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Athlon History: Thoughts?

A

Athlon4all

Diamond Member
I am writing an article for Eliteguild.com (see sig) about the history of the Athlon going back to its launch in August 1999. If you have any comments about how the Athlon has evolved over the years, and would be willing to share them to me. I'm looking for opinions rather than raw info about how the Athlon evolved, especially in 1999 and 2000. You can post your thoughts here (and if you do post, I would go under the assumption that I can quote you in the article) or you can email me (see my profile). Thanks folks. I don't think this is against the rules (is it?) mods if it is then just get rid of it🙂
 
One of the things I've never really heard an opinion on is this question:

Would AMD be in the postion the are now, if Intel had granted them a license to produce chips on the P3 bus?

Personally, I think AMD having to go out and license a bus from Alpha was probably the best thing that ever happened to them. They had to create their own way of how the chip was supposed to work, rather than copy Intel's way.

EDIT: What if AMD had stuck with Socketed chips to begin with? What was the real reason to use Slot's in the original Athlon line? If AMD had used sockets instead of slots to begin with, do you think Intel would still be using slots to this day?

Just some thoughts.
 
EDIT: What if AMD had stuck with Socketed chips to begin with? What was the real reason to use Slot's in the original Athlon line? If AMD had used sockets instead of slots to begin with, do you think Intel would still be using slots to this day?
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They moved the Athlon to off-die on-cartridge L2 Cache. They moved back to Socket for the same reason Intel did. On-Die L2 Cache

btw thanks🙂
 
Well at the time there was a threat of an anti-trust trial against Intel. Is it possible Intel voluntarily held back Willamette in order to let AMD gain some prestige with the Thunderbird? And I wonder to what point the RDRAM fiasco was a "mistake".
At the time I was so stupid, I thought AMD would rape Intel with Athlon and gain something like 30-40% market share. Boy I was wrong, shame on me!
 
I was running a Cyrix200+ and looking for my next speed boost. I was considering a NexGen(?)processor, but was a bit shy at the idea of all the proprietariousness(? - what a word) of the whole thing, so I backed off of it all. AMD, I believe, bought out NexGen and incorporated a lot of the design features into the Athlon. Heard and read a bunch of rumors about upstart(?) AMD, but like who was going to take on Intel?

I eventually settled on a PIII 450setup. The next month the Athlon 500/550 came out and I cried - price and performance better. Now I'm running a 1700+. Love it.
 
Originally posted by: farscape
I was running a Cyrix200+ and looking for my next speed boost. I was considering a NexGen(?)processor, but was a bit shy at the idea of all the proprietariousness(? - what a word) of the whole thing, so I backed off of it all. AMD, I believe, bought out NexGen and incorporated a lot of the design features into the Athlon. Heard and read a bunch of rumors about upstart(?) AMD, but like who was going to take on Intel?

I eventually settled on a PIII 450setup. The next month the Athlon 500/550 came out and I cried - price and performance better. Now I'm running a 1700+. Love it.
Click to expand...

Actually AMD as a company has been along for a LONG time (they are ancient in computer terms). I'm not sure of exactly when they started, but I think that I have a chip around here somewhere that says AMD & 1975(?) on it. Really not sure on the date, but it's long before Microsoft even came about.
 
I was going to get a 500 when they first came out. The first MB's required a 300 wat PSU, but my local PC shop didn't know that. I couldn't get it to run stable for even 2 minutes, and took it back (but I was impressed with the speed!) A few months later they informed me why it wouldn;t work, and by then the 750 was out. I got one (slot A, on-slot 384k cache) and it is still running today. I now have 5 Athlon systems and one Duron. After my past history of paying too much for Intel CPUs I will support AMD as long as they are "in the ball park", and bang for the buck is at least as good (usually better) than Intel at a level 1-2 steps below the bleeding edge. If it weren't for the Athlon, we would all still be paying 3-5 times as much for the intel CPU's. I remember paying $500 for a 486dx266 Intel CPU. At the time you could get a AMD equivalent, but it was a little substandard, even though it was MUCH cheaper. The first time I really got on board was with a K6 166. It would beat a Pentium 200 at many things, and would OC to 200 and kill it easily at that speed on anything. I only paid $320 for it then, and the 200 was over $500 (I think). All I remember for sure was that the K6 beat the 200 Pentium, and cost much less. They really didn't totally shine until the Athlon though. I think their pear was between the 1 ghz launch and up to the early P4's. Somewhere about 6 months after the P4 came out, AMD started slipping. I hope they come back with the Hammer. It will be good for everyone, Intel and AMD fans.
 
