While Conroe was definitely solid, last time around in getting there Intel didn't just pursue the technical side of bumping clocks/power, they also engaged in some genuinely illegal anticompetitive practices to get OEMs to not use AMD. So AMD wasn't able to leverage their few years of advantage into marketshare that would enable more sustained R&D, thus when Intel did regain the lead with a new architecture they had lost essentially nothing in the way of strategic position. The $1.25 billion AMD ultimately got out of Intel in a settlement years later didn't erase that advantage.
This time around though Intel isn't in the same position at all to dictate to major market players for a variety of reasons. The current big lucky break catapulting AMD way into the lead is certainly temporary, but it does seem like they'll be able to gain some real marketshare and attention. That will hopefully serve to make this time around end up in a much more stable back and forth.
I remember seeing AMD is growing R&D by 18% next year... what that means in practice, who knows. I am hoping to see them more competitive on the high end of graphics though... > $1100 for a top end consumer video card is crazy.
My understanding is that Nvidia can't produce enough GPU to saturate their pro market, the demand is huge as we speak and only increasing for now (looking at you, ML).
So AMD (or rather, their RTG division specifically) would be remiss not to align their price/perf with Nvidia to maximize profit.
A reason why they'll probably stay 'cheaper' to some extent for some time (perhaps long) is that they don't compete against CUDA, Nvidia's silver bullet. And don't just think “muh fancy library”, think hordes of engineers that Nvidia has the financial muscle to deploy in the field, 'lending' them to customers who need ad hoc driver work, custom implementations, general help, and what-have-you.
CUDA is a war machine, because that's how Nvidia operates its strategy.
It's how they owned the video game market back then, and I'm pretty sure they do the same with CUDA / ML / compute (why wouldn't they).
I thought that OpenCL would eventually be to CUDA what Vulkan is becoming to DirectX (btw: thank you, Linux); but it seems to me that OpenCL is going the way of the dodo? (still very little support in all ML/compute software I encounter, anecdotally).
AMD can sell a ton of GPU at good price, and they should, but they're lagging behind because optimized software libraries support (CUDA, the whole commercial hammer it represents) is where it's at.
Fortunately or not for them, Intel's graphics efforts seem to be... hype, more than a truly organized effort (insiders leaks speak of a terrible, terrible political / manegerial / organization situation at Intel's). It's fortunate for AMD's graphics market share, but it's unfortunate in that Intel would be a major support for OpenCL (last I checked, at least) and Intel's rise on that market could have taken AMD's hardware along with it in a tsunami of competition for CUDA.
Eeeeh, still seeing signs of this in the NUC and Laptop space. For instance you can find a laptop with anything faster than a RTX 2060 despite 4800/4900HS completely thrashing the Intel line of laptop chips.
This time around though Intel isn't in the same position at all to dictate to major market players for a variety of reasons. The current big lucky break catapulting AMD way into the lead is certainly temporary, but it does seem like they'll be able to gain some real marketshare and attention. That will hopefully serve to make this time around end up in a much more stable back and forth.