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The rise of AMD has been like a dream come true. I only wish Intel could get their cards straight and compete in the prosumer space. It used to be that Intel w

The rise of AMD has been like a dream come true. I only wish Intel could get their cards straight and compete in the prosumer space. It used to be that Intel was a good choice of money wasn’t really an object, but as time has gone on it has become harder to justify Intel chips regardless of the pricing.

agumonkey 7y ago
Fair point, in these days of economic turmoil, intel premium will feel pointless
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  But that's just the thing - for a while, you could spend extra in Intel for a premium system. It wasn't a good $/performance tradeoff, but at the upper end it was there. What's wild about this moment in time is that Intel has lost even the high end; there isn't an Intel premium, because they are not the best product at all.
  - swsieber 7y ago
    Not performance wise, but I've heard they have better tooling. Hopefully that's just a matter of time.
    - ssijak 7y ago
      And for hackintoshes
      - s_dev 7y ago
        For how long -- Apple switched from IBM to Intel due to performance reasons. Their mobile chips use ARM. Perhaps only time before Apple offer MacBooks with AMD chips.
notJim 7y ago
I thought I read a few months ago that Intel still does well in the video editing space (especially with 4k), because their chips have onboard decoding hardware. Is this still true?
- wmf 7y ago
  Discrete GPUs have the same hardware although there may be some driver pickiness with certain apps.
  - notJim 7y ago
    Premiere Pro apparently doesn't use the GPU for h.264/5, so sadly if you want that, you have to use an Intel CPU: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Premiere-Pro-143/Hardware-Recommendations https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems...
    - xxpor 7y ago
      My understanding is that GPU rendering for h26{4,5} is a lot faster, but the image quality is nowhere close to CPU based rendering. Given that Premiere Pro isn't in the business of real time rendering or transcoding, the business case isn't there for full rendering support. If you really need the speed, maybe render into a fast but large lossless format, then use ffmpeg gpu transcoding?
      - kllrnohj 7y ago
        It's not that Premiere Pro cares about image quality above all else, because it does use GPU-accelerated decoding. It's that Premiere only uses Intel's integrated GPU for decoding and not with Nvidia's or AMD's GPU decoder. Quick Sync's quality is worse than NVENC's these days so it's likely more along the lines of Intel contributed the patches than Adobe not wanting it out of purity reasons.
        xxpor 7y ago
systemvoltage 7y ago
> regardless of the pricing If Intel sells $5 CPUs, will you change your mind? I don't understand the obsessive praise of AMD. Keep in mind that Jim Keller, an Intel ex-chip architect lead the AMD Zen platform when he was hired in 2013 (after working at Apple on the A4/A5 SOCs). It is the same dude competing against himself. Btw, he is back at Intel since 2018 to help Intel out.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  I'm not sure how this relates to the parent comment. They stated that no matter what your budget is, Intel is always the worse option currently. Their chips cost more and do less when they used to cost more and do more.
  - sixothree 7y ago
    I got the fastest CPU my motherboard could handle. But looking at the performance charts, there were AMD CPUs with 25% and 50% more performance costing hundreds of dollars less than what I spent. I could have spent that money on a motherboard and some extra RAM, but didn't feel like doing the work. Meaning this was an upgrade from an under powered CPU to a newer chip that was not available when I did the build originally.
    - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
      The vast majority of users would find a 50% performance improvement and a huge price reduction to be worth the extra effort of replacing the mobo, especially since they already have to replace the cpu and likely put the mobo in to start with.
- toast0 7y ago
  I mean, it's nice to see that after years of stagnation, AMD is now able to hit best IPC, more cores/chip, best perf/watt, and close enough singlethreaded perf. And AMD $/perf is better too. An Intel chip at the right price is probably fine -- although, they've lost a lot of perf to mitigate security issues, so I dunno. Intel has also been pretty stagnated the last several years (what are we on, the 5th respin of Skylake?) Jim Keller's work at Intel should probably start showing up in 2021 or 2022... Could be pretty exciting, or Intel corporate politics could bury it all.
DeathArrow 7y ago
I also hope that VIA and other x86 license holders step up their game and start to compete like in early '90s.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  VIA is out of the western market for the foreseeable future. They are currently manufacturing x86 CPUs for the Chinese government to break the government's reliance on western technology. They do still make CPUs though. Just incredibly slow ones currently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DanhnASClQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DanhnASClQ (although with guaranteed government funding TBD how much that changes)

