[aashishnb]

Here's a layman's view while buying a computer:

Generally, based on historic experience & inputs from your vendor, Intel based machines have been better than AMD based machines. The intel ones are priced at a somewhat premium to AMD ones, which tends to reinforce this view.

This is like buying subsequent versions of successful models like the Honda City / Innova, etc. even if the newer competition may offer better bang for buck. Also, not buying newer Tata vehicles even if better because of historical brand image

[alikidwhy]

Good thread

I personally prefer Intel as a brand but I believe AMD has improved a lot and knocked Intel out with their latest Threadripper chips (although it may seem like an overkill).

I was thinking of building a PC and this thread showing up, is great.

The current Ryzen 3000 chips are better than Intel imo, due to the following reasons;

1. They’re cheaper than their Intel counterparts (most).

2. 3000G chipsets come with Integrated Vega Graphics (Vega 8 and Vega 11) which are relatively newer than Intel’s UHD 620/630 and far more capable. The integrated graphics can run most games at stable settings and 60fps unlike Intel’s.

3. Intel does not provide heatsink and fan in most of its newer gen CPU(s) although one must always use a separate fan, a budget user will not notice the difference in performance and buying a fan separately makes the build more expensive.

To sum up, I prefer AMD now.

[Venkat_Figo]

AMD has made significant gains with their Zen 2 architecture (3000 series processors). AMD is using 7 nm while Intel is still at 14 nm. However I would like to make a few points as below:

- Intel is still ahead in single core performance, however applications benefiting from multi threading, especially productivity applications, run better on AMD, benchmarks prove the same.

- Intel still holds the crown for gaming, all though AMD has managed to close the GAP, on resolutions above 1440p, the difference is <10%. Hence AMD offers better price to performance ratio.

- Laptops is a different story, Intel pays OEMs to stick to them, but AMD's offerings are just too good, with desktop level productivity performance & on par gaming performance, you wont go wrong choosing AMD.

- In the GPU segment its a different story, AMD's drivers really need improvement, while they are getting there, NVIDIA is far ahead, especially in the top end GPU market, with virtually no competition. With the launch of the 3000 series GPUs, AMD has their work cut out, hope they deliver. I am personally looking to upgrade my desktop GPU.

Originally Posted by Sebring

Can you tell us why Apple moved away from Intel?

Optimization is the key. Apple's IOS along with its Bionic processors & 4 GB RAM perform better than Android's using a Snapdragon's 865 & 12 Gigs of RAM (although the gap is narrow, the specs sheet difference is huge).

They want the same level of optimization & performance in their Mac's as well. Also reduces their dependency on 3rd party & they make more money.

[hashbro]

Intel has been a runaway champion in CPU. AMD first gave Intel a competition, when they came up with Athlon 64 processor. After that it was Intel all the way again.

Then AMD released Ryzen and the scene changed completely. This was a time when Intel's tried and tested tick-tock architecture was at the end of its lifecycle.

Being said that the rumours are that Intel's upcoming Tiger Lake CPUs will again be able to compete with AMD.

We need to have a good competition for the sake of consumers.

[CarJunki]

When buying technology or anything else, set the parameters of performance / use that is non negotiable to you. This essentially draws a boundary around what you want.
Then look for products addressing those areas.

Some common things one should look at:
1. Is the latest and greatest the real need?
2. Is this going to be something where battery life is important (like students taking to college), there is usually no electrical points or limited number of those
3. Screen quality, look for high NITS capable screens (300 and above are good)
4. Weight, do you want to lug 3 kg load in backpack or 1.5 kg?
5. Sturdiness needs of the laptop (not so much a concern for desktops though)
6. Bragging power, how important is the card draw game and coming out trumps in those to you.

