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Still wondering how AMD has only ~25% of desktop market share given recent Intel issues.

by treprinum 2y ago

bugbuddy 2y ago
Because Intel is still top dog when it comes to single threaded performance even against Zen 5.
- treprinum 2y ago
  Yeah, but that's at the cost of a 50% probability of a CPU failure within a year. Moreover, it doesn't hold true in games vs X3D CPUs.
  - bugbuddy 2y ago
    That’s hyperbole. There’s no data to back such a claim.
    - Cold_Miserable 2y ago
      Indeed. Intel is trash right now. No AVX512 thus AMD is infinitely faster.
      - bugbuddy 2y ago
        Define infinitely
belval 2y ago
Well there are several reasons: - Intel is still competitive for gaming and productivity (albeit at a somewhat higher power consumption) - AMD does not have a good budget offering (competing with i3 at ~120$) - People don't refresh their desktop as often as a laptop, especially for gaming where realistically an i7-7700k from 2017 coupled with a modern GPU will comfortably output 60fps+ at 1440p.
- Drew_ 2y ago
  > i7-7700k from 2017 coupled with a modern GPU will comfortably output 60fps+ at 1440p I can say by first hand this is not true for any modern MP game. In general, I hate these "it does X FPS at Y resolution" claims. They're all so reductive and usually provably false with at least a few examples.
  - Zambyte 2y ago
    On the contrary I can say first hand that it is true (3700X which is two years newer, but on benchamrks it is a toss up between the two). What modern GPU at you using?
    - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
      I generally rule out all Intel CPUs between the 4770 and 11th Gen. The exception is when I need dirt-cheap + lower-ish power consumption (which isn't gaming)
      - Ekaros 2y ago
        An now 13th and 14th Gen... Before it is absolutely certain issues are fixed... So that leaves 12th?
        baq 2y ago
        12700k here, absolute unit of a CPU.
      - Zambyte 2y ago
        Your preference does not change whether or not it can achieve > 60fps at 1440p in modern multiplayer games when paired with a modern GPU
    - Drew_ 2y ago
      3700X's 8-cores is a generational leap above the 7700k's quad core for modern games. They aren't comparable at all. I ran a GTX 1080 and then an RTX 3080. The performance was not very good in modern games designed for current gen consoles like pretty much any BR game for example. Some games got high FPS at times but with low minimum FPS.
graton 2y ago
Prebuilt PC sales is likely that cause. I'm sure AMD has a much higher share for those who are building their computers. But that is most likely an overall small share of the market of computers sold.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  The Amazon statistics show much higher sales of AMD CPUs than of Intel CPUs, so this supports your belief about DIY computers.
- jtriangle 2y ago
  Most computers sold are prebuilts, and most computers sold are for commercial use, ie office bees, so video game oriented PC's are a relatively small corner of the market.
deleted 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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jeffbee 2y ago
Intel sells a complete package with highly integrated laptop things such as wifi (CNVio2) and webcam (IPU6) for a very low price, and they have things that fleet buyers want like vPRO.
- treprinum 2y ago
  The article had a separate "mobile" category for that where AMD had <20% market share.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    While true, people still want things like Wi-Fi and vPro in a desktop. And USB4 and what not.
pathless 2y ago
Intel has had very good marketing for decades, and they've also surrendered to marginless sales just for the sake of appearing dominant. AMD's strategy of late seems to be for higher margins, but lower share.
sweca 2y ago
I just bought an AMD chip for my new server build for this reason. But then I found out about the Sinkclose vulnerability...
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  Before a Sinkclose package can be deployed, it needs some multi-stage exploits to be successful. I think it's value is against exclusive targets. I've had more than 0 clients in my career that might draw that kind of attention but not a lot more.
Rinzler89 2y ago
Intel N100 NUCs with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSDs can be had for less than $200 on Amazon. What does AMD have in that price point? NUCs with AMD APUs are nearly double the price. AMD is top dog in the high performing PCs but not everyone buys high performance PCs.
- tracker1 2y ago
