Why are AMD CPUs so much cheaper?

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jkarateking

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Jun 5, 2014
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I am wondering why AMD CPUs are so much cheaper.

For example:

AMD FX-8320 has 8 cores at 3.2GHz

Intel i5 6400 only has 4 cores at 2.7Ghz


The Intel one is £150 whereas the AMD one is only £110 even though to me the specs look a lot better with more cores and more clock speed.


What is the reason for AMD CPUs being so much cheaper?


Also I am buying a budget PC. Should I go with AMD as they are cheaper and the specs look better?
 
Solution
bicycle_repair_man
Core and clockspeed only tell half the story, and even then, making comparisons based on these factors alone is flawed, as the underlying architecture is completely different; apples and oranges if you will.

To keep it short and simple, Intel CPUs have superior single-threaded performance and arguably superior multi-threaded performance, depending on the CPUs in question. They also use less energy, emit less heat and their coolers are quieter as a result.

AMD make up for weak single-threaded performance with good multi-threaded performance, but again, this depends on the CPUs in question. All AMD CPUs can be overclocked but they aren't as energy efficient as Intel CPUs.

The current AM3+ CPUs are based on an architecture which is four...
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amd is crap its far behind intel, intel is worth it as the processors preform better than amd & are more reliable & for the extra u spend u get a faster computer intel is greta for gaming & everything amd is on dying sockets & processor technology is way behind intel but intel bios set ups are way nicer to adjust
 
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Core and clockspeed only tell half the story, and even then, making comparisons based on these factors alone is flawed, as the underlying architecture is completely different; apples and oranges if you will.

To keep it short and simple, Intel CPUs have superior single-threaded performance and arguably superior multi-threaded performance, depending on the CPUs in question. They also use less energy, emit less heat and their coolers are quieter as a result.

AMD make up for weak single-threaded performance with good multi-threaded performance, but again, this depends on the CPUs in question. All AMD CPUs can be overclocked but they aren't as energy efficient as Intel CPUs.

The current AM3+ CPUs are based on an architecture which is four years old now, whereas Skylake is brand new. This is part of the reason why the FX series is considerably cheaper.

Which CPU you should buy depends on what you'll be using the PC for.
 
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Solution
There's more to a processor than the number of cores and clock speed.

Think of AMD's clock speed like a bicycle in first gear. You're pedaling real fast, but still going slow. Think of Intel's clock speed like a bicycle in tenth gear. You're pedaling not as fast, but you're getting there faster.

As for the number of cores, most applications do not make use of that many cores, so many of the eight cores of the AMD processor are not used.

-Wolf sends
 
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AMD FX series is an old line of CPU using an old socket. You are comparing it with the recent intel i5 series using Skylake and the new socket 1151. There are like 4 years between them.

Apart from that, AMD reuses its processor to cut down expenses (i.e. all FX8XXX and FX9XXX are the same chip but depending on the quallity of the silicon is set to higher or lower clock speeds). Apart from that, Intel CPUs are more refined and usually have better quality because of more controls. The only way AMD could face Intel at the moment is making its prices lower.
 
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I usually check the hierarchy chart when I need to compare CPU's or graphics cards. They give a pretty good idea how they stack up against one another.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html

The i5-6400 is a slightly better CPU overall than the 8320. But, like bicycle_repair_man said, it depends on the applications you're running. Software that is multi-threaded will likely run better on the 8320. As far as gaming performance, many new games are multi-threaded, but even that doesn't matter much as neither of these processors will bottleneck a game for a few years.

Going off your goal of building a budget PC, I would most definitely go with the 8320 if you're planning on gaming. Mostly because the difference in performance is going to be minimal and that AMD motherboards are also generally much cheaper than intel boards. The amount of money you save on the CPU and mobo can be put towards a better GPU which will make far far far FAR more impact on the performance of the games you're trying to play.

 
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So by that logic, intel should be cheaper?

As of 2015 average min wage in the u.s. was $7.15/hr.
Depending on the territory in Malaysia, their min wage varies from the equivalent of $0.96-$1.07 usd/hr.

China's wages tend to be reported as monthly, roughly around 2,000 yuan a month or maybe a bit more. At 2000 yuan a month converted to usd, broken down to a 40hr work week as we usually have in the u.s. that puts their min wage around $1.77/hr.

Same goes for Vietnam, the vnd breakdown based on a 40hr work week translates to roughly $1.15/hr.

With U.S. min wages around 6-7x that of every one of those countries you listed, how is amd saving money compared to intel's 'high cost' of having to pay people all over the world? In fact quite the opposite, the reason for companies sourcing work in other countries is to save money due to the much lower wages compared to paying workers in the U.S.

