4 ms·
Intel's domination in gaming and "low level" workstation is getting tenuous at best, and that's why they need to shake their entire lineup at that level too and
by nolok 9y ago
Intel's domination in gaming and "low level" workstation is getting tenuous at best, and that's why they need to shake their entire lineup at that level too and doing several line release in a single year (which is hilarously obvious as to how unprepared they were).
Yes, in pure per core performance intel still has a nice edge of roughly 10%, and yes games mostly care about single core perf, and yes if you want to make the best gaming machine money can buy you still go for intel.
But gaming has not been CPU bound for quite some time, and amd's proposition there is not "the same thing, little bit less expensive and little bit less powerful", it's "the same price, little bit less powerful by core but still not cpu bound, and we give you twice the cores". Intel might very well fix that by the end of the year but right now you want a 600 - 1000 € gaming machine there is a very good chance you go for Ryzen.
And of course that's why AMD did that, they did not go crazy with core count to be nice, they did it because that's what they finally needed to get over that "but intel's still ahead and there is no reason to go with amd if you don't need to save fifty bucks".
- gigatexal 9y agoWhat benchmarks show gaming not being CPU bound, everything I have seen says otherwise. 4 - 8 cores clocked as fast as possible make for the best performance. What I like about AMD is that they pack their chips with features. Low end ones support VT-D and VT-X, AES, etc., whereas Intel likes to segment the market a ton with arbitrary features turned off to prevent higher ticket SKUs from being replaced with lower priced ones.
- chx 9y agoIn very broad strokes, strategy games are (very likely) CPU-bound while FPS is more GPU-bound. Alas, strategy games while CPU bound are not fully capable of using any number of threads -- Cities: Skylines tops out around 8 threads, for example.
- snuxoll 9y agoI mean, they also were able to cheaply increase core count by not stuffing an iGPU into the chip. Outside of HEDT CPU's on the Intel side you have no choice on whether you get HD/Iris/Iris Pro graphics, even if you're going to put a gaming GPU in the system anyway. Meanwhile, the mainstream AM4 platform is based around the assumption you'll be sticking a GPU in already so space on the CPU die is better used for more cores.
- nolok 9y agoWhich is kind of funny given that intel's "iGPU everywhere" was triggered by AMD APU strategy a few years back after they bought ATI.