News AMD vs Intel 2020: Who Makes the Best CPUs?

[DZIrl]

A troll or an Intel empolyee?
I have a gigabyte b450 with ryzen 3600.
I doubt it is the latest drivers/chipset/bios..... with no problems. Maybe it is the ram or some other thing like psu/gpu.... and you blame the cpu.
I don't understand how all the reviewers that used handbrake did not mention that handbrake does not work with Amd cpu and only works with Intel.
If I am not mistaken Tomshardware used handbrake in their review of the 3950x.

I'm neither just honest everyday user.

I wrote two things:

1. Brands (HP, Dell) have better SW than self built ones (Asus, Gigabyte...)
2. Intel has less buggy SW

BTW, I'm really glad AMD finally did it! Without Ryzen 3000 my PC will cost 4000 Eur and will be less powerful.
Now we wait on nVidia...

 

[st379]

I'm neither just honest everyday user.

I wrote two things:

1. Brands (HP, Dell) have better SW than self built ones (Asus, Gigabyte...)
2. Intel has less buggy SW

BTW, I'm really glad AMD finally did it! Without Ryzen 3000 my PC will cost 4000 Eur and will be less powerful.
Now we wait on nVidia...

I try to avoid Amd gpu but their cpu are great.
You had serious problems and I doubt it is the cpu fault.
If you have navi gpu i heard that it could cause issues.
The ryzen 5 3600 and gtx 1660 ti are very stable with gigabyte b450.
I did try to avoid Amd gpu.

 

[truerock]

AMD does not "make" anything. AMD has turned over Intel's cross-licensed patents to TSMC (aka Chinese government) and in return TSMC makes CPUs.
AMD is a shell organization that provides little (or no) value to the development of CPU technology.

 

[3ogdy]

Great article.
Typo:
"and it's mid-range Core i9-9700K isn't far behind. "
it's -> its
There is no i9 9700K. That's an i7.

 

[Makaveli]

A troll or an Intel empolyee?
I have a gigabyte b450 with ryzen 3600.
I doubt it is the latest drivers/chipset/bios..... with no problems. Maybe it is the ram or some other thing like psu/gpu.... and you blame the cpu.
I don't understand how all the reviewers that used handbrake did not mention that handbrake does not work with Amd cpu and only works with Intel.
If I am not mistaken Tomshardware used handbrake in their review of the 3950x.

Looks like a post I would read on best buy website from someone that would allow geek squad to touch there pc.

May indeed have a legit problem but its not AMD.

AMD does not "make" anything. AMD has turned over Intel's cross-licensed patents to TSMC (aka Chinese government) and in return TSMC makes CPUs.
AMD is a shell organization that provides little (or no) value to the development of CPU technology.

lol I think you came to the wrong site.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I disagree with the overclocking section, and I would say it's either a tie or a win for AMD.

Just because Intel sets base speeds so much lower than actually achievable speeds so they can slap on a ridiculously low TDP doesn't mean they're better overclockers, it just means Intel wants a low number to mislead people as to their efficiency.

With AMD and Intel having all core boost speeds within a couple hundred megahertz, depending on cooling, of their single core boosts, and with both able to be manually overclocked to or past their all core boost clocks, often using less voltage than the boost voltage, it's pretty even there.

So wait... AMD practically wins and your complaint is that they didn't win overclocking even though its widely known that they have little to no overclocking headroom?

Normally overclocking is not about power savings at all. Its about maximum performance.

https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-and-ryzen-7-3700x-zen-2-review?page=9

Hot Hardware saw an 85W increase when manually overclocking. In the old days manually OCing was the way to go to get the best clocks and best power draw.

Leaving PBO on works but it also is keeping it within a certain power draw.

No Overclocker is going to worry about upping the power draw of their CPU when trying to get the max performance.

I'm proud AMD 3950X owner since its first day but HW is not everything, more important is SW.
My story is: last time I built my own PC was 25 years ago - Pentium era. There were always some problems with HW and I continued with notebooks (HP, Dell) Intel based. In mean time bought my wife Toshiba notebook with AMD and even today I here stories and blames how slow, hot and awful it is (was). Back to Intel.
And last year I insisted to be a man and made a decision to buy Ryzen 3900 or 3950. Of course wife mentioned her Toshiba billion times
We started with 1500 Eur but ended up on above 2500 Eur. Gigabyte Ultra MB, 3466 DRAMs, RTX 2060...
It works really fast, Task manager is great with all those cores but software! Oh my God! Gigabyte MB software is crap, AMD software is crap! I was not able to run Handbrake cause of BSoDs. Today after 7 BIOS updates PC works without BSoDs, Handbrake works and other benchmarks too.
But AMD software... oh my God once again. Not only SW is crap but AMD support does not care at all!
RAID update prevented booting and I lost days detecting what problem is. Asked AMD support... ha ha ha. Finally I found problem, wrote an encyclopedia about and how to fix it and told everything AMD support. Did they care? No!