agumonkey 7y ago

Fair point, in these days of economic turmoil, intel premium will feel pointless

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
But that's just the thing - for a while, you could spend extra in Intel for a premium system. It wasn't a good $/performance tradeoff, but at the upper end it was there. What's wild about this moment in time is that Intel has lost even the high end; there isn't an Intel premium, because they are not the best product at all.
- swsieber 7y ago
  Not performance wise, but I've heard they have better tooling. Hopefully that's just a matter of time.
  - ssijak 7y ago
    And for hackintoshes
    - s_dev 7y ago
      For how long -- Apple switched from IBM to Intel due to performance reasons. Their mobile chips use ARM. Perhaps only time before Apple offer MacBooks with AMD chips.

notJim 7y ago

I thought I read a few months ago that Intel still does well in the video editing space (especially with 4k), because their chips have onboard decoding hardware. Is this still true?

wmf 7y ago
Discrete GPUs have the same hardware although there may be some driver pickiness with certain apps.
- notJim 7y ago
  Premiere Pro apparently doesn't use the GPU for h.264/5, so sadly if you want that, you have to use an Intel CPU: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Premiere-Pro-143/Hardware-Recommendations https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems...
  - xxpor 7y ago
    My understanding is that GPU rendering for h26{4,5} is a lot faster, but the image quality is nowhere close to CPU based rendering. Given that Premiere Pro isn't in the business of real time rendering or transcoding, the business case isn't there for full rendering support. If you really need the speed, maybe render into a fast but large lossless format, then use ffmpeg gpu transcoding?
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      It's not that Premiere Pro cares about image quality above all else, because it does use GPU-accelerated decoding. It's that Premiere only uses Intel's integrated GPU for decoding and not with Nvidia's or AMD's GPU decoder. Quick Sync's quality is worse than NVENC's these days so it's likely more along the lines of Intel contributed the patches than Adobe not wanting it out of purity reasons.
      - xxpor 7y ago

systemvoltage 7y ago

> regardless of the pricing If Intel sells $5 CPUs, will you change your mind? I don't understand the obsessive praise of AMD. Keep in mind that Jim Keller, an Intel ex-chip architect lead the AMD Zen platform when he was hired in 2013 (after working at Apple on the A4/A5 SOCs). It is the same dude competing against himself. Btw, he is back at Intel since 2018 to help Intel out.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
I'm not sure how this relates to the parent comment. They stated that no matter what your budget is, Intel is always the worse option currently. Their chips cost more and do less when they used to cost more and do more.
- sixothree 7y ago
  I got the fastest CPU my motherboard could handle. But looking at the performance charts, there were AMD CPUs with 25% and 50% more performance costing hundreds of dollars less than what I spent. I could have spent that money on a motherboard and some extra RAM, but didn't feel like doing the work. Meaning this was an upgrade from an under powered CPU to a newer chip that was not available when I did the build originally.
  - Polylactic_acid 7y ago
    The vast majority of users would find a 50% performance improvement and a huge price reduction to be worth the extra effort of replacing the mobo, especially since they already have to replace the cpu and likely put the mobo in to start with.
toast0 7y ago
I mean, it's nice to see that after years of stagnation, AMD is now able to hit best IPC, more cores/chip, best perf/watt, and close enough singlethreaded perf. And AMD $/perf is better too. An Intel chip at the right price is probably fine -- although, they've lost a lot of perf to mitigate security issues, so I dunno. Intel has also been pretty stagnated the last several years (what are we on, the 5th respin of Skylake?) Jim Keller's work at Intel should probably start showing up in 2021 or 2022... Could be pretty exciting, or Intel corporate politics could bury it all.

DeathArrow 7y ago

I also hope that VIA and other x86 license holders step up their game and start to compete like in early '90s.

kllrnohj 7y ago
VIA is out of the western market for the foreseeable future. They are currently manufacturing x86 CPUs for the Chinese government to break the government's reliance on western technology. They do still make CPUs though. Just incredibly slow ones currently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DanhnASClQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DanhnASClQ (although with guaranteed government funding TBD how much that changes)