Intel processors not looking so brilliant anymore. Plus AMD's debt problems get better with each passing quarter

[Albal_156]

Well looks like Intel's chips have been hit hard first by Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities and now by MDS vulnerabilities as well. AMD has been hit by their mitigations for Spectre but since Intel has had now 5 vulnerabilities to patch it seems like they might not be the default CPU in the market anymore particularly now AMD has a process node lead over them too. Though it seems 8th gen and 9th gen processors are not affected as much by this. But they are still significantly more than AMD's offering and they may now be more similar in performance

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-amd-mitigations-performance-impact,39381.html

 

Quote

"Intel has published its own set of benchmark results for the mitigations to the latest round of vulnerabilities, but Phoronix, a publication that focuses on Linux-related news and reviews, has conducted its own testing and found a significant impact. Phoronix's recent testing of all mitigations in Linux found the fixes reduce Intel's performance by 16% (on average) with Hyper-Threading enabled, while AMD only suffers a 3% average loss."

Quote

From a performance perspective, the overhead of the mitigations narrow the gap between Intel and AMD's processors. Intel's chips can suffer even more with Hyper-Threading (HT) disabled, a measure that some companies (such as Apple and Google) say is the only way to make Intel processors completely safe from the latest vulnerabilities. In some of Phoronix's testing, disabling HT reduced performance almost 50%.

 

According to Phoronix an 8700K might now be on par with a Ryzen 7 2700X and the same for the 2990WX and the 7980XE. Though since Intel chips can be overclocked further they might still have a performance advantage. But on out of the box specs they might be more similar and this further gives consumers a reason to buy AMD processors. Though this is Linux and not Windows I might add.

Quote

"If looking at the geometric mean for the tests run today, the Intel systems all saw about 16% lower performance out-of-the-box now with these default mitigations and obviously even lower if disabling Hyper Threading for maximum security. The two AMD systems tested saw a 3% performance hit with the default mitigations. While there are minor differences between the systems to consider, the mitigation impact is enough to draw the Core i7 8700K much closer to the Ryzen 7 2700X and the Core i9 7980XE to the Threadripper 2990WX." - Phoronix

 

Plus AMD has rejoined the Fortune 500 list so their debt situation seems to be looking up. Though comparing them with the revenue for Intel at the moment I'd expect Intel to not sit on their hands and to do something about this. AMD Fortune 500

 

Quote

Considering the massive disparity in AMD's revenue, which pulled in $6.48 billion in 2018, compared to Intel and Nvidia, which raked in $70.8 billion and $9.71 billion, respectively, the company's ability to field competitive architectures on a comparatively shoestring budget is impressive.

Overall, it's hard to overstate the impact AMD's Zen architecture has had on the company, but now the future is Zen 2 and the 7nm process, both of which we expect to learn much more about during next week's Computex trade show. We're sure Intel isn't sitting idle either, so we should expect big announcements from both companies at the show.

 

[imbrock]

Also AMD has been signing contracts left and right for the next few years. Next gen consoles, super computers, research stuff, lots of good coming down the pipe.

[PocketNerd]

I'm sitting on an AMD build just waiting for the $$ to afford the upgrade. Might wait a little longer depending on Zen 2

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, PocketNerd said:

I'm sitting on an AMD build just waiting for the $$ to afford the upgrade. Might wait a little longer depending on Zen 2

You have a 6600k. Any upgrade to current AMD hardware isnt worth it. 

[schwellmo92]

2 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

You have a 6600k. Any upgrade to current AMD hardware isnt worth it. 

A 6600K is not very capable by todays standards, I would consider it low-er end.

[Albal_156]

Plus its been hit by the mitigations for CPU vulnerabilities.

[GoldenLag]

4 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

A 6600K is not very capable by todays standards, I would consider it low-er end.

 

2 minutes ago, Albal_156 said:

Plus its been hit by the mitigations for CPU vulnerabilities.

Does it "feel" low end. Its still a pretty darn capable CPU

[LienusLateTips]

4 minutes ago, Albal_156 said:

Plus its been hit by the mitigations for CPU vulnerabilities.

That doesn't make them THAT much slower, at least not in the real world.

[SupaKomputa]

6600K is comparable to R3 1200, 4 core no HT.

4 cored i5 can no longer be called "high end" cpu.

[LienusLateTips]

1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

6600K is comparable to R3 1200, 4 core no HT.

4 cored i5 can no longer be called "high end" cpu.

It was never high end. It was mid range 4 years ago. 

 

You can easily overclock it to be much faster than the R3 1200, but it will have an issue with lack of threads in many workloads.