Now some technical considerations:
1. Unless you are going to use an external eGPU, the thunderbolt port does not give additional benefits to common user.
2. Thermal - heat is energy wasted, in mobile and movable devices this energy comes from battery. More heat means less battery endurance
3. RAM: There are LP-DDR4 and DDR4, LP-DDR will provide lower performance but consume less battery. So if your use is lightweight, mostly web browsing and document creation/editing/excel etc then LP-DDR is OK, if programming is major driver get one with DDR4
4. Dedicated graphics, there are some scientific loads that benefit greatly from dedicated graphics, even a minuscule dedicated graphics will provide great jump in experience

It turns out that for same energy consumption AMD can deliver higher performance. If you keep performance same vs Intel, then AMD provides longer battery life and a more cooler laptop. Less heat from laptop is essential if you keep laptop on your lap while working. There may be some people who like their laps toasty, no offence to them.

Intel still rules in single core performance, but that is becoming less relevant. Reason being evolution of software. Earlier gen software were more dependent on single core performance, now they are all being designed to exploit multi-core performances. Now the users are also liking the ability to open 25 browser tabs and then some more application simultaneously. And they expect snappy performance with even high loads.

Slowly Intel will find market share slipping out of its hand for laptops. They were no where in handheld. Their only strong hold is being attacked furiously by others.

One last point, there is no x86 architecture in the 64-bit computing world. This architecture came from AMD. In fact during the initial period it was called amd64. Why does this matter, well here again the story is about software working more lucidly with the compute architecture delivering performance boost.

In the server market, M$ has started using AMD big time for Azure infra. This is one heady cocktail. M$ is present in almost all enterprise. When a company sees M$ using AMD for their cloud infrastructure, the users of M$ will be less apprehensive when they are looking for next server class hardware.

[poloman]

Like any industry semiconductor companies will have their own peaks and troughs. AMD was once closing gap on Intel around 15 years back, They had very good market share even in server market at that point

Then Barcelona silicon and a series of missteps happened. It was close to bankruptcy. The share was trading as low as $1. Investors jumped the ship with what ever they could salvage. They survived only due to monopoly restrictions where Intel themselves wanted AMD to survive. Other than Intel and AMD, no other company hold x86 architectural licenses.

Then they took some bold decisions, closed down the foundry business, focused on design and architecture and exercised patience. Exploited weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the opponent. Now stock is trading at $92. I would have been a multi crorepati, had I hold on to shares.

Now they are back in game. The CEO Lisa Su is a core technical person and an asset. She should be given the full credit for this turn around. And TSMC also played their role well. How many know TSMC has twice market cap as that of Intel currently.

But as I summarized in earlier posts, never write off Intel. They have the cash. They know the game. AMD had >35-40% market share 15 years ago. Then it dropped even to single digits. Now it has gained significantly, still AMD revenue is still 1/10 of Intel. So don't mistake the discussions in this thread to be the larger picture,as if AMD is swallowing Intel. If they solve the process troubles, they will be back in business of domination.

[kamilharis]

I was evaluating an Ultrabook and this thread came up at the right time. I was confused with HUAWEI D 15 Ultrabook (256 SSD+1TB HDD) which comes with identical specs, in two variants - one with AMD Ryzen 5 3500U and another variant with 10th generation Intel® Core™ i5-10210U.

Mr. Joxster had cleared many of my doubts in another thread, so I am not going to those discussions again. Just out of curiosity I began checking comparison videos of AMD vs Intel then and I found this comparison by Ranjit interesting. The new AMD chips are superior it seems according to many analysts!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj7JsfaE8YM

[Samarth 619]

Originally Posted by Aney Kadam

you said and i quote "even the power brick in not capable of feeding enough power to the cpu under sustained loads." i have been experiencing similer kind of problem when i am playing a heavy game for example GTA5 the charger disconnects and reconnect automatically(this happens in 5 to 10 secs interval) this results in FPS drops. I have a 1 and half year old dell G3 i5 8th gen which i use for gaming and i am a complete noob when it comes to computers.
I have complained about it many times to dell tech support, they are very cooperative they changed my laptop's motherboard under warrenty but still this problem still presists. as of today they are still figuring out whats wrong with my laptop.

