Key information
Twenty-five years ago, AMD introduced the Athlon XP processor family, utilizing the Palomino core. To address the marketing disadvantage caused by Intel's higher clock speeds, AMD launched a campaign to challenge the 'megahertz myth' with the slogan 'Performance matters more than MHz.'
The company implemented a Performance Rating (PR) system to reflect actual capabilities rather than raw frequency. This strategy aimed to highlight that their processors could match or exceed the performance of Intel's Pentium 4 chips despite running at lower clock speeds.
In an October 2001 review, Thomas Pabst noted that the AthlonXP 1800+ outperformed Intel's 2 GHz Pentium 4 in most benchmarks. Pabst observed that an AthlonXP running at 1533 MHz could beat a Pentium 4 operating at a 33% higher clock speed, concluding that AMD had little alternative but to adopt this naming convention.
The PR system was eventually abandoned after roughly five years. As market trends shifted toward multi-core architectures and new designs like the Athlon 64 emerged, the need to compare against Intel's clock speeds diminished, leading to the eventual removal of frequency-based marketing.
