Ever since 1969, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc.) has been producing semi-conductors for use in server technology and personal computers. They experienced rapid growth through the 1990s as they competed with Intel for the desktop and server PC market. They came out with their own type of AMD computer processors (CPUs) which quickly became popular as a less expensive competitor to Intel. Since that time, the company has continued to cultivate plus they now employee almost 17,000 people plus they continue steadily to produce various semi-conductors for various computer uses. Their hottest product, however, continues to be the AMD computer processor.
Some of the new processors that AMD offers for use as CPUs in PC's are the Phenom, Avalon, Opteron, Turion 64 X2 and several other chipsets. These chips are just as good or superior to the comparable chips manufactured by Intel. When choosing a new system, there is really no reason to choose one manufacturer over the other. Before, AMD processors used to be priced lower than the Intel CPUs, but that isn't always the case anymore. Since
more info will often outperform the same type of chip created by Intel, AMD has priced their chips to be closer in cost to the Intel.
System builders also used to favor the AMD CPUs since there have been higher margins in systems built with AMD chips. And since a lot of people wouldn't know the difference between a PC constructed with an Intel chip or AMD chip, many systems were built using AMD chips. This was a smart choice as running Windows on either chip will give the user the same look and feel. There is absolutely no difference in the manner Windows behaves having an Intel or AMD chip.
Also, home system builders also used many AMD processors to get just as much bang for the buck as you possibly can. Also, they are favorites for overclocking. Overclocking simply means pushing a chip to a higher speed than it is rated for. With certain motherboard and processor combinations, it is possible to push a chip to 15% to 20% faster than what it really is rated for. Home builders have come up with many ways to do this with AMD processors. (However, Intel has kept up and now overclocking of Intel processors is also possible.)