On other, blue, side my MB has Intel Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Ethernet. Intel update app installed without any problem, detects everything and tells me about updates. Installs updates without any problem! It is still in my tray and when dbl clicked opens new tab in browser and tells me there are no updates!
At work I have Dell with Intel and also no problem at all!

We could discuss is AMD better/faster or Intel but only what matters is software quality. I could have Cray under my desk but if it crashes every now and then... If I have to think 10 times before installing an update and then loose days fixing it... it's not worth.

But I must mention Gigabyte support - great! Thanks guys!

AMD absolutely has more software issues. But to be fair they also don't have nearly the man power dedicated to software and drivers that Intel does.

 

[saunupe1911]

I have a simple question fellas. I'm a gamer with a 2080 Super that loves to play Call of Duty. My PC also serves as a Home Theater PC. What CPU would you buy today based on what we know today???

Currently I have 6700K...which was one of he top dogs in its day...and still is very capable since it's overclocked to 4.8mhz.

 

[Gurg]

Regarding power consumption. In Y-cruncher power chart the 9900K OC to 5.1 used an average of 49 watts more than a 3900x PBO. That sounds bad. But from my calculations if that benchmark was run for 8 hours per day for 365 days times $0.1331/ kWh average US electrical cost it totals to approximately $19. Seriously however who taxes their CPU 8 hours a day running benchmarks?

So if I own a 9900K and use it for gaming 8 hours a day I get a geomean average of 145.5 frames per second in games at 1080p with a 2080ti, an average of 14% more than if I used a 3900x PBO with AOC. At 4K the differential supposedly falls to around 4-5%.

Higher frame rates, fewer stutters, tears and BSOD with the 9900K during gaming for $19 or around 2/3 of a cent per hour of gaming.

All this slamming Intel for 2/3 of a penny per hour additional energy costs while gaming? Really?

 

[Jpeters72]

Maybe I missed were this was specific to consumer models..but its a disservice not to point out lack of features specific to enterprise (i.e. Intel vpro), virtualization support or failure rate. When talking 3000 end user devices and presence in 3 data centers the price to perfornce is not the only metrics I have to look at...and I look at this when ever I have a device on rotation hoping it becomes feasible to save some money using AMD, it just hasn't gotten there yet

 

[Jpeters72]

I have a simple question fellas. I'm a gamer with a 2080 Super that loves to play Call of Duty. My PC also serves as a Home Theater PC. What CPU would you buy today based on what we know today???

Currently I have 6700K...which was one of he top dogs in its day...and still is very capable since it's overclocked

Plainly put..its kind of a loaded question..first capture data while your gaming, is your cpu even a bottle neck? Then there is cost factor, does a brand new AMD could and board benefit you enough to justify cost? CPU is not the only factor here, if you currently have a high end mother board and go cheap for your AMD build you could find issues in other areas

 

[Phaaze88]

AMD vs Intel 2020: Who Makes the Best CPUs?

Yes.

 

[pizza99]

As someone who used to performance manage hardware in a telco, I feel that this article is of a low standard from a technical knowledge perspective. For a start, when looking at throughput it is necessary to look at other metrics than fps. Current gpus don't perform that well, so there is almost certainly going to be gpu bottlenecking at the top end. So the article ignores headroom - capacity for better performance. The best cpu isn't judged solely on current performance but also future performance. I don't look at fps much but more at frametime. Concluding that there isn't much difference in IPC or gaming performance from a gpu-bottlenecked fps score is an error.
Trouble-free performance is another category that has been missed.
There is also use of jargon e.g. "Intel still barely holds the edge in per-core performance, meaning it offers really snappy performance in lightly-threaded scenarios and applications that don't scale well with core and thread counts". Mis-use terminology and credibility of the author goes out the window.
Apart from confusing cores with threads, the sentence is mumbo-jumbo. And technically wrong. Although using the term "scale" makes me shudder, multi-threaded apps don't always perform better on one brand compared to another.
Also I'd say that there are cpus out there that can run games faster than amd and intel. And run desktop apps a lot faster. But you won't be able to buy one in your local pc shop.
So overall, from a technical standpoint, the article isn't a great technical analysis. The main problem is that it doesn't look ata capacity to perform.

