If we're going to not revise history it's probably important to not leave out the actual meat of what made AMD's Zen processors so compelling: core count.
Zen 1 launched offering double the core count of any of Intel's competing products at the same price. Intel was ahead on single core performance for a long time but in any well multi threaded benchmark or app Intel was getting absolutely demolished, with AMD offering twice the performance Intel was at any pricepoint. Intel failed to compete in multithreaded apps for 4 product generations, giving AMD enough time to close the single threaded performance gap too.
Now they are both pretty close performance wise, but AMD is well ahead from a power efficiency standing compared to Intel's competing CPUs.
>Intel failed to compete in multithreaded apps for 4 product generations
Sure, and they got away with it because multi-thread workloads aren't relevant for the vast majority of the population. They still aren't today.
Most consumer computing workloads, including gaming by far, are dependent on single-thread performance. The vast majority of people do not spend their computing hours encoding video, compiling source code, or simulating proteins. They play games, surf Facebook, watch Youtube, read Mysterious Twitter X, and chat or call friends and family on LINE/Discord/Skype/et al.
In case you are detached from reality, I ask you to realize most peoples' computing needs today can be satisfactorily satisfied with an Intel N100. That's a two generations old 4 core, 4 thread CPU among the lowest tiers of consumer CPUs availabe.
Hell, I personally can satisfy all my daily computing needs with an Intel i7-2700K Sandy Bridge CPU without feeling hindered. I surmise most people will be satisfied with far less.
Another way to put it is: For all the core counts AMD Ryzen (and now Intel) brought, most people can't actually make full use of them even today. That's another reason why AMD Ryzen took so long to become a practical competitor to Intel Core i instead of a meme spread by the vocal minority.
Zen 1 launched offering double the core count of any of Intel's competing products at the same price. Intel was ahead on single core performance for a long time but in any well multi threaded benchmark or app Intel was getting absolutely demolished, with AMD offering twice the performance Intel was at any pricepoint. Intel failed to compete in multithreaded apps for 4 product generations, giving AMD enough time to close the single threaded performance gap too.
Now they are both pretty close performance wise, but AMD is well ahead from a power efficiency standing compared to Intel's competing CPUs.