7 ms·

Intel's CPUs today are still king when it comes to single-thread workloads, like gaming. The main difference in the past two years has been that AMD has taken t

by 013a 6y ago

Intel's CPUs today are still king when it comes to single-thread workloads, like gaming. The main difference in the past two years has been that AMD has taken the lead in multi-thread performance, and that's scared Intel so much that they've significantly improved multi-thread performance and price across the board. The difference is quite stark, in both directions [1]: AMD destroys Intel in anything that benefits from multiple cores at the same product tier (Ryzen 9 3900x vs i9 10900k), in some workloads as high as 50%. But, Intel wins when gaming; usually by around 5-10%. The more measured position is: If you're just looking for the best value brand right now, AMD is the way to go, even if you are gaming. The 10900k is better than the 3900x for gaming, but its also a ~$120 up-sell: At similar pricing tiers, the single-thread performance difference is likely quite similar. But if you just want the best at any price, that's still Intel: More cores won't save every workload. [1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/3543993/intel-10th-gen-review-core-i9-10900k.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3543993/intel-10th-gen-revie...

fermienrico 6y ago
The whole situation boils down to price. AMD is a better value given the price. If Intel wants, they can just cut and match the prices. Why is there so much callous fanboyism around/against a goddamn CPU supplier like they’re a statement of their lifestyle or such? Its ok to do due diligence before purchasing but relentless obsession over my red team is better than your blue team screams of immaturity. Same with the people that endlessly pixel peep and read MTF charts for days in photography. They spend more time talking about how great their camera and lens setup is than actually going out and taking pictures with it.
- xattt 6y ago
  It is a hobby in itself. It’s irritating to others because the true hobby is hidden under the guise of another hobby. The irritation comes from a mismatch of expectations around the end goal between those who are fanboys and those who just want to get stuff done.
- ponker 6y ago
  As a film camera guy, I can say that I am unashamedly more of a camera hobbyist than a photography hobbyist. I mostly take pictures to keep the mechanisms operational.
- enragedcacti 6y ago
  I think a lot of the AMD hype for enthusiasts comes from the fact that without AMD being a meaningful player in the bulldozer years, desktop CPUs became VERY boring. 4-cores and single digit performance increases from Intel at enthusiast prices for approaching a decade. All you have to do is look at a youtube channel like Linus Tech Tips to see that a lot of people find it interesting when there is competition.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Encouraging competition can be done without hurling callous statements and consumer entitlement. As a retail business owner, I find 80% of our consumers sound and reasonable. The 20% - we never want their business. We keep our best to not anger them and most of our energy goes into maintaining the public image of our company. There are some real asshole customers that do things you never want to hear - stuff that makes me lose hope in humanity.
kev009 6y ago
By the time you subtract all the sub-prime performance from their vulnerabilities, this isn't actually true on properly patched operating systems. They took a sub-prime loan on validation, sacrificing security in the process, and the result is chips marketed and sold as something they are not. There really should be government-level lawsuit and restructuring at intel right now.
- bredren 6y ago
  I looked for but couldn’t find recent benchmarks showing performance degradation on windows and macOS related to mitigating Spectre and Zombieload / Z2. Can you point at recent information on this?
- Filligree 6y ago
  It's worse, isn't it? From what I've heard, Intel likes to run their benchmarks with many (most?) mitigations disabled... but Windows ships with all of them enabled.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- 013a 6y ago
  Any modern (ie 2020) third-party benchmarks ran against these processors have the vulnerability patches applied. They're factored in. Yes, Intel will often cite performance characteristics without the patches applied, and shame on them for that. And, Yes, it would be interesting to know how much of Intel's performance lead pre-Ryzen was due to this bad speculative execution microcode; it seems likely that AMD wasn't as far behind as everyone thought, but the past is the past. But the debt is now paid, and Intel still leads in single-core performance. Really, they've never not led in single-core performance (maybe going back to the late-90s Athlon days they were trailing). That's something an Intel shill would tell you, but it's also something anyone can find out just by looking at the benchmarks or doing their own testing. Marketing is mostly lies, but those lies stop when I hold the silicon in my hands.
- coreblocks 6y ago
zepearl 6y ago
> The 10900k is better than the 3900x for gaming, but its also a ~$120 up-sell Is it correct to think that compared by work-done-by-watt AMD is currently better than Intel? (in this example Intel's 10900k uses 250-300W [1], AMD's 3900x uses 140-170W [2]?) In my case I use often many threads/processes (generated by databases and/or my Python programs that usually spawn as many subprocesses as possible without overloading the CPU) and as my PC/server is next to my desk then if the performance difference is not too great my priority is usually for a CPU that gets less hot/is more efficient (because the fans have to work less therefore the box is less noisy, additionally the room heats up less which makes me suffer less during summer). [1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-10900k-cpu-review/2 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-10900k-cp... [2]: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ryzen-9-3900x-7-3700x-review,6214-3.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ryzen-9-3900x-7-3700x-r... Thx
