Quote Originally Posted by Sweepslag View Post
I tend to think there is more to it than just RAM. The Thunderbird chips completely buried the Pentium 4 in every respect, so Intel got a massive wake-up call, and invested heavily in building a new architecture from the ground up. The result was the Core 2 series, which was the basis for everything they've done since then. AMD simply failed to come up with an architecture that could match the Core series for performance and efficiency. Why that is, I don't know. Lack of R&D cash compared to Intel may have played a part.
The actual result was the Pentium D, but it was a disaster, but they recovered well with the Core 2 range after that.

The Core architecture hit AMD where it hurt, but the biggest damage to AMD's long-term health came from Intel's execution strategy. Beginning around the same time, Intel moved to a system of smaller but aggressively timed processor updates that it called "tick-tock."

Every year, Intel would introduce a new processor lineup—the "ticks" would gently tweak a CPU architecture and move it to a smaller, lower-power manufacturing process, while the "tocks" would remain on the established manufacturing process and introduce more drastic architectural changes. This system limits the risk that a new process or architecture will run into significant problems during the manufacturing stage, and new processor iterations can be introduced so quickly that a competitor with a superior architecture won't necessarily be able to stay on top for years, as AMD did with K8.

Neither Core nor any subsequent Intel architecture has left AMD behind all by itself, but Core 2 kicked off a relentless string of well-executed Intel CPUs. While AMD's CPUs continued to improve, they were over time shut out of the high-end market once more and forced to compete again mainly on price, mirroring the company's early struggles.