  There aren't really any AMD options as cheap as the N100/95/97 mini-pc options. That said, there are some truly great options in the sub-$600 mini-pc segment. The Beelink SER8 with an 8845hs is pretty great to say the least. Bought one a few weeks ago for HTPC/Emulation usage running ChimeraOS, it's done a very good job. Though I might replace the BT/WiFi controller for something better supported. Only hung up once, but still annoying. I wouldn't consider it "high performance" but it's definitely good performance and far better than any Intel mini-pc options I've looked into.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    Nice to see Beelink has some bios updates available. Many of these mini-PC.folks don't seem to offer any updates! Here's a random sample of 1: https://dr.bee-link.cn/?dir=uploads%2FSER%2FBIOS%2FSER6%20MAX https://dr.bee-link.cn/?dir=uploads%2FSER%2FBIOS%2FSER6%20MA...
- theropost 2y ago
  This is true, though an AMD 5700U mini PC might go for $300, or less if you can find a bargain. However, it will hands down dominate a N100. 2.5 to 3x faster, not to mention the APU (vega 7) for video/gaming capabilities. I was always Intel, but AMD has really stepped up in the last few years. Their APU line up is top notch, and pretty incredible for the mini PC market (and laptops). The newer gen are great too, but for the best bargains, then Zen 3 lineup is the way to go
  - Panzer04 2y ago
    There's a lot of options from both mfgs above the bottom end. Alder lake CPUs (eg. 12600h is simarly priced with 12 cores) are pretty solid in the same price class as Zen 3. I think both have pretty competitive miniPC offerings (with intel usually offering more cores) in the midrange. Definitely agree asst if you plan on actually using the minipc swinging a real mobile chip with 3x the perf of N100 class processors is almost certainly worth it.
MostlyStable 2y ago
My lab is trying to purchase a new office computer with heavy enough workloads to justify a mid-to-high tier CPU. I recommended that we buy an AMD machine primarily because of the current intel issues. The first problem I ran into is that the majority of companies selling pre-built computers do not offer an AMD option (and pre-built is a must. We are not allowed to use grant money to buy all the parts and assemble ourselves, which would have been my preferred option). And when they do, they are often limited in selection and might only be older generation or budget-tier CPUs. I did eventually manage to find an AMD option that fit our needs and my boss forwarded to billing for approval. We got significant push back with IT recommending various intel machines that they claimed were "better" (although also several hundred dollars more expensive), but were also available through the universities preferred sales partners. We could probably fight and get them to allow us to purchase what we want (the fact that they have to "allow" it when 100% of our funding is non-university dollars is a separate, ridiculous issue), but honestly, at this point we have probably already spent more staff time on this than the real world differences, even including the micro-code problems, are worth. I'd bet that a lot of corporate contexts, and even home enthusiast customers, operate on the same momentum: they have always bought intel and so they will continue to buy intel. Even in the absence of some strong belief that intel is "better".
- f1shy 2y ago
  Do I remember correctly that intel was paying companies for not offering AMD? Like Dell?
  - dijit 2y ago
    You do. 15 years ago though. https://www.intel.com/pressroom/legal/docs/NY_AG_v._Intel_COMPLAINT.pdf https://www.intel.com/pressroom/legal/docs/NY_AG_v._Intel_CO...
    - Alupis 2y ago
      The effects live on, unfortunately. Justice was not served as an outcome of that case. Today, people's mindshare is still largely with Intel, mostly due to nearly 2 decades of associated brand new computers, and performance with Intel, since they were the only offered option 90% of the time. Think about your typical non-technical person shopping for a computer. "I want Intel, they've always done well for me".
dagw 2y ago
It's really hard to buy pre-built high end desktop computers from big brands with the latest AMD CPUs.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
To this day, Intel is still deeply ahead in software support for AI. MKL, OpenAPI, Intel Optimization for sklearn, for pytorch, etc (there are many more). No equivilants exist from AMD but NVIDIA has an equivalent for all of these (i.e. CuPy). Using AMD for AI stuff only makes sense if you never believe that you may want to do any kind of ML-like workload on or with the CPUs assistance. This is true for many folks though, but for those it's not true for, they will buy blue until Intel no longer exists.
- treprinum 2y ago
  MKL runs on Ryzens just fine and newest Ryzens all have AVX512 which all new desktop/laptop Intels lack. "AI" on CPU is a gimmick, everybody does it on GPU anyway (outside 128GB RAM M3 Max that has some LLM use, but it's still due to shared memory with GPU).