 

[ankit213506]

If you want overall performance then go for Intel 2020, but if you want to feel the best experience of game then go for AMD. You will get AMD in less price then the Intel

 

[devendraraju]

Exactly!!!
AMD -now- ships their latest CPU's (Zen2) PRE-OVERCLOCKED.
Intel DOES NOT.
Guess which CPU 'APPARENTLY"!!! has more overclocking headroom???

--> DON'T BUY INTO MARKETING <Mod Edit>

If you do insist on pushing marketing crap, remember to do the following...
Now link Intel's "high" overclock with wall-socket power draw: HOW DOES THAT COMPARE WITH AMD???

But I love Amd Dont know why

 

[watzupken]

We wade into the endless debate: Who makes the best CPU, AMD or Intel?

AMD vs Intel 2020: Who Makes the Best CPUs? : Read more

While I agree with most parts of the review, I disagree with the results for the below 2 points,
1. Overclocking - I think review should consider that only the Intel K series are overclockable, along with a Z series motherboard, and with top end cooling solution. Its true they overclock higher, but that also means you need a more expensive board to keep up with the power requirements on the Intel chip. Assuming a motherboard in the same price range, I doubt you can clock that well on an Intel chip without causing a meltdown on the board. Clocking above 5Ghz is one part, but sustaining it needs some serious cooling and high end motherboard.

2. Gaming - I am not sure why there is a need to pull in the Ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx given that Ryzen 3xxx should be the benchmark now. While people can claim that its a fair comparison since Intel 8xxx series are also there, but do recall that there is nothing different between the Intel 8xxx, 9xxx and 10xxx series in terms of architecture. The latter models are just the 8xxx series on steroids, pushing clockspeed and giving up on efficiency. Also I feel the focus on average framerate is not really a good way of measuring performance since I believe in some cases, the minimal framerates are higher on AMD chips assuming a similarly priced chip.

 

[watzupken]

If you want overall performance then go for Intel 2020, but if you want to feel the best experience of game then go for AMD. You will get AMD in less price then the Intel

I think you got it wrong way round. If you are looking for gaming performance, Intel is still better on the basis of higher clockspeed. For overall performance, AMD is the clear winner.

What most reviews don't tell you is the amount of money you need to shell out in order to get the Intel chip at clockspeed above 5Ghz since you need to pay a premium for K series chips, Z series motherboard, and a top end cooler. Without these 3 key requirements, you can forget about overclocking the Intel chip.

 

[TerryLaze]

While I agree with most parts of the review, I disagree with the results for the below 2 points,
1. Overclocking - I think review should consider that only the Intel K series are overclockable, along with a Z series motherboard, and with top end cooling solution. Its true they overclock higher, but that also means you need a more expensive board to keep up with the power requirements on the Intel chip. Assuming a motherboard in the same price range, I doubt you can clock that well on an Intel chip without causing a meltdown on the board. Clocking above 5Ghz is one part, but sustaining it needs some serious cooling and high end motherboard.

2. Gaming - I am not sure why there is a need to pull in the Ryzen 1xxx and 2xxx given that Ryzen 3xxx should be the benchmark now. While people can claim that its a fair comparison since Intel 8xxx series are also there, but do recall that there is nothing different between the Intel 8xxx, 9xxx and 10xxx series in terms of architecture. The latter models are just the 8xxx series on steroids, pushing clockspeed and giving up on efficiency. Also I feel the focus on average framerate is not really a good way of measuring performance since I believe in some cases, the minimal framerates are higher on AMD chips assuming a similarly priced chip.

1. That's all a point of view/expectations.
If you only need 5Ghz for gaming the 9900k will draw like 70-80w ,there are plenty of benchmarks that have tested that,you don't need any special cooling or a good board to manage that.

Also you can drop a 9900k on the cheapest even non-z board there is and it will still boost clocks a couple of hundred Mhz higher that the 9900 will so you will still get about the same amount of "overclock" you would with actually overclocking a ryzen.

2.there are 8 graphs of gaming and plenty of results for the 3xxx series
also half of them are for 99th percentile and the one thing you get from those is that clocks are much more important than cores.

 

[Wuznar]

We wade into the endless debate: Who makes the best CPU, AMD or Intel?