Its normal behaviour for Laptops to give less fps on battery alone, it needs power to be connected to give their highest fps'. Its common for every laptop that exists.

But I guess your exact problem is the non availability of power for 5-10 seconds, like a lag.

By the way, I did a Google search on your problem and I stumbled across this link. Exact same symptoms, and the problem is solved!
In short, you might need a high power charger. I hope this helps you.

Check it out: https://www.dell.com/community/Inspi...g/td-p/7298878

[Kingston]

I don't mind either as long as the per core performance is stronger than the other offerings in the same price bracket (I am talking about desktop-class processors).

I build gaming rigs for my friends (have done 8 so far) and I always find the Intel + Nvidia combo delivers a more stable performance. The key metric here is not Ghz or no. of cores but rather how well your games are optimized for your hardware and Nvidia does a great job with their drivers for Intel. Everything comes together perfectly!

That said, the one AMD rig which I did still outperforms equivalent Intel rigs when used for content creation (read rendering). So, it all comes down to what you are using your computer for.

As for laptops, God save your soul!

Because we are a automobile forum, the best analogy I can think of is – Desktop class processors are BMW M cars and Laptop class processors are your BMW M-Sport cars.

[Joxster]

Originally Posted by Kingston

I always find the Intel + Nvidia combo delivers a more stable performance.

Taking NVIDIA out of the equation, can you please elaborate on what is less stable when using an AMD CPU? I would be very interested to know the details from first-hand experience

Originally Posted by Kingston

As for laptops, God save your soul!

Because we are a automobile forum, the best analogy I can think of is – Desktop class processors are BMW M cars and Laptop class processors are your BMW M-Sport cars.

Actually, AMD has already saved our souls with Ryzen 4000 series laptop processors - just take a look at how close they are are to the Ryzen 3000 desktop processors.
Now it's just up to laptop OEMs to build models with these CPUs + NVIDIA high end GPUs. AMD is also about to release their RDNA2 GPUs, which are going to be a serious upgrade over their current GPU architecture - that's what's coming in the next gen gaming consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EO1zJzJ1nY

Cheers

[Kingston]

Originally Posted by Joxster

Taking NVIDIA out of the equation, can you please elaborate on what is less stable when using an AMD CPU? I would be very interested to know the details from first-hand experience

There is always the case of dropped frames when per core performance isn't the same as Intel – again this is purely from a gamer's perspective. This is a bottleneck caused by the CPU.

Most games do not optimise for 'N' number of processor cores since the GPU takes over that. What they need is a couple of strong performing processor cores to handle compute while transferring data bandwidth to the SSD<->RAM<->GPU.

A real world comparison for Intel vs AMD for gaming would be the Apple Silicons vs the rest mobile processors. Apple always has stronger single core performance resulting in a longer life span (an iPhone 5s would still happily load the newest Facebook app in comparison to a Snapdragon S3 which was launched around the same time).

Coming back to computers, this chart is what matters for people who do not use applications intended and optimised for multi-core processors.

Originally Posted by Joxster

Actually, AMD has already saved our souls with Ryzen 4000 series laptop processors - just take a look at how close they are are to the Ryzen 3000 desktop processors.

Now it's just up to laptop OEMs to build models with these CPUs + NVIDIA high end GPUs. AMD is also about to release their RDNA2 GPUs, which are going to be a serious upgrade over their current GPU architecture - that's what's coming in the next gen gaming consoles.

Of course, with laptops it is always about the OEMs decision to use the right combination. The board matters a lot, your data lanes need to keep up, and so does thermal efficiency. I strongly recommend folks who want raw power to go for a laptop only if their job absolutely requires it.

I work for one of the hottest startups in the country and all our content creators who need the raw processing power use desktops and iMacs even though everyone has a MacBook Pro.

The numbers and graphs can show all they want but in the real world, desktops will always be noticeable more adept and capable at doing properly complex tasks. For all those like me who only use word processors, spreadsheets and online tools for work, laptops are a god-send freedom!