Amd has had to drop prices of several of their cpus, most noticeably when they first released. Their 8 core cpu's were much more expensive until real world comparison showed they didn't compete anywhere close to intel's 8 core cpu's. Then the price slashing began and amd dropped their prices to match the relative performance of their cpu's regardless of 'specs'.

From just a couple of years ago, mention of the fx 9590 being around $800 at one point. Quickly dropping to nearly $200.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-cpu-price-drop,27505.html

Why? Because it didn't perform like an $800 cpu. If it had in fact performed like intel's 5960x (8 core i7) then $800 would have been a reasonable and even a bargain. Performance dictates price and pricing has to be competitive to stay in business. Honda could price their civic models the same as a ferrari but chances are they would rot at the dealership because they would never sell. They're not a ferrari, they're a honda and need to be priced accordingly.
 
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the 8320 already bottlenecks games

look at any online game, gta5, fallout 4, arma 3 etc etc

it is laughable to recommend amd right now for a new build





 
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A cheap AMD motherboard with a 4+1 phase VRM often has to throttle the CPU to protect itself when it gets too hot. A good AMD build requires a quality motherboard and an aftermarket cooler to keep the noise down. In the end, there aren't much savings over an Intel build that can use a less expensive motherboard.
 
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Amd is a cheaper brand but it doesnt say that its crap intel cpu's has better treading so its more efficient.

 
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They are cheaper because AMD shares Cache resources on their chips while Intel uses a dedicated cache

Think of the FX lineup as the Honda's of the CPU world. High RPM (Clock speed) but low torque (cache). So you have a really quick CPU out of the box, but as you put some load on it, it gets overworked and can't dish out power quick enough.

Intel chips currently have a lower RPM, but the torque to push through when the work load gets heavy.
 
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Intel pursued a monopoly i the 90's and early 80's trough very aggressive business practices and litigation, the only surviving competitor was AMD that had a superior technology and RD budget (I'm talking circa 98) then Intel invested in RD and used the following decade to get ahead of AMD technologically; then transistor technology hit a barrier around 2004, you see you can only make transistors so small before they start leaking and stop behaving as transistors so frequencies halted at 3 ghz and got to 5 ghz very, very slowly. Doesn't matter how much CPU brands babble about branch prediction, smaller processes, instruction sets philosophies, multithreading and higher core count (although all of this helps a lot) the main driving factor in better cpu speed is clock speed, that's why 15 years ago a 2 year old computer was crap. Nowadays proc manufacturing companies have to be very clever and do a lot of tricks to up the instruction count per cycle cause it is becoming impossible to upgrade frequencies, Intel has become very good at that, better than AMD (and has a higher R&D budget) and that's why they are more expensive. But the dirty little secret is that unless you want to stuck an 8 core processor in a candy bar and snapchat your dick pics all day long with a 3 ampere battery there is not much sense in making your chips run cooler and with less power (specially if your costumers are going to throw your cooling solution to the trash can and put it an aftermarket liquid cooler with more lights than an airway), Intel knows that and they are moving out of the PC business (which has decreased for the first time in decades) and into the mobile business (which is a more competed arena) cause it really doesn't matter that you can do insane branch prediction and make two molecule wide transistors than don't leak at the end of the day a 5ghz proc is going to behave very much alike a 5ghz proc.
 
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Honestly AMD is moving to OWN the whole business. They are in the mobile space, consoles, and are now pumping out very budget friendly cards for the masses there by owning the OEMs. The AMD FX line up was AHEAD of its time, like way ahead. If applications were threaded properly the FX series would be on par with the Intels at a much cheaper price point, but the development of multi-threaded application did not grow to met their expectations as we know today, hence they are "worse". DX12 and Vulkan are changing the game a little. The ACE engine on the radeons were idle using up power and doing nothing, they were there for compute power which GCN cards are better at than Cuda. Now that asynchronous compute(DX 12 and Vulkan) is in some games, you are seeing gains from the AMD camp since their design is being utilized more than ever before.
 
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disregarding some of the blatant anti-amd & pro intel comments ,intel will always be better for gaming than an fx chip.
but the fact is it depends on usage,everyone plainly assumes a single ipc gaming scenario but the fact is for multi threaded real world applications there are scenarios where the 6300 will hands down beat its $100 competitor - the i3 6100 , & the 8320 will just plain crush the i5 6400.

It is not always about gaming,but that always where the conversation tends to go.

& yes theyre cheaper because

1. theyre weaker
2. intel can charge whatever they like ( & they do - never expect real value for money)
3. Intels underhanded tactics back in 2009 crippled amd to an extent theyve never ever fully recovered from, an event for which intel should have been reprimanded far far more than they were ( the us justice system just simply didnt have the balls though
4. already said ,amd have just rehashed the same lineup for the last 4 years at the end of the day, while frittering the majority of what little profit they make on some utterly unnecessary departures & bad management decisions.

