Battle Of the Brands: AMD vs. Intel

Big companies like Google and Amazon, likely developed custom made hardware for their enormous workloads. Probably crunching millions or trillions pieces of data daily. For the general consumer, you have two main stream options: AMD or Intel. These are the dominate brands (and practically only options) in the CPU space. For the inquisitive minds they may wonder what’ the better choice, this article shoots to provide you with some information to help make an informed opinion of the two CPUs. We’ll discuss: what a CPU is in general, the two brands, performance, preferred use case, current popularity and trends for the two brands.

What’s a CPU and Why Do I need it?

Briefly mentioned in a previous article is what a CPU is. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It is in short, the brain of any computer system. It receives zeroes and ones in patterns called instructions. These instructions are processed by the CPU and tells the rest of the system it’s a part of what to do. These instructions are things that’ll make sense to the computer, but not necessarily a regular person. Some of these instructions are then stored in memory modules as programs. Now with the programs, you’re getting functionality that you as a person, can use. This is things like a calculator app, Microsoft Word, Chrome, Netflix, even your favorite video games. Without it, most electronic devices wouldn’t function. It’s found in everything:

• Smart Wearables
  • Smart Watches
  • Smart Glasses
  • VR Head Sets (Oculus, Vive)
• Mobile Devices
  • Smart Phone
  • Tablet
• IoT (Internet Of Things)
  • Smart Bulbs
  • Smart Fridges
  • Microwaves
  • Smart TVs
  • Media players (Roku and Fire Stick)

Fun fact: A common feature in most computer motherboards is if it can’t detect a functioning CPU, it won’t power on. Some have a feature to temporarily bypass the need for this, but that’s a topic for later discussion.

Intel, The CPU Giant

Intel is the preferred brand for most systems .According to PassMark Software’s CPUBenchmark site, as of Q4 2020, Intel leads the market share at ~64% overall. Intel is in it’s 10th generation of Desktop CPUs. Providing high-end CPUs with up to 28 cores and overclock speeds of up to 5.3GHz as well as low and mid-range CPUs. They’re generally the preferred CPUs of PC gaming. Intel’s CPUs have better latency numbers in comparison to similar AMD CPUs. This lower latency allows for faster processing and seamless play.

Though AMD recently released RX 6000 series GPU that optimized with AMD CPUs. That could tip the advantage towards AMD in that respect. They have been the leader in desktop CPU technologies for a while. Recently, an advantage of power efficiency I noticed with Intel CPUs seems to be negligible. Intel’s lead with clock speeds, offered core counts, threading and virtualization features has also diminished over time as well . Though in some specific cases, AMD actually comes out ahead. We’ll mention those in a bit.

AMD, The Fierce Competition

AMD is a strong rival in this space to Intel. It offers both consumer and business grade processors. The higher tier of AMD processors, the Threadripper CPUs, offer core counts of up to 64 core processors, handling up to 128 threads. With most common applications, this is above and beyond the needed functionality. They also have the Ryzen series CPUs which has possess 4 to 16 cores. The cores can handle up to 32 threads. AMDs CPUs are better suited for intense computations. With the high core counts and their architecture, some applications can take advantage of the large thread counts and thrive with AMD processors. Scientific applications which as modeling scenarios with warehouses of data, or mining bitcoin in parallel with GPUs are examples what could take advantage of the high core counts.

As mentioned before AMD recently released a RX 6000 series of GPUs that are optimized with AMD CPUs. Allowing modern games such as Gears 5 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare to run at about 90 FPS in 4K resolution according to AMDs website. With the right combo, it can increase its’ bandwidth by double and become roughly 10% more power efficient. A big plus for gamers who want the best graphics their monitors or TVs can handle.

Another advantage of AMD is their relative cost to performance value. With AMD, you’ll generally get a better performance CPU for the price mark than you would a Intel CPU. For example, the Intel i9-9900K cost about $500. A comparable AMD CPU would be the Ryzen 9 3900X. The Ryzen 9 3900X cost’s comes in $100 less at $399.99. Some sellers offer rebates, bundles and discounts dropping the price even more.

Verdict

Though Intel has definitely been dominating the overall CPU market, AMD has been making competitive improvements to their CPUs. Essentially making the choice between an AMD and Intel CPU a subjective preference. If you’re looking at gaming, Intel has been the historically people’s choice. Though, with the some of the latest technology’s from AMD, they make it more appealing to pair their new GPUs with their own CPUs to get the best bang for your buck.

For gaming, I’d personally choose AMD due to the performance to cost ratio and the ability to overclock any of their CPUs if desired. Intel does technically have the better single-core performance than AMD (important for gaming). Games aren’t optimized to utilize all the cores AMD has to offer….yet. As technology advances more, I’m sure this will change and offer another advantage to AMD.

Cordell Kennerly