Screaming Sindy II complicated the position while suits from Intel baffled us mere hacks with semiconductor science. When the Pentium 4 arrived to hysterical excitement from the press, the szechuan wasn't that much clearer. The hardware sites huffed and puffed attempting to compare AMD's microprocessor with the Intel offering but seemingly to little avail. The testing was complicated by the fact that there was little software that took advantage of Screaming Sindy II, and also by conflicting claims about Rambus memory and the like. Intel MMX won the day.
Marketing always seems to beat benchmarketing when the chips are down.
It seemed to us, when we visited Taiwan again in September, that Marmosetzilla was pursuing its own agenda - and we were left with the definite feeling that if it was forced to plump between INTCzilla and AMDzilla, it would choose the former, rather than the latter. Behind the scenes, Via is quietly pushing its own microprocessors, usually codenamed after Old Testament characters, in important markets such as China, India and Latin America. Throughout the second half of this year, AMD was quietly cleaning up in the European market, although its grasp on the corporate sector remained slender. The Megahurts Madness, as we predicted here in January, had taken its toll and consumers were not voting with their feet and buying shiny bright new PCs for stacks of extra bucks just to get a few extra mips to play Quake III or whatever. The advantage to us plebs is that we get more powerful PCs, the disadvantage to margins for the big semiconductor firms is clear enough.