& yes I am anti- intel up to a point,they make great cpu's ,theyre not a great company when it comes to morals or scruples, not even close.
 
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Where does the fx 6xxx and fx 8xxx crush the i3 and i5? Considering the TH cpu comparison chart, the 4th gen i3 and fx 6xxx are about tied with a slight edge to the fx in 3ds max. The 4th gen i5 beats the 8350. In blender, the i3 4th gen is tied with the fx 8320 and the i5 4430 beats the fx 8350. In handbrake video encoding, the 4th gen i3 beats the fx 6100 and fx 8350 is tied with the i5 4690. In totalcode video encoding the i3 and fx 6xxx are nearly tied, slight edge to the fx 6xxx and the i5 (3rd gen mind you) beats the fx 8350. The i3 and i5 eat the fx chips lunch in .wav to .acc audio encoding. Adobe after effect the i3 is slightly faster than the fx 6100 and the i5 (3rd gen again) stomps all over the 8350. In adobe premier pro the fx 6xxx slightly bested the i3 and the i5 4690 outperformed the fx 8350.

About the only real world benchmark I can find where the fx has any real performance gain is in 7zip. I'm hard pressed to find any other non gaming real world scenarios where the fx trounces all over anything but it's own feet. It's being matched or bested at a rate of 2 cores vs 6 or 4 cores vs 8 in audio encoding, video encoding, 3d rendering, photo design software. So basically if you spend a good portion of your time unzipping files, get the fx. For everything else, go with intel.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2015/benchmarks,187.html

This wasn't cherry picking, it was simply going through the list of various uses people are likely to use their pc for. Everything from audio to video to image processing, multiple video editors since that's where amd's 'moar cores' are supposed to shine. The bottom line is amd isn't bang for the buck, it's less bang for less bucks. Products that compare in price often compare in performance which coincidentally is why they're priced that way.

Some people have a real love for amd and so will continue to promote them in spite of real world results feeling some sort of personal hurt over business deals that occurred 7yrs ago. That's the definition of fanboy-ism. I personally don't care who has the better hardware, if it were amd then I'd buy amd. It happens to be intel so I run intel. Amd's isn't going to send me a fruitcake at the holidays with a warm cup of cocoa and invite me over for the holidays. They're going to snatch my money same as every other corporation.

I didn't mention power consumption since I happen to live in the u.s. with relatively cheap power costs. It won't make much of a difference to my monthly power bill. Though I might feel differently if I lived in a country where the power costs easily 4x what we pay in the u.s. Intel does use far less power under load. It would be "anti amd" if this were all just opinion and not backed by benchmarks but it's not. It's as easy and looking at the comparisons and seeing a clear difference.

I have to wonder if people always scrutinize the manufacturer of every product they use on a daily basis to verify whether they adhere to a high moral business practice or only when it comes to processors. It would be kind of odd for people to shake their finger at intel, shaming them based on morals while wearing clothing made in sweatshops or using various other goods where the laborers are treated unfairly or the company has ever made an 'unfair' business practice - perhaps ate food produced by a large corporation that did shady land trade deals to push out small independent farmers just so they could save $.10 on their potatoes or peaches. lol.
 
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There first place is intel based, second amd based. First place has six times the cores and uses twice as much power, but actual perfomance is no even two times as much.
 
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Interesting point, I'm vegan and try to buy everything I can 'ethically' but I cant see a difference in tech companies really, what I find more interesting is the scrutiny of cpu based on benchmarks that are used to beat others with like a big stick. Imagine we applied this to everything? eg the wife got a new car a while back, if the salesman had of starting telling us how each of the kids could put the seatbelt on 7.638 seconds quicker than the competitions similar model saving x minutes over a year at the shops/school we'd probably have laughed. I know car analogies are crap and someones thinking but '0-60' or 'mpg' over seatbelts but roads are a bit like software in that when can you actually do your 0-60 over get your best mpg.
 
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I'm vegan as well, but why buy an inferior car? I mean, if one were objectively better in every way, AND priced similarly, but you wouldn't see much benefit out of it in your typical usage, would you not still buy the objectively better one?

I mean it's one thing if you're trying to justify spending money in the first place (e.g. should I even bother upgrading my FX to an i7?) and quite another to pick an FX-9590 for a new build.

Regarding which company is more ethical, that's tough to say. Both appear to me to be giant, semi-evil corporations whose primary goal is to take our money. I'm not really swayed either way, with Intel's underhanded business tactics 15 years ago, vs AMD's series of corrupt upper management.

Ultimately, we're irrational creatures and make most of our decisions despite the facts, rather than because of them, but that doesn't mean we should embrace it.
 
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Because 'inferior' in many cases is subjective, the car was a poor analogy, always is, sorry :)
 
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