Yeah, even in like 1996/1997 for certain industries there were hints as to the way things were going, even if it took 4/5 years for the transition to fully take place.
For example, in 1996/1997, Digital Domain (VFX industry) used a 'render farm' cluster of Carrera Alpha workstations running NT to render the Titanic film, instead of SGIs running IRIX. (SGIs were still often used on the artists workstations though, but progressively that shifted).
By 2001, many of those machines were x86 which were then often as fast as the SGIs and Alphas, even with x86's stack-based floating point architecture which handicapped it a bit, and the significantly higher memory bandwidth and larger caches of the SGIs.
For example, in 1996/1997, Digital Domain (VFX industry) used a 'render farm' cluster of Carrera Alpha workstations running NT to render the Titanic film, instead of SGIs running IRIX. (SGIs were still often used on the artists workstations though, but progressively that shifted).
By 2001, many of those machines were x86 which were then often as fast as the SGIs and Alphas, even with x86's stack-based floating point architecture which handicapped it a bit, and the significantly higher memory bandwidth and larger caches of the SGIs.