Originally posted by: Markfw900
I was going to get a 500 when they first came out. The first MB's required a 300 wat PSU, but my local PC shop didn't know that. I couldn't get it to run stable for even 2 minutes, and took it back (but I was impressed with the speed!) A few months later they informed me why it wouldn;t work, and by then the 750 was out. I got one (slot A, on-slot 384k cache) and it is still running today. I now have 5 Athlon systems and one Duron. After my past history of paying too much for Intel CPUs I will support AMD as long as they are "in the ball park", and bang for the buck is at least as good (usually better) than Intel at a level 1-2 steps below the bleeding edge. If it weren't for the Athlon, we would all still be paying 3-5 times as much for the intel CPU's. I remember paying $500 for a 486dx266 Intel CPU. At the time you could get a AMD equivalent, but it was a little substandard, even though it was MUCH cheaper. The first time I really got on board was with a K6 166. It would beat a Pentium 200 at many things, and would OC to 200 and kill it easily at that speed on anything. I only paid $320 for it then, and the 200 was over $500 (I think). All I remember for sure was that the K6 beat the 200 Pentium, and cost much less. They really didn't totally shine until the Athlon though. I think their pear was between the 1 ghz launch and up to the early P4's. Somewhere about 6 months after the P4 came out, AMD started slipping. I hope they come back with the Hammer. It will be good for everyone, Intel and AMD fans.
Click to expand...

AMD hopes for the Hammer to be big as well. They really started to slip right about when you said because they changed their focus internally to the Hammer. My guess that the Hammer will be met with a mixed response as most of it's benefits come from being 64bit compatible (although it does have other overall benefits), and 99% of all software (including benchmarks) will be 32bit focused. I just see a lot of ppl showing how the P4 still beats it in 32bit benchmarks & not get it at all. Hopefuly 64bit apps will be available to take advantage of that extra speed as well.
 
AMD was founded in 1969, it is 1 year younger than intel.

AMD used to manufacture CPUs for intel (who couldn't make enough for the demand).

AMD made their 286 & 386 clone type cpus. The 486AMDs were quite good (And the Cyrix 486-true totally kicked butt).

(A Cyrix 100Mhz was cool enough to touch - back when 66mhz 486 cpus were hot enough to burn your skin off, they out performed AMD & intel at same clock speed and were easily overclockable. Cyrix lost it on the 586 series of chips)

Intel stopped making x86 named chips because of Cyrix and AMD.

AMD bought NEXGEN (who made a custom RISC>x86 cpu/mobo combo) NexGEN had a very good product with an unheard of 3-5 year warranty. The cpu-board combo is a double edge sword. 1 - No way to selll the CPU as the chip was incompatible with ALL mobos. 2- reliable was HIGH because there were made for each other. 3- upgrades are bad since you bought a packaged deal. 4 - no future.

AMD used NexGEN technology in the x586 cpu - these were the PRE K6 processors. They were OKAY - but not reliable. The K6 chips were FINE office CPUs. But even the K6-2 & K6-3 were never able to equal PII or Celeron 300A performance that games needed. ie: A 333mhz Celeron woul easily KICK the AMD K6-2 450Mhz in 3D games. For 2D desktop, it was the reverse in many cases.

Most K6-2 systems were crap due to the cheaper chips being installed in yet cheaper hardware. (PCChips comes to mind) Stick a P1 or P2 into a CHEAP junky mobo and you'd get an unstable system as well.

While I personally had high hopes for the Athlon CPUs (because I was getting tired of intels games and high prices), I didn't adopt the AMD cpu for the first 2 years due to reliability and stability issues of the mobos and some odd-ball performance issues. The first AMD systems I built was when the TBird-1ghz was NEW and had to upgrade a customers PC who bought a POS SLOT-A board from another vendor. But I still built P3s and Celeron systems as the primary.

When the KT-266A chipset came out (as well as the XP CPUs), I never built another intel system since.