AMD vs Intel 2020: Who Makes the Best CPUs? : Read more

This article was skewed toward Intel....Yes, I know AMD won the debate but I found it eye-popping that in the gaming graph, no 3rd gen AMD was represented so obviously Intel won. Come on Tom's Hardware! Keep your comparisons honest. Intel is floating turds and trying to pass them off as gold these days. They don't need your help to compete, they still have the lion's share of the market and at some point, they will catch up with AMD so try not to show obvious bias like this. You guys have been accused of favoring Intel for years and you have denied it, stunts like this don't help you. Please do a better job next time.

 

[King_V]

1. That's all a point of view/expectations.
If you only need 5Ghz for gaming the 9900k will draw like 70-80w ,there are plenty of benchmarks that have tested that,you don't need any special cooling or a good board to manage that.

So, Intel rates the CPU at 95W TDP, yet, you're claiming at 5GHz boost, it will only draw 70-80w? Where did you get those numbers from?

 

[TerryLaze]

So, Intel rates the CPU at 95W TDP, yet, you're claiming at 5GHz boost, it will only draw 70-80w? Where did you get those numbers from?

Intel rates the CPUs for heavy usage not games.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-9900k-9th-gen-cpu,5847-11.html

 

[King_V]

From RIGHT UNDER that graph:

Five measurements with five strongly diverging results are not something that would be apt for a fair comparison. However, at 5 GHz, the Core i9-9900K never really crossed the 100W limit, so it was still cool enough to make ends meet. At least for games.

But power becomes more of an issue in some productivity applications because a constant load on all cores at high clock rates is almost too much. And to be clear, the Core i9-9900K gets super hot faced with Prime95 and AVX instructions (205W stock, 250W overclocked), exceeding the specified TDP.

We measured 137W (232W) during the Cinebench test, and we topped 145W (241W overclocked) under the larger Blender workload. We even pushed past 120W (198W overclocked) with various CAD plug-ins for Creo and SolidWorks. The limits of normal all-in-one compact water cooling solutions are in sight during standard operation at 4.7 GHz on all cores, but you can easily overwhelm cheaper AIOs during overclocking.

So, you said 70-80W at 5GHz boost - but that's apparently ONLY through gaming. You took ONE test and applied it universally.

That makes as much sense as me going to THIS graph and making the claim that at 5GHz boost, the 9900k always pulls 250W regardless of workload type:

 

[Gurg]

What most reviews don't tell you is the amount of money you need to shell out in order to get the Intel chip at clockspeed above 5Ghz since you need to pay a premium for K series chips, Z series motherboard, and a top end cooler. Without these 3 key requirements, you can forget about overclocking the Intel chip.

I have about the lowest price Z390 M/B in my PC and a 9600k which can be purchased for a combined $350 or about the cost of just a 9700k, 3700x or 3800x CPU. The 9600k runs overclocked @ 5.0 all core. For the gaming charts that include the 9600k at 5.0 it ranks at or near the top with the overclocked 9700k or 9900k in average and 99th percentile FPS beating the whole AMD line for almost all games when paired with a top model GPU.

What most reviews fail to take in to account is that a quality high output power supply and all in one cooler are items that you will be able to use for future builds. So spend more on those to buy quality and performance. Those and the case or fans are the items that can be carried to future builds.

In the next 1-3 years there will be enough improvements in the CPU speed and motherboards features that can justify upgrading those, your memory, GPU and storage. While a current higher cost CPU build now won't be obsolete, neither will it be a top performer after about three years.

 

[TerryLaze]

So, you said 70-80W at 5GHz boost - but that's apparently ONLY through gaming. You took ONE test and applied it universally.

I said that it's only for gaming,tom's only made one test so the only thing to conclude is that that one bench is representative..

 

[larkspur]

This article was skewed toward Intel....Yes, I know AMD won the debate but I found it eye-popping that in the gaming graph, no 3rd gen AMD was represented so obviously Intel won. Come on Tom's Hardware! Keep your comparisons honest.

Try clicking through the graphs, lol. There are 8 total gaming graphs.

 

[King_V]

I said that it's only for gaming,tom's only made one test so the only thing to conclude is that that one bench is representative..

They clearly DIDN'T make only one test.

You go to weird lengths to proclaim, somehow, that Intel is the best way to go. Then the caveats.

Yes, it's the BEST - for getting those few extra frames/second. At 1080p. That the human eye can't distinguish. Why do you engage in these contortions?