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    Certain workloads aren't total "gimmicks" (i.e. small embeddings models), and often those CPU optimizations are on things that absolutely do take advantage of the CPU well (i.e. graph analysis) or on traditional ML algorithms like random forests (intel optimizations for sklearn) which are still important and do still run well on CPUs. Not to mention that most people have more RAM than they do VRAM. Running MKL on your datacenter grade AMD processor technically violates some license and it relies tricks like this - https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2020-08-31-MKL-Zen https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2020-08-31-MKL-Zen Technically, if your found to be allowing this as a cloud provider by Intel, they have grounds to sue you, so yes, you can use MKL on a Ryzen at home, but you put yourself at risk for lawsuits by doing this in a data center at scale
  - 0xDEADFED5 2y ago
    I'm doing fast AVX512 embeddings on Ryzen, and fast ONNX AVX512 reranking on Ryzen. Though I do the actual heavy lifting on GPU, doing all the RAG stuff in CPU is helpful. AI on CPU is still mostly a gimmick, but as models get smaller and more capable it's becoming less of a gimmick.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> Still wondering how AMD has only ~25% of desktop market share given recent Intel issues. I sometimes pick Intel over AMD because I don't have AMD's CPU naming conventions memorized - and I'm in a hurry.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  Hah, I felt that urge last time I bought a PC - I could easily roughly compared Intel performance vs price, but with AMD I had to look up half the models.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > I could easily roughly compared Intel performance vs price, but with AMD I had to look up half the models. That's sort of what I'm up against. AMD makes excellent products. If I have a day or two I can ask my son for recommendations. He knows AMD lines off the top of his head. If I have 10 minutes, I go with what I know.
- jhickok 2y ago
  Like you don't have time to research the CPUs for a personal machine? Man I usually go overboard reading up on the hardware going into my own desktop.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > Like you don't have time to research the CPUs for a personal machine? No. It's when I have to quickly line up hardware for my customers. I'll have 5 projects in play and I get an email from a client saying they need a workstation or notebook for a new hire ASAP. I can skim Intel CPUs among Lenovo offerings fairly quickly. Back when I was a system builder, I knew every capability of every chip. When Intel had hobbling virtualization (VT/x, etc), I knew which chips were capable. In that day, I often chose AMD to save time because every AMD CPU was fully capable.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  Especially in laptops, AMD has a downright insane naming scheme designed to confuse buyers - so this is honestly kind of understandable..
jtriangle 2y ago
We changed our current order for workstations to AMD parts. They arrive today or tomorrow I think. Odds are it would have been fine, they were just i3 worker bee boxes, but, it's not really worth the risk when there's a viable alternative.
mdasen 2y ago
Honestly, this is one of the reasons I think Intel's stock is likely undervalued at this point (not that I want to invest my money with management I don't feel confident in). Intel is facing a lot of threats and they rested on their laurels. At the same time, Intel is still 75-80% of the market - even as AMD started killing Intel in performance for several years. I'm less sure that Intel will hit its fab milestones than Intel's press releases, but I'm also not sure that AMD can really take advantage of that. AMD is reliant on TSMC's capacity and as we've seen recently, AMD often has to wait a year or two before it can use TSMC's latest processes. Even AMD's upcoming Zen 5 processors will be using TSMC's 4nm N4P process (with future Zen 5 processors expected to be 3nm). If Intel is able to get 18A out the door in 2025, Intel's fabrication will certainly be competitive with what AMD can get (and likely quite a bit better). From what I've read (and I might be wrong), it sounds like Intel is moving to High NA EUV soon (now-ish/2025) while TSMC is waiting until around 2030 (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/tsmc-to-adopt-high-na-euv-tools-in-2030-or-later-report https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/tsm...). Is TSMC falling into the trap of letting a competitor out-invest them - the same trap that Intel fell into ~2012-2022? Probably not, but it does seem likely that the advantage TSMC had will taper away over the next couple