AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Tom’s Hardware, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

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Twenty-five years ago today, AMD launched its Athlon XP processor family based on the Palomino core. These chips ran at lower raw clock speeds than Intel’s Pentium 4 rivals but delivered comparable or better application and gaming performance. To address this marketing imbalance, AMD introduced a Performance Rating (PR) system alongside the slogan "Performance matters more than MHz." This campaign aimed to challenge the industry standard that equated higher megahertz with superior performance.

In October 2001, Tom’s Hardware tested these processors and found that an Athlon XP 1800+ beat Intel’s flagship Pentium 4 2 GHz in most benchmarks. The review also noted that an Athlon XP running at 1533 MHz could match or exceed a Pentium 4 clocked nearly 33% higher. Editor Mark Tyson explained that AMD wisely undersold its chips using the PR naming system to avoid strong opposition, as the company had little alternative marketing option during the Pentium versus Athlon era.

The PR system was eventually abandoned roughly five years later as CPU architectures evolved and multi-core technology emerged. Intel’s MHz advantage diminished with newer chip designs, while the well-received AMD Athlon 64 made the inferiority complex of the PR system less relevant. By the end of the decade, marketing focus shifted away from clock speeds entirely. Although some initially compared the new rating to a "Pentium Rating," it was intended as an independent measure of realistic performance rather than a direct competitor to Intel’s existing metrics.