Ok, I've read it and there's a few HUGE questionable things I'd like to point out and open up for discussion here:
1.- MSRP: Intel is RETAILERS 1K TRAY PRICE and not CONSUMER RECOMMENDED UNIT PRICE (what "MSRP" refers to, in short). This is a HUGE difference and you're taking them as they're the same. They are not. Also, there's an important nuance you don't even mention: Intel can change that for big retailers and OEMs, so the real retailing price is even lower for specific retailers for bigger-than-1K bulk. That nuance is super important to mention and explains why, for example, MicroCenter has such low prices compared to a lot of other retailers for Intel CPUs.
This needs a dedicated article and corresponding link in every article that talks about comparind AMD & Intel pricing.
This needs to be repeatedly hammered home to the public so that there is no confusion to how AMD's MSRP works with Intel's Tray Pricing and how it isn't reflective of MSRP.
2.- TDPs: Intel has the better (now) way of talking power and AMD's "measure" is a joke, since it does not even put power in their formula. Whenever their power consumption matches the TDP, is a coincidence. Ironically, this is a bit disingenuous to Intel as AMD is actually being scummy there. I don't even know why, since just using "base" and "peak" power is way better. At least, both Intel and AMD explicitly mention those. This is an important distinction as well for motherboard power delivery.
We need tell both companies to knock it off with the TDP non-sense. It's become a giant farce at this point.
I think we need to focus on how much power the socket is rated to deliver and that's what we should be concentrating on since each CPU socket has a rated maximum power load.
Doesn't matter if it's continuous power load or momentary power spikes, we need to know that info and compare & contrast.
2.1.- Cooling: this needs to be it's own investigation, since AMD can get away with paltry cooling and still perform really well, but Intel can't quite do the same. I can't really say for sure AMD "compensates" price with this, but I can absolutely say AMD can get away with cheaper cooling for all of their line up whereas Intel's 13600K is the only CPU that can. Both the i7 and i9 13K are just monsters at full bore and unrestricted. Vis a vis, if someone is willing to tweak either camp, both get great efficiency improvements, but I will still say AMD comes out on top.
Yeah, performance relative to how much cooling you're willing to throw at it needs to be detailed with precision & granularity.
Also, Intel's 13th gen Thermal Throttles very easily compared to 12th gen, that needs it's own article on how that affects performance.
3.- Motherboard Power Delivery: It is KNOWN bottom tier Intel motherboards can't power i9's and, I'm pretty sure, now they may even have issues with the 13600K. This is not mentioned and made explicit enough for buyers to be aware of. If you trick yourself into thinking you can pair a 13900K with a bottom tier B660, you're in for a nasty surprise. AMD does not have this problem and it is one of the reasons why B650 also has a high base price compared to B550, along with PCIe5 support. There's other nuances when talking platform, but they're less relevant and power is the important thing to mention here. So, this is to say, AMD just put a better "baseline" for the AIBs to follow and Intel's "baseline" is complete garbage.
I think the reviewers need to validate how much power can the MoBo deliver and what CPU it can support without ham-stringing it on power delivery / performance relative to other MoBo's with superior Power / VRM setups. Hardware Unboxed has discovered certain B-series MoBo's that shouldn't be labelled the way it is, because their VRM setups are so poor that it handicaps performance.
We also need everybody to run at stock Intel CPU settings instead of MoBo, Pre-OCed settings.
That gives you a Apples to Apples comparison.
GN has made entire articles on that.
4.- DDR comparison. The results are ok and the conclusion based off them is correct. Problem is that there's newer games out there which show huge differences in DDR generations and they're not being discussed here. If someone is building a platform with DDR4 needs to be aware that, more than likely, newer games will punish slower RAM bandwidth with huge FPS loses. Best example would be Spiderman's PC port.
But not every game benefits from DDR4 -> DDR5 jump.
Some games benefit from the Bandwidth boost.
Other games are latency sensitive.
There's no one solution and that needs to be highlighted.
There's no magical answer, that needs to be made clear.
5.- Motherboard Feature Set: I'm not too big on making this a central point, but worth pointing out anyway. AM5 is the better platform vs Z690 and Z790, period. Whatever price difference you see, is reflective of this. As pointed out: if you're going for a high cost system, ~$50 of price difference on the same "tier" motherboard is peanuts.
It depends on what features matter to you. That could literally be a personal judgement call.
Overall, everything else seems spot on and I agree with. Business strategy for AMD is clearly maximizing their higher margin parts and see if they can do something with the mid-tier range. Keep in mind they haven't even announced any lower tier CPUs and Intel is doing an Alder Lake rebrand for almost everything under the i5 13600K.
I have no issue with Intel re-branding AlderLake, it makes the best use of their resources.
AMD has done it in the past, Intel should be fine doing the same.
As long as both are transparent about their rebranding, we should be ok.
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