years - assuming Intel isn't full of crap about their progress. Even if TSMC maintains a lead against Intel, can AMD take marketshare? Specifically, can AMD produce as many chips as demanded or are they somewhat limited by how much capacity they can get from TSMC? For example, if people want X number of AMD server chips, does AMD manufacture 25% of that number and 75% of customers buy Intel chips because that's what is available due to AMD's lack of fab capacity? I'm not saying that is the case - it's a genuine question for someone that knows more about the industry than I do. We do know that TSMC has limited capacity. Apple tied up TSMC's 3nm capacity such Apple is the only company shipping 3nm parts. It looks like Intel will be the next company shipping 3nm parts with their Lunar Lake using TSMC's N3B process this fall. I'd also note that Intel's fabs aren't unlimited either. Meteor Lake moved to Intel 4 in December 2023, but Emerald Rapids (server) remained on Intel 7 at the same time. Intel can't just churn out as many Intel 4 chips as they'd like. I too wonder how/why AMD is still below 25% marketshare given Intel's issues. I wonder if AMD has limitations on how much fab capacity it can get which is stifling attempts at gaining marketshare. At the same time, it looks like Intel is on a course to fix its issues - if one can believe what Intel is saying. If Intel is able to ship 18A chips in 2025 at volume, it seems like it should fix the big issue that Intel has been facing - inferior fabs. AMD has been able to out-do Intel in part because it's been able to rely on TSMC's better fabrication. Is this just a blip where Intel looks bad 2020-2024? That's a genuine question because I don't really know enough about the industry. Maybe someone will say that Intel's PR is mostly bluster and that they're still being run by beancounters trying to optimize for short-term profits. Maybe someone will say that Intel is investing in the right direction, but there's still a lot of risk around pulling off High NA EUV for 2025. Maybe someone will say that Intel is likely to hit their milestones and will regain the title of best-fab. However, given that AMD hasn't been able to really hammer Intel's marketshare, it feels like Intel has more staying power than I'd think. Again, like the parent comment, it's always puzzled me that AMD hasn't gained a ton of marketshare over the past 5 years.
bangaladore 2y ago
My next CPU will be AMD. Why I'm not upgrading yet: 1. I generally use the same CPU for 2-3 years. I have a 11700k right now. 2. AMD hasn't released the beefier versions of its new CPU. High-end consumer Intel chips have many more cores/threads (P + E), while AMD's top right now has 16 threads. #2 Is why I'm holding off for now. I'm waiting for the X3D version of their chip with ~2x the core count and more threads.
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  #2 is just incorrect, the top end ThreadRipper (7995WX) has 96 Cores / 192 Threads. Intel has nothing that comes close to it.
mrweasel 2y ago
Depending on you definition of recent, because it's to recent to really make any significant impact. If you're thinking recent as in the last few years, then because the performance and power issues with Intel aren't large enough to make any difference for regular desktop use. Most will be on a 3 - 5 year upgrade cycle, so your new office PC just needs to be better than a five year old one, which it will be. What it might do it damage the used market. Prices on Intel based refurbished PCs needs to drop, by a lot, now that we know that many/most of those CPUs are damaged beyond repair and will continue to degrade.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
Because, like you said, the issues are recent.
deelowe 2y ago
Because AMD's general purpose offerings are pretty poor in comparison to intel (e.g. per per watt, productivity, etc). AMD only really shines in high end applications like gaming or high core count cloud computing.
JasonSage 2y ago
I think it's going to change a lot in coming years, but it's early days. I feel like the writing has been on the wall for Intel's downward trajectory and AMD's substantial improvements for a few years now, but I think a lot of trust and brand loyalty has papered over the signs for Intel enthusiasts. On a hardware news site covering the recent news, I saw for the first time in Intel buyers... shock. Incredulity. Disappointment. It's the first time I've seen self-admitting Intel fans come out in numbers questioning their beliefs and perceptions. I think in the next 4-year cycle as home PC builds turn over and Intel buyers are coming back to market, there's going to be a large influx of AMD converts. The Intel disaster lately will have turned erosion into an exodus. Maybe not a monumental one. But the AMD numbers are going to grow seriously over the next half decade.