 
My comment comes with frustration I have had over the years with the Alpha bus. The EV6 bus was capable of scaling to 400mhz (200mhz DDR) when they liscensed it. AMD introduced the processor on the 200mhz (100mhz DDR) bus and it was plenty fast. AMD released the 266mhz (133mhz DDR) bus and then sat by and watched Intel quad-pump their 100mhz bus to an effective 400mhz and then later to 533mhz. AMD has seemed reluctant, to put it mildly, to move the Athlon to a faster bus and the 333mhz (166mhz) bus seems like a serious afterthought from a company who seemed to have little to no interest in it. The original post asked for comments and these are mine. I don't care to hear about how the extra bandwith would be wasted because this is all only IMHO. I guess to sum it up.. Intel seems more pro-active in their efforts to reduce "future" system bottlenecks, whereas AMD seems more reactive.
$.02
 
I just have to add to my comments on Intel prices. I was researching a reply for another article (a moron thinks the P4 has the same and variable IPC as an Athlon) and cam across this, which fortifies my hatred of Intel pricing; Quotes Tomshardware, November 2000:
"Pentium 4 at 1.4 GHz goes for $644, Pentium 4 at 1.5 GHz costs $819 right now. It's not exactly a bargain, but, hey, who really cares about price if it really is all about style? "

And this is a reminder to anyone who doesn't support good compitition, even if you like Intel, you better hope AMD survives....................
 
I think AMD was planning on the 333Mhz for the barton core.... but barton isn't ready and the 64bit hammer isn't out as it should be by now.

intel is PRO-ACTIVE, as you say - because there is competition.

 
Actually AMD as a company has been along for a LONG time (they are ancient in computer terms). I'm not sure of exactly when they started, but I think that I have a chip around here somewhere that says AMD & 1975(?) on it. Really not sure on the date, but it's long before Microsoft even came about.
Click to expand...

Oh, I know that AMD has been around for a while. I had an old 386sx of theirs, and I knew that they at one time were a subcontractor of Intel. I was refering to the proverbial cat out of the bag - the K7.

So far, I've run 386sx, a 486 (something or other- can't remember), K6-3 400, 1700+ and never had any problems with any of these AMDs. All were solid machines. My buggy ones were all Intel. Had a buggy Intel 486-66, but that was a long time ago ( my 200+ was more stable). PIII 450 was good tho.
 
Originally posted by: npcom
AMD was founded in 1969, it is 1 year younger than intel.

AMD used to manufacture CPUs for intel (who couldn't make enough for the demand).

AMD made their 286 & 386 clone type cpus. The 486AMDs were quite good (And the Cyrix 486-true totally kicked butt).

(A Cyrix 100Mhz was cool enough to touch - back when 66mhz 486 cpus were hot enough to burn your skin off, they out performed AMD & intel at same clock speed and were easily overclockable. Cyrix lost it on the 586 series of chips)

Intel stopped making x86 named chips because of Cyrix and AMD.

AMD bought NEXGEN (who made a custom RISC>x86 cpu/mobo combo) NexGEN had a very good product with an unheard of 3-5 year warranty. The cpu-board combo is a double edge sword. 1 - No way to selll the CPU as the chip was incompatible with ALL mobos. 2- reliable was HIGH because there were made for each other. 3- upgrades are bad since you bought a packaged deal. 4 - no future.

AMD used NexGEN technology in the x586 cpu - these were the PRE K6 processors. They were OKAY - but not reliable. The K6 chips were FINE office CPUs. But even the K6-2 & K6-3 were never able to equal PII or Celeron 300A performance that games needed. ie: A 333mhz Celeron woul easily KICK the AMD K6-2 450Mhz in 3D games. For 2D desktop, it was the reverse in many cases.

Most K6-2 systems were crap due to the cheaper chips being installed in yet cheaper hardware. (PCChips comes to mind) Stick a P1 or P2 into a CHEAP junky mobo and you'd get an unstable system as well.

While I personally had high hopes for the Athlon CPUs (because I was getting tired of intels games and high prices), I didn't adopt the AMD cpu for the first 2 years due to reliability and stability issues of the mobos and some odd-ball performance issues. The first AMD systems I built was when the TBird-1ghz was NEW and had to upgrade a customers PC who bought a POS SLOT-A board from another vendor. But I still built P3s and Celeron systems as the primary.

When the KT-266A chipset came out (as well as the XP CPUs), I never built another intel system since.
Click to expand...

Great summary.

I'll point out a few significant moments in AMD history. This is purely from an enthusiasts point of view.

Intel trademark's "Pentium", and eliminates AMD and Cyrix ability to "clone" X86 CPU's

AMD uses the 5x86 (133MHz 486) part to compete with the >100 Pentiums because their 5th generation core wasn't primetime. (although having a 486 overclocked to 160MHz was badass)

AMD releases the K5 with confusing PR rating. Same speed chips have 2 different ratings. K5 never mattered much, as they ramped clockspeeds way too slow to compete with Pentiums.

