Technology

PC processors entered the Gigahertz era today in the year 2000 with AMD's Athlon — AMD hit marketing gold with its 1 GHz Athlon, beat Intel by a nose

Source

Tom's Hardware

Published

Mar 7, 2026

TL;DR

AI Generated

In the year 2000, AMD made a significant leap in PC processor technology by shipping its 1 GHz Athlon CPU, marking the beginning of the Gigahertz era. AMD's marketing success with this milestone processor slightly edged out its competitor Intel. The launch was compared to historic achievements like man's first steps on the moon and breaking the four-minute-mile record. Intel, caught off guard by AMD's announcement, responded with a paper launch of its 1 GHz Pentium III chip but faced supply issues. This event marked a pivotal moment in the CPU industry's history.

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TL;DR

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PC processors entered the Gigahertz era today in the year 2000 with AMD's Athlon — AMD hit marketing gold with its 1 GHz Athlon, beat Intel by a nose

TL;DR

Similar Articles

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China's next-gen CPUs and GPUs prepare to challenge last-gen Intel and AMD in 2027 — Loongson 3B6600 and 9A1000 aim to match Intel's 12th Gen and AMD's RX 550

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AMD is reportedly developing an entry-level RDNA 4 GPU with 8GB of VRAM — RX 9050 rumored to debut with 2048 cores, more than RX 9060