I wonder if it did? Who bought a laptop because it had an Intel CPU? I know I always bought Intel laptops because Intel laptops were the only things available, not because I have some high view of Intel as a brand. I imagine the vast majority of laptop buyers wouldn't even know what an Intel is.
That was a long time ago. AMD has shipped iGPUs/integrated platforms and dGPUs with fully mainlined drivers for ages now. Only recently has Intel gained credibility with Iris iGPUs beating AMD's, whereas for the longest time you had to pair Intel platforms with Nvidia GPUs to get any kind of graphics performance, spelling trouble due to Nvidia's insistence on closed drivers and binary blobs.
Back when I was not on Mac, I always preferred laptops with Intel integrated graphics, regardless of performance. It was just better drivers, less battery drain and boards didn't fail either. My first laptop had NVIDIA graphics, and it was whole combination of bad drivers and motherboard frying because of overheating. Things have probably changed, but I'd just get one with Intel graphics -- just because I trust Intel to keep pushing better drivers based on their history.
Speaking on AMD, 10 years ago at-least, there were very few premium AMD laptops, and they used to overheat quite a bit, has that changed?
Yes, AMD's APUs have filled the market vertical with good integrated graphics and CPUs starting about a decade ago with the AMD A4 through A10 lineup, and continuing today with the Ryzen processors with Radeon Graphics.
GPUs of the era your thinking of had high failure rates from issues with lead free solder, though the Nvidia GPUs on Macs and Laptops would outright fail from other issues, requiring a full chip replacement.
For the Linux users I was referring to, the most graphically intensive thing many of them run is a desktop compositor.
But yes, today, AMD iGPUs are a great choice for mobile, and AMD dGPUs are a great choice for desktop or for i-don't-care-about-battery gaming laptops.
I've seen this come up a few different ways over the past year, and I think I've also read that Intel contributes more to kernel development than any other company. One thing I'm wondering is: how dependent on Intel have desktop Linux distros become?
nothing much slower than when an nvidia dkms process fails silently and you're left without video options at next boot -- something that generally can't happen with intel-video/linux.
I get your point, but intel video options perform on par or better with regards to the most common consumer video rendering demands at this point. Video acceleration and high resolutions and multiple displays are well covered -- not everyone needs to process GPGPU workloads and play the newest games at 90FPS.
I don't know, for a good while before Ryzen came out Intel CPUs were widely regarded as the best choice, so the marketing may very well have helped move machines.
On an unrelated note, "perverts" doesn't seem to me like a particularly kind appellation.
the pentiums were a huge leap from the amd 386/486 and cyrix options. 'Intel Inside' was basically a premium-product differentiator for those that could afford it, and that was well understood by consumers at the time.
Ferrari/Gucci/Armani/Rolex/Louis Roederer labels also help to push product. Same phenomenon, people didn't buy Intel strictly because it was needed for specific workloads, they bought it because of the fancy sticker that differentiated their product from cheaper alternatives; even if the person didn't know thing-one about computers or CPUs.
It sounds corny, but having lived through it I can vouch that things are really that stupid.
I always bought Intel CPU laptops. Could never figure out the AMD naming scheme (and still can't but that goes for Intel now too). Also back then it seemed the AMD laptops were of poorer quality than the Intel ones.
It was one of the most successful branding campaigns. It allowed Intel to become the primary brand over the laptop/pc vendors. You can buy Acer/HP/Dell/... Because they are all Intel. Even non tech people understood that and this gave great bargaining power to Intel.
> It was one of the most successful branding campaigns. It allowed Intel to become the primary brand over the laptop/pc vendors.
I mean, it coincided with that. It's not clear how much was caused by branding/marketing and how much was caused by Intel being better (at least in laptops) from the Core Duo days until now[1] plus-or-minus a few years?
---
1. Honestly, I haven't kept up with laptop hardware performance during the AMD chiplet era.
For what it's worth, the laptop I currently use for work I requested a few years ago specifically because it had an Intel CPU – not necessarily because of performance (though that was a factor) but also I know how to get important performance counters out of it for diagnosing performance issues. I don't know if I'd make the same judgment today, though.
Because that’s part of the deal. You sell the campaign to Dell and promise to do co-marketing and advertising - how effective it is when 90% of the prebuilt market is already Intel is left to the reader.
I always buy Intel. I simply do not care for AMD's software jank, Intel has consistently proven more stable and reliable and that's not something I'm willing to trade for marginal differences in performance caps.
Among sophisticated consumers you would think people buy a laptop based on thermal envelope and longlasting performance on battery. The marketing around Intel CPU and the Nazi concentration camp style model numbers takeaway from an informed choice.
"Intel Inside" worked to build awareness of the Intel brand. The campaign validated the idea that, for a certain amount of ad spending, one can build brand awareness, even for a CPU chip. But, compared to Qualcomm, for example, do people need to be aware of a brand in order for that brand to be dominant?
With the rise of mobile gaming, the fact that people don't know what chip is in their phone casts even more doubt on the value of brand awareness. Intel got dominant by always having a design and/or fab dominance over rivals. A "one-two punch." Who among PC buyers understood that?
On top of that, if Gelsinger is serious about building a contract fab business, that has sales and marketing needs way outside of anything Intel does today.