Nexgen based K6 becomes the foundation for real competition for Intel. K6 233 is fastest desktop processor for about a week until...

Intel moves to slot-1 Pentium2 design with on-board L2 cache. Performance kills the k6. AMD responds with faster K6's and the dubious Super Socket 7 platform. This pushes VIA into limelight, albeit with a buggy MVP4 chip. K6-2 with 100MHz bus and 3dnow shows it can outperform P2 in a couple highly AMD optimized benchmarks.

Intel creates Celeron 300A with on-die cache. Many users who stuck with AMD because of high intel prices ditch AMD for this price/performance and overclocking champ.

K6-3 offers improved performance, but flounders. The k6 architecture has just too weak of a FPU to compete with Intel and 3dnow adoption is slow. "Pentium" becomes the "kleenex" of microchips.

Highly anticipated K7 platform emerges, initial motherboards are buggy, high PS requirements. The biggest CPU battle in history is born. AMD Athlon and Pentium 3 race to 1GHz... with AMD winning (sorta).

Both AMD and Intel move to socket platform. VIA has become a viable (pardon the pun) alternative to Intel based motherboards. Many question stability, but many more actually buy the boards.

AMD Duron brings $40 good performance chips to the mainstream. KT133A motherboard is a big win for VIA. Many of those 300A/BX users find themselves switching to T-bird/KT133A platforms. Intel BX motherboard is tough to beat though. "The Pencil Trick" becomes common language for PC tweakers.

In a move some believe was driven entirely by marketing, Intel moves to a long pipe, high clock design Pentium 4. Initial parts perform poorly compared to AMD, but the ball is rolling. AMD remains the enthusiast choice for price/performance and stays strong in the overall performance category until the Northwood P4 emerges.

P4 1.6 is new Celeron300A, almost. Intel captures performance crown by using RDRAM, which everyone loves to hate. Eventually DDR wins. Athlon XP and KT266A is awesome price/performance vs Intel, but AMD is losing at overall performance to high clocked P4's w/ DDR.

Today...

everyone waiting for Barton, Hammer. Intel is showing 3GHz, while AMD plays "PR" games. AMD paper launches XP2400, 2800. AMD still value pick.

I probablky left a ton out, but that's my $0.02

edit ---

just so no one thinks i was harsh on AMD, i've been using/abusing their parts since 386DX40, 486DX4-120, 5x86133, k6200/TX then moved to 300A/BX, Celeron 533/BX, Athlon 800/KT133, I seem to be stuck on this Tbird 1.3/Kt133. Waiting for dasm nForce2... might end up back at intel 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Markfw900
I just have to add to my comments on Intel prices. I was researching a reply for another article (a moron thinks the P4 has the same and variable IPC as an Athlon) and cam across this, which fortifies my hatred of Intel pricing; Quotes Tomshardware, November 2000:
"Pentium 4 at 1.4 GHz goes for $644, Pentium 4 at 1.5 GHz costs $819 right now. It's not exactly a bargain, but, hey, who really cares about price if it really is all about style? "

And this is a reminder to anyone who doesn't support good compitition, even if you like Intel, you better hope AMD survives....................
Click to expand...
Just to keep both sides represented: you gave the 2000 prices for Intel. Lets look at the competition as well. March 6, 2000: 1000 MHz Athlon, $1299. August 28, 2000: 1100 MHz Athlon, $853. October 17, 2000: 1200 MHz Athlon, $612. So complain all you want about Intel's prices, but AMD's prices were nearly the same back then. So when AMD had the hands down best processor, and their largest marketshare - they charged about $1000 for a chip. Gee look what that competition did to the pricing.

That was during the biggest computer boom of all time - very high demand for processors, and very high prices. Six months later the computer boom had ended. AMD's price for their top chip: $350 for the 1400 MHz Athlon. Intel's price for their top chip: $352 for the P4. So was it competition that dropped the price, or was it the economy dying? AMD was great competition and the prices were sky high at the end of 2000, so if competition was the answer why were prices sky high?
 