Still wondering how AMD has only ~25% of desktop market share given recent Intel issues.

bugbuddy 2y ago

Because Intel is still top dog when it comes to single threaded performance even against Zen 5.

treprinum 2y ago
Yeah, but that's at the cost of a 50% probability of a CPU failure within a year. Moreover, it doesn't hold true in games vs X3D CPUs.
- bugbuddy 2y ago
  That’s hyperbole. There’s no data to back such a claim.
  - Cold_Miserable 2y ago
    Indeed. Intel is trash right now. No AVX512 thus AMD is infinitely faster.
    - bugbuddy 2y ago
      Define infinitely

belval 2y ago

Well there are several reasons: - Intel is still competitive for gaming and productivity (albeit at a somewhat higher power consumption) - AMD does not have a good budget offering (competing with i3 at ~120$) - People don't refresh their desktop as often as a laptop, especially for gaming where realistically an i7-7700k from 2017 coupled with a modern GPU will comfortably output 60fps+ at 1440p.

Drew_ 2y ago
> i7-7700k from 2017 coupled with a modern GPU will comfortably output 60fps+ at 1440p I can say by first hand this is not true for any modern MP game. In general, I hate these "it does X FPS at Y resolution" claims. They're all so reductive and usually provably false with at least a few examples.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  On the contrary I can say first hand that it is true (3700X which is two years newer, but on benchamrks it is a toss up between the two). What modern GPU at you using?
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    I generally rule out all Intel CPUs between the 4770 and 11th Gen. The exception is when I need dirt-cheap + lower-ish power consumption (which isn't gaming)
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      An now 13th and 14th Gen... Before it is absolutely certain issues are fixed... So that leaves 12th?
      - baq 2y ago
        12700k here, absolute unit of a CPU.
    - Zambyte 2y ago
      Your preference does not change whether or not it can achieve > 60fps at 1440p in modern multiplayer games when paired with a modern GPU
  - Drew_ 2y ago
    3700X's 8-cores is a generational leap above the 7700k's quad core for modern games. They aren't comparable at all. I ran a GTX 1080 and then an RTX 3080. The performance was not very good in modern games designed for current gen consoles like pretty much any BR game for example. Some games got high FPS at times but with low minimum FPS.

graton 2y ago

Prebuilt PC sales is likely that cause. I'm sure AMD has a much higher share for those who are building their computers. But that is most likely an overall small share of the market of computers sold.

adrian_b 2y ago
The Amazon statistics show much higher sales of AMD CPUs than of Intel CPUs, so this supports your belief about DIY computers.
jtriangle 2y ago
Most computers sold are prebuilts, and most computers sold are for commercial use, ie office bees, so video game oriented PC's are a relatively small corner of the market.

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jeffbee 2y ago

Intel sells a complete package with highly integrated laptop things such as wifi (CNVio2) and webcam (IPU6) for a very low price, and they have things that fleet buyers want like vPRO.

treprinum 2y ago
The article had a separate "mobile" category for that where AMD had <20% market share.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  While true, people still want things like Wi-Fi and vPro in a desktop. And USB4 and what not.

pathless 2y ago

Intel has had very good marketing for decades, and they've also surrendered to marginless sales just for the sake of appearing dominant. AMD's strategy of late seems to be for higher margins, but lower share.

sweca 2y ago

I just bought an AMD chip for my new server build for this reason. But then I found out about the Sinkclose vulnerability...

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
Before a Sinkclose package can be deployed, it needs some multi-stage exploits to be successful. I think it's value is against exclusive targets. I've had more than 0 clients in my career that might draw that kind of attention but not a lot more.