- 013a 6y ago
  Yes: In terms of performance per watt, AMD generally beats Intel. It's not really even close in many situations. What this means for consumers is more complex, as there are many variables you can try to optimize for. If you're after minimal power usage in order to optimize for electricity cost, while still keeping good performance, actually: mobile Intel CPUs tend to be the best pick. AMD has some strong mobile CPU options, but they're essentially impossible to build into a desktop PC, whereas mobile Intel CPUs are available in products like the Ghost Canyon NUCs (ok, well, "available" may not be the right word, because they're freakin' impossible to find right now, but Officially, anyone can buy them). If you're after lowering heat output for the purposes of reducing noise or increasing overclocking performance, generally its better to solve this via better cooling. Noise is more of a function of bad cooling, rather than super-high heat output from the processor. Many people view liquid cooling as "super high overclocking performance", but actually: The biggest benefit to liquid cooling is that it reduces "air churn" inside the case by removing the typical CPU radiator fan just sitting in the middle of the case spilling air in every direction. Instead, you've got dedicated intake/output fans on defined sides of the case, resulting in clear air paths, which increases fan efficiency, reducing the number of fans you need or reducing the amount of work they need to do. But: the laws of thermodynamics state that heat can't just disappear. If you're optimizing for actual heat reduction for the sheer purpose of heat reduction, then an Intel mobile CPU or Ryzen desktop CPU is better (with Intel mobile CPUs being better by far). Check out the Ghost Canyon NUCs. If you can find one, they're more expensive than just DIY, but would likely be a great option for you.
outworlder 6y ago
> But, Intel wins when gaming; usually by around 5-10%. 10% more CPU performance is going to provide overall gains that are difficult to measure. That's even more true for games, which nowadays are seldom CPU-bound.
- 013a 6y ago
  It's a complex equation, but in general, if you have an RTX 2080 Ti, you'll get a higher average FPS out of an i9 10900k than a Ryzen 9 3900x across most games. Of course, that "more performance" often means "Running at 300fps instead of 270 fps", and it really doesn't matter. And, the higher the resolution, the more GPU stress you'll see, so at 4K-class resolutions its far closer to trading between CPU-bound and GPU-bound. But, then, DLSS2 complicates things further by amplifying what the GPU is capable of at even very high resolutions, and the RTX 3080 Ti is releasing in a couple weeks. So its only possible to speak in generalities about facts which are true in most situations. In the past decade, there has not been any competitively positioned products which would make an Intel/Nvidia PC not the generally-best option for PC gaming. AMD deserves a ton of credit for what they've done with Ryzen, and outside of gaming, BUY RYZEN. But, within gaming, it's a far more complex equation which depends on how much you're spending, what you're using the PC for other than gaming, if you're streaming, etc: In short, its such a complex equation that its better to just not think about it and flip a coin.
lm28469 6y ago
> But, Intel wins when gaming; usually by around 5-10%. It's measurable but is it significant ? True cpu bottleneck is a thing of the past for 99.9% of the games and 99.9% of people. By the time you're cpu limited you're in triple digits fps territory in 1440p. Even 5 years old cpus aren't that far from today's best: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_7_3700x_ryzen_9_3900x_review,25.html https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_7_3700x_ryze...
- SECProto 6y ago
  Yup, I play Overwatch at ~100fps at 1440p on an intel 2500k from 2011. CPU might matter for other games, but not the ones I play.
zozbot234 6y ago
Gaming has not been "single-thread" for a while, tbh. Multi-thread workloads are going to be increasingly relevant in the future, as even low-to-middle end cpu's will ship with a sizeable number of cores and support for GPU compute acceleration, e.g. via Vulkan.
oh-4-fucks-sake 6y ago
Nice background. Thank you. What's interesting to me is that the world's "leading" chipmaker got caught off-guard by lacking multithreading performance. You'd think that these world experts wouldn't have that blind spot.
SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
> single-thread workloads, like gaming. Most games these days have multi-thread heavy workloads. Gaming hasn't been single-thread dominant for AAA titles for a while.
greggyb 6y ago
Just a note for anyone reading through, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Intel i9 10900K are both near the top end of the respective companies' ranges of processors. These are not required for modern AAA gaming. The current guidance for "good" gaming CPUs is in the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and Intel i5 10600 range (+/- "X" or "K"). The 3900X and 10900K mentioned above will outperform these two, but it is unlikely to be a significant limiting factor for most gamers. At this level, Intel still beats AMD for gaming performance. Finally, if you're looking to go for a more budget build, the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X is a very solid entry-level gaming CPU. Based on my observations, most guidance suggests this CPU for lower-cost builds than can support an i5 or Ryzen 5. If you're looking to make some educated decisions between CPUs, always look for benchmarks. Gamers Nexus [0] does very good CPU reviews, with a mix of gaming and productivity workloads. If you're leaning more production workloads, Phoronix [1] has one of the most comprehensive test suites out there. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/user/GamersNexus https://www.youtube.com/user/GamersNexus [1]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Processors= https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Process...

