About that name "Athlon",
I agree with everything you said. I'll just put another viewpoint on things.
Brand name recognition is king. No matter how many benchmarks AMD publishes on K6, K6-2, K6-III, even 3DNow!, the fact is that people associate K-whatever with el-cheapo technology. (Please don't flame me, this has nothing to do with merit, only consumer perception.)
Now AMD has a chance to try and take the performance crown away from Intel. What better way to make an impact than to create a new brand name and immediately associate it with blazing-fast performance? Everyone is talking about how the tables have turned, that this is a new revolution, yada yada. Well, if AMD wants this to be a new revolution, they not going to hail the revolution with a mere evolutionary name like K7.
Now all AMD needs is a good advertising campaign. I remember how effective Apple's "Pentium II on a snail" commercials were in convincing people that PowerPC was twice as fast, even if that performance advantage was only demonstrated on one synthetic benchmark that meant squat. Perhaps AMD's advertising department is thinking along similar lines, i.e. take the brand name that everyone knows, which is Pentium, and trash it.
As for how ridiculous the name "Athlon" sounds, well, I remember all of the jokes that went around when the "Pentium" brand name was first invented. Of course, Intel got the last laugh, since the name "Pentium" became as ubiquitous as "Coca-Cola". In any case, any new brand name is going to sound idiotic at first. But if AMD's marketing department does a good job, no one will be laughing at that name come year 2000.
Of course, AMD's marketing seems to be as effective as Gore's campaign managers, but at least AMD has something of substance to work with.
Tenchusatsu |
