The amazing i820 saga
13 days ago
- #CPU History
- #Tech Failures
- #Intel vs AMD
- Intel faced severe production shortages in 1999-2000, leading to scarcity of Celerons and Pentium-IIIs, pushing some to AMD Athlons.
- The 'race to 1000MHz' between Intel and AMD was more about marketing than reality, with both companies struggling to deliver viable products at that speed.
- AMD's Athlon Thunderbird and Duron CPUs outperformed expectations, with Duron surprising by matching Pentium-III performance.
- Intel's i820 chipset was a commercial and technical failure, plagued by issues with RDRAM and SDRAM compatibility, leading to massive recalls.
- The transition from Slot A to Socket A for AMD processors marked a significant design improvement, though early Socket A chips were fragile and required careful handling.
- Performance scaling in CPUs like the Athlon Classic was affected by cache speed relative to CPU speed, with higher models not delivering proportional performance gains.
- The Pentium-III 666 (officially 667) was notable for its naming controversy and performance, especially with a 133MHz bus.
- AMD's Duron series offered excellent price-performance ratios, particularly appealing to gamers, though business users saw less benefit from upgrades.
- Intel's strategy with the i820 chipset and Rambus RAM backfired, benefiting competitors like VIA and AMD in the chipset and CPU markets respectively.