OK dullard, I don't have any more facts that I care to lookup about the past, but I have been buying PC parts for 17 years, and I remember that every time I went to lookup prices (and I do this weekly) to put together a PC for a friend, Intel was always way more for the same performance until recently. Now it is only 2.5 P4 and above that are overpricing, or out of my price range. However, as an example, here is the price list as of right now at my local discount house:

K7 950 Duron Socket A OEM $28
K7 1200 Duron Socket A OEM $39
K7 1100 ThunderBird OEM $35
K7 1333C (266) ThunderBird OEM $49
XP 1700+ (1466 Mhz) Retail $67
XP 1800+ (1533 Mhz) Retail $81
XP 1900+ (1600 Mhz) Retail $NA
XP 2000+ (1666 Mhz) Retail $97
XP 2100+ (1733 Mhz) Retail $108
XP 2200+ (1800 Mhz) Retail $179
XP 2400+ (2000 Mhz) Retail $215
XP 2600+ (2133 Mhz) Retail $NA

INTEL

Celeron P4 1.7 Ghz 478 Retail $64
Celeron P4 1.8 Ghz 478 Retail $81
Celeron P4 2.0 Ghz 478 Retail $97
Pentium 3 1.2 Ghz Tualatin Retail $120
Pentium 4 1.8a Ghz 478 512k Retail $162
Pentium 4 2.0a Ghz 478 512k Retail $185
Pentium 4 2.2a Ghz 478 512k Retail $220
Pentium 4 2.4b Ghz 478 512k Retail $220
Pentium 4 2.53b Ghz 478 512k Retail $270
Pentium 4 2.6b Ghz 478 512k Retail $342
Pentium 4 2.8b Ghz 478 512k Retail $443

Now the most exspensive XP is the 2400+ at $215, and that is less than the 2.2a P4. And this is the same type snapshot that I see everyday in comparing prices. And nobody I know really needs more than 2 ghz. (just wants) And these are available NOW and with NO shipping to me.
 
From a corporate IT management perspective?.

As I recall, the pre-athlon processors had some reliability and stability issues. Certainly not all of them but enough that we wouldn?t touch an AMD based system for corporate use. Pricing for AMD based systems was very attractive, but if you considered the total cost of ownership, the Intel based systems got the nod. Systems that had reliability and stability issues require more support, which quickly eats up any initial cost savings.

Probably the most important factor is job security. You wouldn?t lose your job if you bought Intel, but if you bought AMD and several VP?s lost data because their processor locked up?.. you could find yourself out of a job.

AMD has some good technology, offers excellent value, and provides much needed competition to Intel. However, when it comes to marketing, they are severely outclassed and outspent by Intel. AMD name recognition and brand awareness is poor.

The reliability and stability issues are pretty much gone from the AMD based systems, but the reluctance and fear to use AMD still lingers somewhat in the corporate world.
 
Most of the relibilty issues of the K6 series of CPUs came from the mobo chipsets. Hence, AMD created chipsets (to jump start the K7) for future chips.

K6 CPUs were usually running on Mobos designed to run P1 CPUS! Look what AMD, they took an OLD tech and was able to ramp it up to 500Mhz!! Not bad.


Another thing I would like to add to merlocka post... he said that VIA expanded into the market with their boards a few years back. The REASON for this is that intel screwed up their 820 chipset... so VIA was the only supplier of chipsets that could do AGP 4x and ATA 66 while intel was stuck with AGP2x & ATA BX chipsets. And of course the 810 was not a power users board for its lack of AGP.

 
Opinions?

Fact: AMD has always undercut Intel after the initial shortage of a new model at intro. (You have to know this by having followed market prices -not announced prices- at the time.) Why? Because AMD is run by nice people? No; AMD needs to get part of Intel's market share to move into profitablity. That means competition. With a mass market item you have to recoup costs over some large number of items. Another way to put this is that AMD is nice because they have no alternative. (That's also why capitalists are nicer than commie b*st*rds and socialist beaurocrats.)

True: prices are depressed in a general economic slump. AMDs prices are more depressed than Intel's. A lot of the economy is now out of the general slump. For CPUs, there is another cause. Another type of competition has driven the performance of CPUs so high so fast that they have overrun the need. When frivolity and waste eventually return, as the economy picks up, prices will make a comeback. Meanwhile Intel and AMD are forced into a value-pricing strategy just to limit losses. Yep, lowering prices is the optimum stategy when you are losing money on a mass-market item. Units sold is more important than margin. Why? The finance charges on their capital investment continue regardless of what they do. They can't just sit tight and wait until things pick up without going bankrupt. They have to maximize revenue, not margin.

