http://www.redhill.net.au/c-2.html
"It seems hard to believe now, but even leaving the main board aside, the 386DX-25 CPU was very, very expensive when it first came out. This is almost always the case with the fastest parts, and these were the fastest chip on the planet in their day. As so often with the leading-edge parts, they sold in tiny numbers. We sold a couple of ALR DX-25 machines back in 1989 for about $5000 each, without monitor. As a trade-in now, they'd not be worth five dollars?indeed, we would have to pay someone to take them away.
The biggest single reason that their leading-edge equivalent today, an Athlon XP or a Pentium 4, costs less than a quarter as much is not technical progress (though the progress of the hardware side of the industry truly has been massive), nor is it manufacturing efficiency (though this too has improved a great deal: it is competition. In 1989 if you wanted a powerful X86 computer CPU there was only one supplier, and the price was whatever they cared to make it.
It is very different now, of course, and it was with the now-humble but then leading-edge 386DX-25 that AMD made their entry into the X86 business as a competitor in their own right.
"
seriously, its bad enough major OEM's only supply intel chips. but for enthusiasts that are a very small minority in relation to big picture, sways between amd and intel makes it worse. i mean cmon, if you want high end, get a A64, if you want price performance, get a 2500+ barton, if you want cheap, get tbred.
"It seems hard to believe now, but even leaving the main board aside, the 386DX-25 CPU was very, very expensive when it first came out. This is almost always the case with the fastest parts, and these were the fastest chip on the planet in their day. As so often with the leading-edge parts, they sold in tiny numbers. We sold a couple of ALR DX-25 machines back in 1989 for about $5000 each, without monitor. As a trade-in now, they'd not be worth five dollars?indeed, we would have to pay someone to take them away.
The biggest single reason that their leading-edge equivalent today, an Athlon XP or a Pentium 4, costs less than a quarter as much is not technical progress (though the progress of the hardware side of the industry truly has been massive), nor is it manufacturing efficiency (though this too has improved a great deal: it is competition. In 1989 if you wanted a powerful X86 computer CPU there was only one supplier, and the price was whatever they cared to make it.
It is very different now, of course, and it was with the now-humble but then leading-edge 386DX-25 that AMD made their entry into the X86 business as a competitor in their own right.
"
seriously, its bad enough major OEM's only supply intel chips. but for enthusiasts that are a very small minority in relation to big picture, sways between amd and intel makes it worse. i mean cmon, if you want high end, get a A64, if you want price performance, get a 2500+ barton, if you want cheap, get tbred.
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