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I'm very curious why people prefer AMD chips (I've never used one), would you share why do you and/or people you know like AMD so much?

slaw 4y ago
I have a Dell laptop with Intel i9-12900H. It is very noisy and hot.
amiga-workbench 4y ago
AMD have been thrashing Intel in performance, thermals and battery life for several years now. Intel are also a rather unpleasant company, I'll happily go with a competitor whenever it makes sense.
- favaq 4y ago
  That changed recently, 13th gen intel remains to be beaten.
  - rwalle 4y ago
    In what? High-end desktop CPU performance? I don't think people in this thread is interested in that.
- fomine3 4y ago
  For mobile battery life, Intel still better at idle power consumption.
bityard 4y ago
AMD CPUs often offer high performance at a lower cost than Intel's equivalent offerings. But some people just like supporting the underdog.
samtheDamned 4y ago
On Linux AMD drivers are by far some of the best, and the driver support is miles better both on the end of the 1st party support as well as 3rd party software support. There's a few instances where AMD GPU drivers even outshine their windows counterparts like in OpenGL performance. Intel's driver support is great as well, but their performance recently has not matched AMD, and their iGPUs don't compare to AMD's iGPUs. Also for beefier laptops with discreet GPUs, intel up until very recently would need an NVIDIA card to get decent performance which would require NVIDIA drivers, which are notorious for complicating things on Linux. On the other hand AMD laptops with discreet AMD gpus already have their drivers built into the kernel which removes almost any potential complication. Also there's personal preference, which in my case leans toward AMD because of their generally more open stance with their new technology, like raytracing and FSR which is contrasted by NVIDIAs typically closed off approach to the same things. Intel isn't as bad as NVIDIA in this department either but this is just personal opinion. Lastly AMD CPUs are generally cheaper than intel, and in the last few generations performed better overall than intel. TL:DR AMD on linux has great drivers with good support, the synergy between AMD's CPUs and GPUs and their combined APUs are very good, and personally I appreciate AMD's more open approach to technology like FSR, even if they aren't anywhere near perfect.
bloodyplonker22 4y ago
AMD has much better performance per watt. As you can imagine, this is important in any portable product.
pornel 4y ago
When Ryzen first came out, Intel still used the number of cores to differentiate their consumer and enterprise lines, which meant you could get a bucketload of cores from AMD without paying "enterprise" prices. AMD still tends to have lower actual TDP than Intel, which is more efficient in a laptop and easier to cool in a desktop. If you're going to use the integrated GPU, RDNA generally performs better in games.
acomjean 4y ago
I have linux a notebook with the AMD Ryzen 7 5700u and a Mat screen. Its pretty great on battery (6+ hrs). Even the built in gpu is good enough for general use. I think these newer AMD cpus are even better and worth the wait. My home linux machine is a ninth gen intel with Nvidia. Its technically a notebook, but more like a portable workstation. Its powerful, but battery life is terrible (<3) and you can hear the fans. It can game quite well however.
lhl 4y ago
I wrote this a while back comparing Intel 12th Gen to AMD 6000, and power/perf should apply even more to the 13th Gen vs 7040 (Zen4 + RDNA3): The reason that people want AMD CPUs is simple - they’re much better than what Intel is offering. We can see empirically how wide this gap is now since we have independent reviews of identical laptop platforms from Lenovo and HP’s ultrathin business laptops (the same segment as Framework): HP EliteBook 840 G9 1280P vs HP EliteBook 845 G9 6950HS [1] - these are both respective flagship parts, and we can see the AMD version has both a +23% performance rating and a +23% better battery runtime. Note, that on the HP website currently, the same configuration AMD version is also >30% cheaper. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G3 6850U vs 1235U [2] - since the Intel version reviewed isn’t a top of the line model, it’s not fair to compare performance numbers, but even with the significantly lower TDP Intel part (15W vs 28W), the AMD version of the laptop ends up with an even bigger lead with a 35% better battery runtime. The AMD version is also 10% cheaper than their Intel counterparts from the Lenovo site pricing. In both these cases, the AMD version wins significantly on processing power, battery efficiency and price. The 7040 should extend the lead on the latter, and that's not taking GPU performance into account [3], where the AMD Radeon 680M simply crushes the Intel Xe 96EU by an average of +88% in game performance, and +135% in synthetics (and again, the 7040’s RDNA3 GPU and Xilinx AI core will extend the lead even more for the upcoming generation). [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-EliteBook-840-G9-laptop-review-The-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-alternative.674583.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-EliteBook-840-G9-laptop-rev... [2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-G3-AMD-laptop-review-Quiet-and-efficient-workhorse-with-Ryzen-power.682906.0.html#toc-4 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-G3-AMD-la... [3] https://www.notebookcheck.com/Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs-vs-Radeon-680M_10364_11124.247532.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.com/Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs-vs-Radeon-680...
- bitL 4y ago
  Well, I have USB3 problems with all my AMD machines which makes e.g. attaching a VR headset reliably difficult. Random quickly repeated disconnects of devices due to a buggy chip from ASMedia/ASUS that AMD uses everywhere. I like TDP of the current gen though AMD turned to an even worse company than Intel in how it treats Threadripper users. DisplayPort over USB-C might not work either.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

slaw 4y ago

I have a Dell laptop with Intel i9-12900H. It is very noisy and hot.