Rinzler89 2y ago

Intel N100 NUCs with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSDs can be had for less than $200 on Amazon. What does AMD have in that price point? NUCs with AMD APUs are nearly double the price. AMD is top dog in the high performing PCs but not everyone buys high performance PCs.

tracker1 2y ago
There aren't really any AMD options as cheap as the N100/95/97 mini-pc options. That said, there are some truly great options in the sub-$600 mini-pc segment. The Beelink SER8 with an 8845hs is pretty great to say the least. Bought one a few weeks ago for HTPC/Emulation usage running ChimeraOS, it's done a very good job. Though I might replace the BT/WiFi controller for something better supported. Only hung up once, but still annoying. I wouldn't consider it "high performance" but it's definitely good performance and far better than any Intel mini-pc options I've looked into.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Nice to see Beelink has some bios updates available. Many of these mini-PC.folks don't seem to offer any updates! Here's a random sample of 1: https://dr.bee-link.cn/?dir=uploads%2FSER%2FBIOS%2FSER6%20MAX https://dr.bee-link.cn/?dir=uploads%2FSER%2FBIOS%2FSER6%20MA...
theropost 2y ago
This is true, though an AMD 5700U mini PC might go for $300, or less if you can find a bargain. However, it will hands down dominate a N100. 2.5 to 3x faster, not to mention the APU (vega 7) for video/gaming capabilities. I was always Intel, but AMD has really stepped up in the last few years. Their APU line up is top notch, and pretty incredible for the mini PC market (and laptops). The newer gen are great too, but for the best bargains, then Zen 3 lineup is the way to go
- Panzer04 2y ago
  There's a lot of options from both mfgs above the bottom end. Alder lake CPUs (eg. 12600h is simarly priced with 12 cores) are pretty solid in the same price class as Zen 3. I think both have pretty competitive miniPC offerings (with intel usually offering more cores) in the midrange. Definitely agree asst if you plan on actually using the minipc swinging a real mobile chip with 3x the perf of N100 class processors is almost certainly worth it.

MostlyStable 2y ago

My lab is trying to purchase a new office computer with heavy enough workloads to justify a mid-to-high tier CPU. I recommended that we buy an AMD machine primarily because of the current intel issues. The first problem I ran into is that the majority of companies selling pre-built computers do not offer an AMD option (and pre-built is a must. We are not allowed to use grant money to buy all the parts and assemble ourselves, which would have been my preferred option). And when they do, they are often limited in selection and might only be older generation or budget-tier CPUs. I did eventually manage to find an AMD option that fit our needs and my boss forwarded to billing for approval. We got significant push back with IT recommending various intel machines that they claimed were "better" (although also several hundred dollars more expensive), but were also available through the universities preferred sales partners. We could probably fight and get them to allow us to purchase what we want (the fact that they have to "allow" it when 100% of our funding is non-university dollars is a separate, ridiculous issue), but honestly, at this point we have probably already spent more staff time on this than the real world differences, even including the micro-code problems, are worth. I'd bet that a lot of corporate contexts, and even home enthusiast customers, operate on the same momentum: they have always bought intel and so they will continue to buy intel. Even in the absence of some strong belief that intel is "better".

f1shy 2y ago
Do I remember correctly that intel was paying companies for not offering AMD? Like Dell?
- dijit 2y ago
  You do. 15 years ago though. https://www.intel.com/pressroom/legal/docs/NY_AG_v._Intel_COMPLAINT.pdf https://www.intel.com/pressroom/legal/docs/NY_AG_v._Intel_CO...
  - Alupis 2y ago
    The effects live on, unfortunately. Justice was not served as an outcome of that case. Today, people's mindshare is still largely with Intel, mostly due to nearly 2 decades of associated brand new computers, and performance with Intel, since they were the only offered option 90% of the time. Think about your typical non-technical person shopping for a computer. "I want Intel, they've always done well for me".

dagw 2y ago

It's really hard to buy pre-built high end desktop computers from big brands with the latest AMD CPUs.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

To this day, Intel is still deeply ahead in software support for AI. MKL, OpenAPI, Intel Optimization for sklearn, for pytorch, etc (there are many more). No equivilants exist from AMD but NVIDIA has an equivalent for all of these (i.e. CuPy). Using AMD for AI stuff only makes sense if you never believe that you may want to do any kind of ML-like workload on or with the CPUs assistance. This is true for many folks though, but for those it's not true for, they will buy blue until Intel no longer exists.

