Battle Between Intel and AMD is going on since the beginning. Being the major player in CPU market they both are arch nemesis of each other. They both have very fascinating history.
While buying a new computer people often got worried which CPUs to choose from. Some people cannot decide which one should they get Intel or AMD. In this article I will try to clear thing about Intel and AMD processors.
History:
In CPU market Intel came first into the field. They are a first company to Mass produce consumer grade CPUs in 1971. Intel came into the market with its Intel 4004 4bit CPU. In 1978 Intel introduced their x86 architecture with their 8086 CPU. In the mean time AMD started their journey in Chip making. They produced the AM9080 which was a reverse engineered clone of Intel 8080 microprocessor. AMD started making CPUs in x86 architecture from 1980 with following agreement between IBM and Intel. AMD was making Chips for IBM with copy right from Intel 8086. They had their complicacy. After that in 1991 Intel launched Pentium. It was 10 times faster than previous generations processor. After introducing intel’s Pentium CPU after 5 years AMD made their own designed and developed x86 base CPU K5. Intel tasted success in the name of the Pentium series processors and AMD got it by making all new designed high-end Athlon series and low-end Duron CPUs. Then they started making midrange CPUs named Sempron series. Intel was making Celeron CPUs as lower-end to Pentium and for server use they developed Xeon series CPUs. In the year 2003 AMD stunned the world by announcing Athlon 64 the first 64bit x86 CPU in the market. On that time AMD was performing better than the Intel counterparts. Then intel Launched their Pentium 4 processor with 64bit x86 architecture. On that time AMD dominated the desktop CPU market. In a couple of year AMD announced the first dual core Athlon 64 CPU Athlon X2 and, Intel was a late comer. That time Intel rushed to launch their dual core CPU Pentium D. But it wasn’t that great it suffered heating and power consumption issues. AMD’s CPU was performing very well. Then Intel introduces the Core 2 series CPUs and AMD was already launched their quad core and tri-core CPUs as named Phenome series this time intel did came back at the competition. To compete in portable computer market intel launched Atom CPUs. In end of 2008, Intel’s new line up was ready Core iX. They reviled the first-generation Core i7. Which was a hit. In response AMD launched their Phenom 2 line up with up-to six cores CPUs. Intel’s new CPU lineup was superior than AMDs. In that response AMD designed a new CPU architecture called Bulldozer. Bulldozer was a massive flop. It couldn’t compete with Intel’s top of the line CPUs. Year after year AMD got flop after flop. A series APUs wasn’t that great either. Intel was the king of CPU market. In the year 2017 AMD was saw some light by introducing Ryzen lineup which was built with their all new Zen architecture. The first generation was successful but Intel still had most of the market share in both desktop and laptop CPU market.
Intel was still the king of the CPU market that’s why Intel must have thought the generational improvement wasn’t that much need. But AMD was right behind them. AMD targeted the market of productivity unlike intel focusing on gaming. They also focused on gaming but in gaming single core performance was the key factor here. Because on that time games weren’t taking advantage of multicore CPUs. But AMD was making affordable multicore CPUs. AMD underperformed little less in gaming but in real world tasks AMD smoked intel counterparts. Ryzen brought 3 different category of processors Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 similar to intel’s core i3, core i5, core i7 and core i9.
Current Scenario:
In PC buying, nowadays we often get confused choosing CPU. Whether to get an Intel or AMD based machine. Its rather easy If we can set our priority while buying a new computer. Now AMD and Intel are both Making awesome processors. In almost every category we can get neck and neck performance. But some processors perform better in some particular workloads. In current generation where we can get AMDs latest and greatest 5000 series CPUs and intel’s 11th gen Core Processors. For entry level We can get intel’s core i3 CPUs and Ryzen 3 CPUs. These are very good processors for light to medium usage of everyday computer usage. You can work on them and you can also game on them. But these are not designed for heavy workload like 3D rendering or video editing or other complex demanding tasks. AMD processors was always value for money. The performance they gave in the price point intel can’t compete. If you have budget below $120 then you can either choose AMD Ryzen 3 or Intel core i3 CPUs, but in terms of price to performance ratio you will obviously get better results in Ryzen3 CPUs. In this price range currently, you can get either AMD Ryzen 3 3300X at $120 and Ryzen 3 3100X at $99 or intel core i3 10100 at $130.