amiga-workbench 4y ago

AMD have been thrashing Intel in performance, thermals and battery life for several years now. Intel are also a rather unpleasant company, I'll happily go with a competitor whenever it makes sense.

favaq 4y ago
That changed recently, 13th gen intel remains to be beaten.
- rwalle 4y ago
  In what? High-end desktop CPU performance? I don't think people in this thread is interested in that.
fomine3 4y ago
For mobile battery life, Intel still better at idle power consumption.

bityard 4y ago

AMD CPUs often offer high performance at a lower cost than Intel's equivalent offerings. But some people just like supporting the underdog.

samtheDamned 4y ago

On Linux AMD drivers are by far some of the best, and the driver support is miles better both on the end of the 1st party support as well as 3rd party software support. There's a few instances where AMD GPU drivers even outshine their windows counterparts like in OpenGL performance. Intel's driver support is great as well, but their performance recently has not matched AMD, and their iGPUs don't compare to AMD's iGPUs. Also for beefier laptops with discreet GPUs, intel up until very recently would need an NVIDIA card to get decent performance which would require NVIDIA drivers, which are notorious for complicating things on Linux. On the other hand AMD laptops with discreet AMD gpus already have their drivers built into the kernel which removes almost any potential complication. Also there's personal preference, which in my case leans toward AMD because of their generally more open stance with their new technology, like raytracing and FSR which is contrasted by NVIDIAs typically closed off approach to the same things. Intel isn't as bad as NVIDIA in this department either but this is just personal opinion. Lastly AMD CPUs are generally cheaper than intel, and in the last few generations performed better overall than intel. TL:DR AMD on linux has great drivers with good support, the synergy between AMD's CPUs and GPUs and their combined APUs are very good, and personally I appreciate AMD's more open approach to technology like FSR, even if they aren't anywhere near perfect.

bloodyplonker22 4y ago

AMD has much better performance per watt. As you can imagine, this is important in any portable product.

pornel 4y ago

When Ryzen first came out, Intel still used the number of cores to differentiate their consumer and enterprise lines, which meant you could get a bucketload of cores from AMD without paying "enterprise" prices. AMD still tends to have lower actual TDP than Intel, which is more efficient in a laptop and easier to cool in a desktop. If you're going to use the integrated GPU, RDNA generally performs better in games.

acomjean 4y ago

I have linux a notebook with the AMD Ryzen 7 5700u and a Mat screen. Its pretty great on battery (6+ hrs). Even the built in gpu is good enough for general use. I think these newer AMD cpus are even better and worth the wait. My home linux machine is a ninth gen intel with Nvidia. Its technically a notebook, but more like a portable workstation. Its powerful, but battery life is terrible (<3) and you can hear the fans. It can game quite well however.

lhl 4y ago

I wrote this a while back comparing Intel 12th Gen to AMD 6000, and power/perf should apply even more to the 13th Gen vs 7040 (Zen4 + RDNA3): The reason that people want AMD CPUs is simple - they’re much better than what Intel is offering. We can see empirically how wide this gap is now since we have independent reviews of identical laptop platforms from Lenovo and HP’s ultrathin business laptops (the same segment as Framework): HP EliteBook 840 G9 1280P vs HP EliteBook 845 G9 6950HS [1] - these are both respective flagship parts, and we can see the AMD version has both a +23% performance rating and a +23% better battery runtime. Note, that on the HP website currently, the same configuration AMD version is also >30% cheaper. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s G3 6850U vs 1235U [2] - since the Intel version reviewed isn’t a top of the line model, it’s not fair to compare performance numbers, but even with the significantly lower TDP Intel part (15W vs 28W), the AMD version of the laptop ends up with an even bigger lead with a 35% better battery runtime. The AMD version is also 10% cheaper than their Intel counterparts from the Lenovo site pricing. In both these cases, the AMD version wins significantly on processing power, battery efficiency and price. The 7040 should extend the lead on the latter, and that's not taking GPU performance into account [3], where the AMD Radeon 680M simply crushes the Intel Xe 96EU by an average of +88% in game performance, and +135% in synthetics (and again, the 7040’s RDNA3 GPU and Xilinx AI core will extend the lead even more for the upcoming generation). [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-EliteBook-840-G9-laptop-review-The-Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-alternative.674583.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-EliteBook-840-G9-laptop-rev... [2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-G3-AMD-laptop-review-Quiet-and-efficient-workhorse-with-Ryzen-power.682906.0.html#toc-4 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-G3-AMD-la... [3] https://www.notebookcheck.com/Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs-vs-Radeon-680M_10364_11124.247532.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.com/Iris-Xe-G7-96EUs-vs-Radeon-680...

bitL 4y ago
Well, I have USB3 problems with all my AMD machines which makes e.g. attaching a VR headset reliably difficult. Random quickly repeated disconnects of devices due to a buggy chip from ASMedia/ASUS that AMD uses everywhere. I like TDP of the current gen though AMD turned to an even worse company than Intel in how it treats Threadripper users. DisplayPort over USB-C might not work either.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]