treprinum 2y ago
MKL runs on Ryzens just fine and newest Ryzens all have AVX512 which all new desktop/laptop Intels lack. "AI" on CPU is a gimmick, everybody does it on GPU anyway (outside 128GB RAM M3 Max that has some LLM use, but it's still due to shared memory with GPU).
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Certain workloads aren't total "gimmicks" (i.e. small embeddings models), and often those CPU optimizations are on things that absolutely do take advantage of the CPU well (i.e. graph analysis) or on traditional ML algorithms like random forests (intel optimizations for sklearn) which are still important and do still run well on CPUs. Not to mention that most people have more RAM than they do VRAM. Running MKL on your datacenter grade AMD processor technically violates some license and it relies tricks like this - https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2020-08-31-MKL-Zen https://danieldk.eu/Posts/2020-08-31-MKL-Zen Technically, if your found to be allowing this as a cloud provider by Intel, they have grounds to sue you, so yes, you can use MKL on a Ryzen at home, but you put yourself at risk for lawsuits by doing this in a data center at scale
- 0xDEADFED5 2y ago
  I'm doing fast AVX512 embeddings on Ryzen, and fast ONNX AVX512 reranking on Ryzen. Though I do the actual heavy lifting on GPU, doing all the RAG stuff in CPU is helpful. AI on CPU is still mostly a gimmick, but as models get smaller and more capable it's becoming less of a gimmick.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

> Still wondering how AMD has only ~25% of desktop market share given recent Intel issues. I sometimes pick Intel over AMD because I don't have AMD's CPU naming conventions memorized - and I'm in a hurry.

dukeyukey 2y ago
Hah, I felt that urge last time I bought a PC - I could easily roughly compared Intel performance vs price, but with AMD I had to look up half the models.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > I could easily roughly compared Intel performance vs price, but with AMD I had to look up half the models. That's sort of what I'm up against. AMD makes excellent products. If I have a day or two I can ask my son for recommendations. He knows AMD lines off the top of his head. If I have 10 minutes, I go with what I know.
jhickok 2y ago
Like you don't have time to research the CPUs for a personal machine? Man I usually go overboard reading up on the hardware going into my own desktop.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > Like you don't have time to research the CPUs for a personal machine? No. It's when I have to quickly line up hardware for my customers. I'll have 5 projects in play and I get an email from a client saying they need a workstation or notebook for a new hire ASAP. I can skim Intel CPUs among Lenovo offerings fairly quickly. Back when I was a system builder, I knew every capability of every chip. When Intel had hobbling virtualization (VT/x, etc), I knew which chips were capable. In that day, I often chose AMD to save time because every AMD CPU was fully capable.
Panzer04 2y ago
Especially in laptops, AMD has a downright insane naming scheme designed to confuse buyers - so this is honestly kind of understandable..

jtriangle 2y ago

We changed our current order for workstations to AMD parts. They arrive today or tomorrow I think. Odds are it would have been fine, they were just i3 worker bee boxes, but, it's not really worth the risk when there's a viable alternative.