In terms of gaming and Ryzen 3 3100X and intel core i3 10100 will give similar performance and Ryzen 3 3300X will give you much better performance. In productivity these Ryzen CPUs are much faster than Intel’s Core i3 CPUs. In Cinebench Ryzen 3 CPUs are up to 10% faster than Intel Core i3. In other synthetic benchmarks, Ryzen CPUs are significantly performed better.
In midrange if your budget is in between $150 to $300 you also have options to get either AMD or Intel. You can get AMD Ryzen 5 CPUs in very and Intel Core i5 CPUs in that price bracket. You can get there are plenty of options here in this price segment. From the team red you can get AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, AMD Ryzen 5 5600X ,AMD Ryzen 5 3600X AMD Ryzen 5 3600, AMD Ryzen 5 3500X. From the team blue you can get Core i5 11600f, Core i5 11400f , Core i5 11600K, Core i5 11400, Core i5 10600K. In this category The most expensive and powerful CPU is AMD Ryzen 5 5600X. Which performs head-to-head with Intel’s Core i7 10700k.
In the upper midrange we get options Fewer options. We get Ryzen 7 line up from AMD and Core i7 lineup from Intel. In this category we get some Powerful CPUs from both manufacturers. But in terms of performance in this segment AMD smokes Intel’s offerings. So, If your Budget is Between $300 to $450 you surely go for AMD Ryzen 7 options. In this category we have AMDs latest and greatest AMD Ryzen 7 5800x and from Intel we have Core i7 11700K.Both offers 8 cores ,16 threads. Though Intel’s Player runs on little higher boost clock but its actually slower than Ryzen 7 5800X. Both comes on a same price but Ryzen is significantly better in all aspects. Ryzen 7 5800X performs almost similar to Intel Core i9 11900K but comes in a lower price tag and also consumes less electricity.
Top Tier segment we get the 9s from both players, Ryzen 9 and Core i9 CPU’s. From Intel we get Core i9 11900K price at around $600 currently and from AMD we get Ryzen 9 5900x priced around $570. AMD beats Intel here very badly. In every aspect AMDs offering is much better than Intel’s. In Ryzen 9 5900X you get 12 cores 24 threads which is much faster and Lower in TDP. In this category AMD is the clear winner. It performs well in gaming and productivity and is also lower in price comparing to Intel Core i9 11900K.
AMD also offers workstation grade CPUs named Threadripper. This series of CPUs are made for workstations and for PC enthusiasts. And for Server use AMD has its EPYC lineup server CPUs. In Intel family Xeon CPUS are Used for workstations and servers. Here we can see in AMD we have so much options to choose from.
Both Manufacturer has very good products but as a consumer we should always consider value for money proposition. In AMD CPUs we see a much value for money in every CPU category. From the entry level processors to the top tier lineup. In every segment we get value for money. We can see $300 AMD CPU almost performs like $400 Intel CPU and $400 AMD CPU almost performs like $600 Intel CPU. Currently AMD processors are better then Intel’s offerings, but Intel CPUs are not bad either. Intel also has some advantages in some specific terms. Intel has advantages on virtualization. and support for thunderbolt and Optane memory. But those are very specific use cases. In another hand there are so much advantages on getting an AMD processor. All the AMD CPUs available right now is overclockable. And cheap motherboards are capable of overclocking also. In terms of motherboard, AMD CPUs are compatible with any previous generation motherboards. On the other hand Intel CPUs are not that much backward compatible as AMD. They literally need to change motherboard in generational updates.
In a eye of a conscious consumer, currently AMD processors are the right choice for everyone.
Don’t forget to right us a comment on which processor you wish for your next computer.