AMDs success or failure with Athlon and Hammer depends a lot on the law and history. AMD makes CPUs that run the x86 instruction set, which is Intel's creation. Why does AMD have the legal right to do so? An Intel license? No; Intel lost their bid to put Zilog out of business with a lawsuit. Zilog was a group of renegade Intel employees that started their own company to make chips (the Z80) that were faster and cheaper than Intel's original but ran the 8080 instruction set. By losing that lawsuit, a precedent was established. (One reason companies would rather settle than go to judgement.) So today AMD can make CPUs that clone Intel's 8086 and 80386 instruction set regardless of Intel's wishes without having to pay Intel a penny. (It is still illegal to violate Intel's copyright on the instruction names, and if you notice AMD names are slightly different than Intel's)

AMD owes something to Cyrix. The original Cyrix corporation was formed to clone Intel chips. Several companies provided the capital. Once Cyrix designed the chip, the idea was that these companies would get the right to manufacture it. They needed to form a separate corporation to limit their liability in case of a successly lawsuit by Intel. By that time Intel's chips were exceedingly complex. It was, and still is, illegal to simply copy the hardware. Yet it had to be a complete work-alike. To do this, they establish a so-called "clean room" environment. One set of engineers determines all the electrical and signal characteristics of the chip under all possible conditions. A separate set of engineers design a chip to that spec. No other information is ever passed between the two. Provided you can prove it in court, you have the legal right to make the chip on the basis that it is an original design. Sound dubious? It is. But Cyrix established it for x86 clones. Later NexGen, and AMD when they bought NexGen, did the same thing.

(BTW Cyrix first hit big with a FPU unit that plugged into Intel's FPU socket when the FPU was a separate chip. It blew Intel's away.)

Up until Intel decided to swat AMD for chiseling-in on Intel's chip sales (286, 386, 486), Intel and AMD had a cross-licensing agreement, meaning they had the complete rights to duplicate each other chip dies. AMD did not have to design CPUs to sell them. AMD had been producing improved versions of Intel's CPUs. Intel had tried to break the agreement for years. The lawyers could not agree. Besides Intel's die design, AMD had a backup 486 design that was its own, or _maybe_ it was its own, in case they lost in court. AMD lost some cases and won some. I remember that people were worried they might not be able to buy those faster, cheaper AMD 486s from week to week.

After the Pentium, during which AMD made K5 and K6's to plug into Intel's socket, Intel decided to put AMD out of business. AMD was forcing Intel to make excessive capital expenditures, whch Intel's superb marketing staff knew were otherwise unnecessary. I don't understand, and didn't follow, the legalistics, but the slot1's purpose was to make it illegal for AMD to produce chips that could plug into Intel sockets. AMD never tried to challenge the legal aspects AFAIK. (Exactly what you expect from a big corporation.) AMD should have gradually faded out of the x86 business. Instead they pulled off a miracle. It was impossible. Any design produced by AMD should have been a least a year behind Intel when it came into production. Intel had at least ten times the resources of AMD. An impossible mismatch. Nobody but crazed gamblers, or the ill-informed, would have bet on AMD. It looked like I was going to have to start paying $500 for entry level CPUs. Part of the Athlon's success was disinformation "leaked" by AMD like some CIA counter-intelligence maneuver. Intel did not put quite enough into the product which they thought sufficient to trounce AMD. (Intel won't be fooled again.)

Although it is obvious when you call attention to it, it is sometimes not mentioned that the AMD Athlon CPU and mobo has shadowed Intel. AMD made slot CPUs while Intel was making slot CPUs. Intel abandons the inferior slot design to return to sockets. So does AMD. (Of course AMD engineers, like everyone, understood the slot design was inferior even while AMD was making them.) Intel goes to bare organic CPU slugs without a heat spreader. So does AMD. Intel turns to organic (plastic) chip carriers. So does AMD. Why does AMD do this? One reason is that by paralleling Intel, AMD keeps their costs of production in line with Intel. Once vendors gear up to supply to Intel, that stuff becomes the cheapest thing available.

AMD can't sustain the incredible ad budget of Intel. So they cater to the desires of the Internet techie nerd sites to spred the word as best they can. This has led to the unlockablity of AMD CPUs. There is no way AMD wants it to be easily unlockable by the average user. That would undermine the pricing structure, just like it would for Intel. Still, AMD CPUs remain unlockable. As AMD has slipped in status among the inner circle, they have made the latest CPUs easy to unlock with the latest mobos.
 
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