mdasen 2y ago

Honestly, this is one of the reasons I think Intel's stock is likely undervalued at this point (not that I want to invest my money with management I don't feel confident in). Intel is facing a lot of threats and they rested on their laurels. At the same time, Intel is still 75-80% of the market - even as AMD started killing Intel in performance for several years. I'm less sure that Intel will hit its fab milestones than Intel's press releases, but I'm also not sure that AMD can really take advantage of that. AMD is reliant on TSMC's capacity and as we've seen recently, AMD often has to wait a year or two before it can use TSMC's latest processes. Even AMD's upcoming Zen 5 processors will be using TSMC's 4nm N4P process (with future Zen 5 processors expected to be 3nm). If Intel is able to get 18A out the door in 2025, Intel's fabrication will certainly be competitive with what AMD can get (and likely quite a bit better). From what I've read (and I might be wrong), it sounds like Intel is moving to High NA EUV soon (now-ish/2025) while TSMC is waiting until around 2030 (https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/tsmc-to-adopt-high-na-euv-tools-in-2030-or-later-report https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/manufacturing/tsm...). Is TSMC falling into the trap of letting a competitor out-invest them - the same trap that Intel fell into ~2012-2022? Probably not, but it does seem likely that the advantage TSMC had will taper away over the next couple years - assuming Intel isn't full of crap about their progress. Even if TSMC maintains a lead against Intel, can AMD take marketshare? Specifically, can AMD produce as many chips as demanded or are they somewhat limited by how much capacity they can get from TSMC? For example, if people want X number of AMD server chips, does AMD manufacture 25% of that number and 75% of customers buy Intel chips because that's what is available due to AMD's lack of fab capacity? I'm not saying that is the case - it's a genuine question for someone that knows more about the industry than I do. We do know that TSMC has limited capacity. Apple tied up TSMC's 3nm capacity such Apple is the only company shipping 3nm parts. It looks like Intel will be the next company shipping 3nm parts with their Lunar Lake using TSMC's N3B process this fall. I'd also note that Intel's fabs aren't unlimited either. Meteor Lake moved to Intel 4 in December 2023, but Emerald Rapids (server) remained on Intel 7 at the same time. Intel can't just churn out as many Intel 4 chips as they'd like. I too wonder how/why AMD is still below 25% marketshare given Intel's issues. I wonder if AMD has limitations on how much fab capacity it can get which is stifling attempts at gaining marketshare. At the same time, it looks like Intel is on a course to fix its issues - if one can believe what Intel is saying. If Intel is able to ship 18A chips in 2025 at volume, it seems like it should fix the big issue that Intel has been facing - inferior fabs. AMD has been able to out-do Intel in part because it's been able to rely on TSMC's better fabrication. Is this just a blip where Intel looks bad 2020-2024? That's a genuine question because I don't really know enough about the industry. Maybe someone will say that Intel's PR is mostly bluster and that they're still being run by beancounters trying to optimize for short-term profits. Maybe someone will say that Intel is investing in the right direction, but there's still a lot of risk around pulling off High NA EUV for 2025. Maybe someone will say that Intel is likely to hit their milestones and will regain the title of best-fab. However, given that AMD hasn't been able to really hammer Intel's marketshare, it feels like Intel has more staying power than I'd think. Again, like the parent comment, it's always puzzled me that AMD hasn't gained a ton of marketshare over the past 5 years.

bangaladore 2y ago

My next CPU will be AMD. Why I'm not upgrading yet: 1. I generally use the same CPU for 2-3 years. I have a 11700k right now. 2. AMD hasn't released the beefier versions of its new CPU. High-end consumer Intel chips have many more cores/threads (P + E), while AMD's top right now has 16 threads. #2 Is why I'm holding off for now. I'm waiting for the X3D version of their chip with ~2x the core count and more threads.

BeefWellington 2y ago
#2 is just incorrect, the top end ThreadRipper (7995WX) has 96 Cores / 192 Threads. Intel has nothing that comes close to it.

mrweasel 2y ago

Depending on you definition of recent, because it's to recent to really make any significant impact. If you're thinking recent as in the last few years, then because the performance and power issues with Intel aren't large enough to make any difference for regular desktop use. Most will be on a 3 - 5 year upgrade cycle, so your new office PC just needs to be better than a five year old one, which it will be. What it might do it damage the used market. Prices on Intel based refurbished PCs needs to drop, by a lot, now that we know that many/most of those CPUs are damaged beyond repair and will continue to degrade.

xboxnolifes 2y ago

Because, like you said, the issues are recent.

deelowe 2y ago

Because AMD's general purpose offerings are pretty poor in comparison to intel (e.g. per per watt, productivity, etc). AMD only really shines in high end applications like gaming or high core count cloud computing.

JasonSage 2y ago

I think it's going to change a lot in coming years, but it's early days. I feel like the writing has been on the wall for Intel's downward trajectory and AMD's substantial improvements for a few years now, but I think a lot of trust and brand loyalty has papered over the signs for Intel enthusiasts. On a hardware news site covering the recent news, I saw for the first time in Intel buyers... shock. Incredulity. Disappointment. It's the first time I've seen self-admitting Intel fans come out in numbers questioning their beliefs and perceptions. I think in the next 4-year cycle as home PC builds turn over and Intel buyers are coming back to market, there's going to be a large influx of AMD converts. The Intel disaster lately will have turned erosion into an exodus. Maybe not a monumental one. But the AMD numbers are going to grow seriously over the next half decade.