by 013a 6y ago

fermienrico 6y ago

The whole situation boils down to price. AMD is a better value given the price. If Intel wants, they can just cut and match the prices. Why is there so much callous fanboyism around/against a goddamn CPU supplier like they’re a statement of their lifestyle or such? Its ok to do due diligence before purchasing but relentless obsession over my red team is better than your blue team screams of immaturity. Same with the people that endlessly pixel peep and read MTF charts for days in photography. They spend more time talking about how great their camera and lens setup is than actually going out and taking pictures with it.

xattt 6y ago
It is a hobby in itself. It’s irritating to others because the true hobby is hidden under the guise of another hobby. The irritation comes from a mismatch of expectations around the end goal between those who are fanboys and those who just want to get stuff done.
ponker 6y ago
As a film camera guy, I can say that I am unashamedly more of a camera hobbyist than a photography hobbyist. I mostly take pictures to keep the mechanisms operational.
enragedcacti 6y ago
I think a lot of the AMD hype for enthusiasts comes from the fact that without AMD being a meaningful player in the bulldozer years, desktop CPUs became VERY boring. 4-cores and single digit performance increases from Intel at enthusiast prices for approaching a decade. All you have to do is look at a youtube channel like Linus Tech Tips to see that a lot of people find it interesting when there is competition.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Encouraging competition can be done without hurling callous statements and consumer entitlement. As a retail business owner, I find 80% of our consumers sound and reasonable. The 20% - we never want their business. We keep our best to not anger them and most of our energy goes into maintaining the public image of our company. There are some real asshole customers that do things you never want to hear - stuff that makes me lose hope in humanity.

kev009 6y ago

By the time you subtract all the sub-prime performance from their vulnerabilities, this isn't actually true on properly patched operating systems. They took a sub-prime loan on validation, sacrificing security in the process, and the result is chips marketed and sold as something they are not. There really should be government-level lawsuit and restructuring at intel right now.

bredren 6y ago
I looked for but couldn’t find recent benchmarks showing performance degradation on windows and macOS related to mitigating Spectre and Zombieload / Z2. Can you point at recent information on this?
Filligree 6y ago
It's worse, isn't it? From what I've heard, Intel likes to run their benchmarks with many (most?) mitigations disabled... but Windows ships with all of them enabled.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
013a 6y ago
Any modern (ie 2020) third-party benchmarks ran against these processors have the vulnerability patches applied. They're factored in. Yes, Intel will often cite performance characteristics without the patches applied, and shame on them for that. And, Yes, it would be interesting to know how much of Intel's performance lead pre-Ryzen was due to this bad speculative execution microcode; it seems likely that AMD wasn't as far behind as everyone thought, but the past is the past. But the debt is now paid, and Intel still leads in single-core performance. Really, they've never not led in single-core performance (maybe going back to the late-90s Athlon days they were trailing). That's something an Intel shill would tell you, but it's also something anyone can find out just by looking at the benchmarks or doing their own testing. Marketing is mostly lies, but those lies stop when I hold the silicon in my hands.
coreblocks 6y ago

zepearl 6y ago

> The 10900k is better than the 3900x for gaming, but its also a ~$120 up-sell Is it correct to think that compared by work-done-by-watt AMD is currently better than Intel? (in this example Intel's 10900k uses 250-300W [1], AMD's 3900x uses 140-170W [2]?) In my case I use often many threads/processes (generated by databases and/or my Python programs that usually spawn as many subprocesses as possible without overloading the CPU) and as my PC/server is next to my desk then if the performance difference is not too great my priority is usually for a CPU that gets less hot/is more efficient (because the fans have to work less therefore the box is less noisy, additionally the room heats up less which makes me suffer less during summer). [1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-10900k-cpu-review/2 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-10900k-cp... [2]: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ryzen-9-3900x-7-3700x-review,6214-3.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ryzen-9-3900x-7-3700x-r... Thx

