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I used to be a die-hard Intel customer, and recommended to everyone that asked me what to but, to buy Intel. That has changed. Now it's price/performance that m

I used to be a die-hard Intel customer, and recommended to everyone that asked me what to but, to buy Intel. That has changed. Now it's price/performance that matters more than brand. Intel also had a few missteps that made the brand lose a bit of its luster. My most recent computer is AMD Ryzen based, but we just bought an Intel-based Dell for my partner because the price/performance was better than comparable AMD machines at the time, possibly due to a sale. But the Intel chip is a lot faster than my laptop, so now I'm a little bit jealous of the Intel machine.

vkazanov 1y ago
Sounds weird. I have 2 intel/dell laptops and thinkpad/amd 14s laptop. Both Dells (a workstation-class 22 core cpu and a more power-efficient one) suck massively when compared to amd ai-something-something-ryzen. What's worse, intel drivers are a mess on linux right now. Dell xps 13 plus is the worst laptop I had in a decade, and that's after owning every Linux-preinstalled Dell XPS 13 ever released.
- leptons 1y ago
  "Sounds weird"??? Not really sure what you mean by that. Both our Intel and AMD computers are doing great. Nothing "weird" about it. No problems at all. YMMV.
  - vkazanov 1y ago
    What i mean is that it's relatively hard to find an intel laptop that would be meaningfully faster than an amd one. For a while Intel was surviving on quality software but even this moat is drying out.
    - leptons 1y ago
      The Dell Intel-based laptop has an Intel Core i9-13900HX @ 55W TDP. 24 cores, 32 threads, scores 43,067 on passmark. The AMD laptop I got has AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS @ 54W TDP, which scores 28,632 on passmark and I paid about the same price for it as the Dell about one year earlier, around $1200. At the time we bought the Dell, it was faster than comparable AMD based laptops in the same price range, and that was surprising to me too, but that's what happened. Trust me, I searched for the best deal, but the Dell being on sale at the time made it the best choice in terms of speed and features. FWIW, Apple M4 Max 16 Core scores 43,818 on passmark and runs at 90 Watts TDP, so Intel certainly is competing on speed, as well as TDP.
bee_rider 1y ago
We think of “Ryzen based” as recent, but the first generation of Zen was from 2017-2018. If it possible that your machine has earned retirement?
hypercube33 1y ago
If you're comparing laptop to desktop keep in mind a lot of those top out at 5 to 45w (gaming) and desktop chips are 45-65w to 300w (threadripper) and have a lot more cooling behind them. it's almost apples to oranges in most cases.
- leptons 1y ago
  Not sure why you're trying to techsplain any of this to me. I never conflated desktop with laptop, not sure how you got that out of my comment.
etempleton 1y ago
I do have repeated, annoying instability with my Ryzen 5900X desktop. I find AMD to have a much narrower setup window in terms of memory speed, timing, etc. and that is before any kind of overclocking. And the motherboard / bios firmware situation always seems a bit more sketchy for AMD. Maybe it is just bad luck on my end, but I have not had those issues with Intel in the past or currently.
- leptons 1y ago
  It's bad luck on your end. I have 3 AMD-based "desktops", never had a single problem with any of them. I just throw whatever memory in and it just works. These are being used more as servers than desktops, with large RAID arrays, HBA cards, tape drives, etc. They're consumer-level systems - Ryzen 7 5700G, Ryzen 5 2600, Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

vkazanov 1y ago

Sounds weird. I have 2 intel/dell laptops and thinkpad/amd 14s laptop. Both Dells (a workstation-class 22 core cpu and a more power-efficient one) suck massively when compared to amd ai-something-something-ryzen. What's worse, intel drivers are a mess on linux right now. Dell xps 13 plus is the worst laptop I had in a decade, and that's after owning every Linux-preinstalled Dell XPS 13 ever released.

leptons 1y ago
"Sounds weird"??? Not really sure what you mean by that. Both our Intel and AMD computers are doing great. Nothing "weird" about it. No problems at all. YMMV.
- vkazanov 1y ago
  What i mean is that it's relatively hard to find an intel laptop that would be meaningfully faster than an amd one. For a while Intel was surviving on quality software but even this moat is drying out.
  - leptons 1y ago
    The Dell Intel-based laptop has an Intel Core i9-13900HX @ 55W TDP. 24 cores, 32 threads, scores 43,067 on passmark. The AMD laptop I got has AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS @ 54W TDP, which scores 28,632 on passmark and I paid about the same price for it as the Dell about one year earlier, around $1200. At the time we bought the Dell, it was faster than comparable AMD based laptops in the same price range, and that was surprising to me too, but that's what happened. Trust me, I searched for the best deal, but the Dell being on sale at the time made it the best choice in terms of speed and features. FWIW, Apple M4 Max 16 Core scores 43,818 on passmark and runs at 90 Watts TDP, so Intel certainly is competing on speed, as well as TDP.

bee_rider 1y ago

We think of “Ryzen based” as recent, but the first generation of Zen was from 2017-2018. If it possible that your machine has earned retirement?

hypercube33 1y ago

If you're comparing laptop to desktop keep in mind a lot of those top out at 5 to 45w (gaming) and desktop chips are 45-65w to 300w (threadripper) and have a lot more cooling behind them. it's almost apples to oranges in most cases.

leptons 1y ago
Not sure why you're trying to techsplain any of this to me. I never conflated desktop with laptop, not sure how you got that out of my comment.

etempleton 1y ago

I do have repeated, annoying instability with my Ryzen 5900X desktop. I find AMD to have a much narrower setup window in terms of memory speed, timing, etc. and that is before any kind of overclocking. And the motherboard / bios firmware situation always seems a bit more sketchy for AMD. Maybe it is just bad luck on my end, but I have not had those issues with Intel in the past or currently.

leptons 1y ago
It's bad luck on your end. I have 3 AMD-based "desktops", never had a single problem with any of them. I just throw whatever memory in and it just works. These are being used more as servers than desktops, with large RAID arrays, HBA cards, tape drives, etc. They're consumer-level systems - Ryzen 7 5700G, Ryzen 5 2600, Ryzen 7 7800X3D.