[Cessna182]

I don't have any knowledge about the durability, but I do use the CPU benchmark test to compare the performance of the processor before purchasing a laptop. Here is the website I use: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

The way I understand it is that a higher score is better. I was surprised to find many i7 laptops being sold in India till a year ago had a lower score than more recent competitor products.

However, semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most complex process in history, and Intel has been around longer and hence might know the wear and tear characteristics better.

[sharan_si]

Originally Posted by poloman

Guys, leave the fixation AMD vs Intel when you are buying a laptop. You are buying a system not a processor. I had made these remarks in an earlier post. I work in one of these companies and previously worked in the other, but never recommend one over the other. If you are an average daily user these benchmarks hardly matter. It is another matter if you are an enthusiast and is building a system from scratch.

But the system configuration, chassis design, thermal design, ports, display etc can have a major impact on the user experience. In system design Intel is still much ahead of the curve. You will get lot of options as well.


You will find very few AMD laptops in thin and light premium segment. Things may be changing though..

Agreed, I have worked in one of these companies, Intel is better in system design (Thermal design, IO technology, etc). If you look at only processor speed, AMD is ahead in a few models.
In recent years AMD has overtaken in the server segment in terms of performance and technology node, AMD already has 7nm chips intel is yet to release one, The server system design is different from a laptop.

[Joxster]

Originally Posted by Kingston

There is always the case of dropped frames when per core performance isn't the same as Intel – again this is purely from a gamer's perspective. This is a bottleneck caused by the CPU.

Sorry to say, but this is simply untrue. I happen to be a hardcore gamer running an overclocked and self-delidded Intel i7 8700K + NVIDIA 1080 Ti combo with overclocked and tuned RAM. I will be switching over to a 4950X/4900X + RTX 3090, RTX 3080 Ti or 6900 XT - depending on which one makes more sense to me.
I also have plenty of friends whom I've built PCs for (including a top 100 AoE II DE pro-gamer on Twitch) in the last couple of years, and they have all been AMD Ryzen builds with NVIDIA GPUs. Absolutely no issues whatsoever gaming on an AMD CPU. Here's a video with an extremely detailed analysis of frame times including plotting charts on AMD vs Intel CPUs where he even debunks the myth and sets the record straight about AMD fanboys saying that Ryzen is "smoother" for gaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kK6CBJdmug

Originally Posted by Kingston

A real world comparison for Intel vs AMD for gaming would be the Apple Silicons vs the rest mobile processors. Apple always has stronger single core performance resulting in a longer life span (an iPhone 5s would still happily load the newest Facebook app in comparison to a Snapdragon S3 which was launched around the same time).

No, it's nothing like that at all. 1440p is the new 1080p in the gaming world, and Intel has almost no advantage there - lots of reviews/benchmarking tests on YouTube you can watch. In fact, even at 1080p competitive gaming that difference is negligible below 300 FPS, and literally no one uses monitors of such a high refresh rate yet. Watch the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDGWijdBDvM

Now the balance is going to tip completely in AMD's favor even for gaming, because Intel doesn't have PCIe 4.0 on their CPUs yet, while AMD does. That is going to be a huge performance loss for Intel CPUs with the latest gen GPUs until Rocketlake comes out - and Rocketlake is still going to be on 14nm, so don't expect any miracles.
Top that off with lower latency on Ryzen 4000 desktop Zen 2 APUs & Zen 3 CPUs due to unified 8-core CCX, and you have yourself a recipe for AMD to even overtake Intel in gaming - the results are yet to be seen of course, so this is an assumption, but is the expectation of many tech reviewers.

Originally Posted by Kingston

This chart is what matters for people who do not use applications intended and optimised for multi-core processors.

Anyone still talking about single-core performance is living in the past.

Cheers

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

We have ordered Lenovo P620 workstations equipped with AMD Thread Ripper Pro 3975WX 32 core cpu's.

That is one a hell of a configuration, a dream workstation rig to own and like the cherry on top, it is backed by Lenovo. What is the cost?