013a 6y ago
Yes: In terms of performance per watt, AMD generally beats Intel. It's not really even close in many situations. What this means for consumers is more complex, as there are many variables you can try to optimize for. If you're after minimal power usage in order to optimize for electricity cost, while still keeping good performance, actually: mobile Intel CPUs tend to be the best pick. AMD has some strong mobile CPU options, but they're essentially impossible to build into a desktop PC, whereas mobile Intel CPUs are available in products like the Ghost Canyon NUCs (ok, well, "available" may not be the right word, because they're freakin' impossible to find right now, but Officially, anyone can buy them). If you're after lowering heat output for the purposes of reducing noise or increasing overclocking performance, generally its better to solve this via better cooling. Noise is more of a function of bad cooling, rather than super-high heat output from the processor. Many people view liquid cooling as "super high overclocking performance", but actually: The biggest benefit to liquid cooling is that it reduces "air churn" inside the case by removing the typical CPU radiator fan just sitting in the middle of the case spilling air in every direction. Instead, you've got dedicated intake/output fans on defined sides of the case, resulting in clear air paths, which increases fan efficiency, reducing the number of fans you need or reducing the amount of work they need to do. But: the laws of thermodynamics state that heat can't just disappear. If you're optimizing for actual heat reduction for the sheer purpose of heat reduction, then an Intel mobile CPU or Ryzen desktop CPU is better (with Intel mobile CPUs being better by far). Check out the Ghost Canyon NUCs. If you can find one, they're more expensive than just DIY, but would likely be a great option for you.

outworlder 6y ago

> But, Intel wins when gaming; usually by around 5-10%. 10% more CPU performance is going to provide overall gains that are difficult to measure. That's even more true for games, which nowadays are seldom CPU-bound.

013a 6y ago
It's a complex equation, but in general, if you have an RTX 2080 Ti, you'll get a higher average FPS out of an i9 10900k than a Ryzen 9 3900x across most games. Of course, that "more performance" often means "Running at 300fps instead of 270 fps", and it really doesn't matter. And, the higher the resolution, the more GPU stress you'll see, so at 4K-class resolutions its far closer to trading between CPU-bound and GPU-bound. But, then, DLSS2 complicates things further by amplifying what the GPU is capable of at even very high resolutions, and the RTX 3080 Ti is releasing in a couple weeks. So its only possible to speak in generalities about facts which are true in most situations. In the past decade, there has not been any competitively positioned products which would make an Intel/Nvidia PC not the generally-best option for PC gaming. AMD deserves a ton of credit for what they've done with Ryzen, and outside of gaming, BUY RYZEN. But, within gaming, it's a far more complex equation which depends on how much you're spending, what you're using the PC for other than gaming, if you're streaming, etc: In short, its such a complex equation that its better to just not think about it and flip a coin.

lm28469 6y ago

> But, Intel wins when gaming; usually by around 5-10%. It's measurable but is it significant ? True cpu bottleneck is a thing of the past for 99.9% of the games and 99.9% of people. By the time you're cpu limited you're in triple digits fps territory in 1440p. Even 5 years old cpus aren't that far from today's best: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_7_3700x_ryzen_9_3900x_review,25.html https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_7_3700x_ryze...

SECProto 6y ago
Yup, I play Overwatch at ~100fps at 1440p on an intel 2500k from 2011. CPU might matter for other games, but not the ones I play.

zozbot234 6y ago

Gaming has not been "single-thread" for a while, tbh. Multi-thread workloads are going to be increasingly relevant in the future, as even low-to-middle end cpu's will ship with a sizeable number of cores and support for GPU compute acceleration, e.g. via Vulkan.

oh-4-fucks-sake 6y ago

Nice background. Thank you. What's interesting to me is that the world's "leading" chipmaker got caught off-guard by lacking multithreading performance. You'd think that these world experts wouldn't have that blind spot.

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago

> single-thread workloads, like gaming. Most games these days have multi-thread heavy workloads. Gaming hasn't been single-thread dominant for AAA titles for a while.

greggyb 6y ago

Just a note for anyone reading through, AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and Intel i9 10900K are both near the top end of the respective companies' ranges of processors. These are not required for modern AAA gaming. The current guidance for "good" gaming CPUs is in the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and Intel i5 10600 range (+/- "X" or "K"). The 3900X and 10900K mentioned above will outperform these two, but it is unlikely to be a significant limiting factor for most gamers. At this level, Intel still beats AMD for gaming performance. Finally, if you're looking to go for a more budget build, the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X is a very solid entry-level gaming CPU. Based on my observations, most guidance suggests this CPU for lower-cost builds than can support an i5 or Ryzen 5. If you're looking to make some educated decisions between CPUs, always look for benchmarks. Gamers Nexus [0] does very good CPU reviews, with a mix of gaming and productivity workloads. If you're leaning more production workloads, Phoronix [1] has one of the most comprehensive test suites out there. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/user/GamersNexus https://www.youtube.com/user/GamersNexus [1]: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Processors= https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=category&item=Process...