Inside the Machine

Conclusion

The Pentium may not have outperformed its RISC contemporaries, but it was superior enough to its x86-based competition to keep Intel comfortably in command of the commodity PC market. Indeed, prior to the rise of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) as a serious competitor, Intel had the luxury of setting the pace of progress in the x86 PC space. Products were released when Intel was ready to release them, and clock speeds climbed when Intel was ready for them to climb. Intel’s competitors were left to respond to what the larger chipmaker was doing, with their own x86 products always lagging significantly behind Intel’s in performance and popularity.

AMD’s Athlon was the first x86 processor to pose any sort of threat to Intel’s technical dominance, ...