Nice nostalgic piece. I have a lot of fond "favorite chip" memories from that era.

Not to be too pedantic, I would contend that at the time, it was pretty clear to enthusiast what the differences were. Everyone in the industry was paying attention to 486s and the cost of a genuine intel chip. The FDIV bug was on every Evening News for weeks. AMD and Cyrix vs intel debates were common.

I agree that it is not obvious now that Pentium came after 486, but at the time, it was clear.