I have built thousands of systems, and used many AMD chips. I started using them with the 386DX-40, later the 386SX-33 and 40, and many forms of AMD 486's. These parts were complete clones of the Intel designs, and worked exactly the same, except for some AMD clock speed versions never offered by Intel. AMD built these chips because of certain cross-licensing agreements with Intel that AMD claimed covered the 386 and 486 families. Intel disagreed, and the matter was debated in court for many years, until finally AMD had to develop their own original designs rather than just clone the Intel.
When the Pentium hit the scene is its real form, the 3.3V P90/100, there was no AMD competition for it. AMD developed the K5, but it was a flop. Extremely large die size limited clock speed below competitive levels. I, and everyone else, used Intel chips during this period. There was a brief challenge from Cyrix, which actually had a more competitive chp than AMD during this period.
AMD's saving grace came from purchasing the dying NexGen company, who had developed and marketed the 5x86 chip, a true risc core adapted to run the cisc x86 instruction set. The downside to these chips is they were not pin-compatible with the Pentium, and therefore needed a propriatary motherboard. They were not a huge success. The next generation of NexGen, the 6x86, was technically advanced, but still suffered from the unique chipset requirments.
AMD purchased NexGen and developed a Socket 7 compatible version of the 6x86. This was smart move as AMD's internally developed K6 core was another flop. The re-packaged 6x86 was christened the K6, and the race was on. When the K6 hit the market is was a tick faster than the P166 and 200 chips that where then the top of intel's line. But Intel soon responded with the Pentium MMX chips, which had the benefit of a larger L1 cache. This leveled the playing field with the K6.
I continued to sell Intel systems, but the later K6-2 was both cheap and fast. I sold a great many K6-2/300s, 350s, and 400s. These did well, but did depend on the somewhat finicky Via S7 chipsets and K6 windows patches to keep them stable. The good times came to and end with the K6-2/450. I built a large quantitiy of these, and they came back to haunt me. They would not stay stable at 450MHz, regardless of motherboard, heatsink, ram, or effort. The store I worked for then had to replace many of these chips with Celeron 433's, or K6-3/450s that were more expensive. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn't build any more AMD systems, save a test rig now and then to monitor their progress.
I built more LX and BX machines than I can count. They where marvelously stable chipsets, and very good performers. In later years I built wickedly overclocked P3 and coppermine P3 systems that overwhelmed the K7 (Athlon) systems that were handicapped by the rough KT133a chipset. My personal rig until recently was a P3-700@1050MHz on an Asus P3B-F BX board. At the time I constructed it it was unmatched.
I continued to watch Athlons improve as I happily used my BX rig. Tbirds gave AMD a clock speed advantage over the stagnant P3 line. And Intel tried to force RDRAM on the market for its own reasons, and it confused the product offereings and consumers at the same time. The early P4's were expensive and a dubious improvement over their P3 predecessors. AMD continued to develop their Athlon, and it became the Athlon XP. The final piece of the puzzle was DDR SDRAM, first supported on the Socket A platform by the AMD 760, and later 761. The Via KT266a finally gave AMD a competetive platform, and made AXP the winner we know it to be today.
Intel's limited early P4's and RDRAM penchant gave AMD more market share than it ever dreamed. I was about to give up on Intel and build a KT266a/AXP rig to replace the aging P3. But lo and behold the Northwood and 845e came to the rescue. Value and superior performance once again became an Intel hallmark, and the typically superior stability and compatiblity of Intel chipsets is just as beneficial as ever. I bought my 1.6a, and am glad I weathered the tough times and stuck with Intel. The current Intel 845pe and Northwood CPU's are very satisfying indeed.
