see
past the Intel logo when it came to marketing and purchasing to and for
the gamers.
As for games and graphics, I can honestly say that my AMD-400 with 128
megs of RAM, a 14 gig HD, a Voodoo 3, and a SB Live performs very quick
and fluid in every game from Quake II to the newly released System Shock
2.
The CPU
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