 

Please, quote people.

[Albal_156]

2 minutes ago, LienusLateTips said:

That doesn't make them THAT much slower, at least not in the real world.

 

25 minutes ago, Albal_156 said:

Though this is Linux and not Windows I might add.

They won't be much slower in the real world yes. But I take the view that 4 cores, though still enough for gaming these days probably won't be sufficient to run livestreams and do content creation and many games will start taking advantage of more cores soon. The enthusiast market will probably change unless Intel comes out with something and even that's under question as 10nm is looking unlikely. Intel will be back as they have deep pockets but it won't be for a while as they might just skip straight to 7nm.

[LienusLateTips]

Just now, Albal_156 said:

 

They won't be much slower in the real world yes. But I take the view that 4 cores, though still enough for gaming these days probably won't be sufficient to run livestreams and do content creation and many games will start taking advantage of more cores soon. The enthusiast market will probably change unless Intel comes out with something and even that's under question as 10nm is looking unlikely. Intel will be back as they have deep pockets but it won't be for a while as they might just skip straight to 7nm.

 

5 minutes ago, LienusLateTips said:

You can easily overclock it to be much faster than the R3 1200, but it will have an issue with lack of threads in many workloads.

 

[GoldenLag]

9 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

6600K is comparable to R3 1200, 4 core no HT.

4 cored i5 can no longer be called "high end" cpu.

Yeah not having ht sucks. But it is still to this day a very capable CPU. Id more compare it to a 1300x. And a tad better than that. I would need to look up benchmarks, but i dont have time

[Albal_156]

I'm talking more about 6 cores rather than HT here. Though even a 7700K is handicapped now if HT is disabled.

[Arika]

Keep in mind that AMDs currentl products haven't been around long in the grand scheme of things, there is a very real possibility that AMD could be affected by vulnerabilities not yet discovered where the "mitigations" could lead to similar performance drops. it would be irresponsible to think that Intel are the only ones with issues.

[RejZoR]

6 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

 

Does it "feel" low end. Its still a pretty darn capable CPU

It's a quad core. Even if it has some clock advantage, it just doesn't have many cores. I mean, hell, I had a quad core back in 2008/2009 (Core i7 920). A decade ago. And that wasn't even the first quad core in existence...

 

If you're not a demanding gamer, it'll still work. But that's about it.

[Eaglerino]

Steam hardware survey is still overwhelmingly Intel... I'm sure they'll be fine

[LienusLateTips]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

It's a quad core. Even if it has some clock advantage, it just doesn't have many cores. I mean, hell, I had a quad core back in 2008/2009 (Core i7 920). A decade ago. And that wasn't even the first quad core in existence...

 

If you're not a demanding gamer, it'll still work. But that's about it.

IPC/clock speed improvements. Quad core still isn't enough, though.

[Albal_156]

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Keep in mind that AMDs currentl (sic) products haven't been around long in the grand scheme of things, there is a very real possibility that AMD could be affected by vulnerabilities not yet discovered where the "mitigations" could lead to similar performance drops. it would be irresponsible to think that Intel are the only ones with issues.

Oh yeah of course. But I think it will take a while as it did with Intel's CPU's as well.

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's a quad core. Even if it has some clock advantage, it just doesn't have many cores. I mean, hell, I had a quad core back in 2008/2009 (Core i7 920). A decade ago. And that wasn't even the first quad core in existence...

 

If you're not a demanding gamer, it'll still work. But that's about it.

It gives a very good experience compared to the age of the CPU, its not as if they are garbage. 

 

There are games where you would wish to have a 6 core with ht, but those are in the minority

[RejZoR]

7 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Keep in mind that AMDs currentl products haven't been around long in the grand scheme of things, there is a very real possibility that AMD could be affected by vulnerabilities not yet discovered where the "mitigations" could lead to similar performance drops. it would be irresponsible to think that Intel are the only ones with issues.

So, we're blaming AMD for "would be potential vulnerabilities, maybe" now? If they are found, sure. But having attitude that AMD is just the same, we just haven't found them yet sounds awful lot like something Intel fanboy would say... Everyone has that, so you can't use it as an excuse. Hell, Intel had that until it was found their CPU's have tons of holes dating back many generations.

 

@GoldenLag

There are tons of games that use almost as many cores as you give them to work with. It's not 2015 anymore when i7 6700k was still a thing... And 6600k is from the same generation. Just without HT and with lower clock.

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

So, we're blaming AMD for "would be potential vulnerabilities, maybe" now? If they are found, sure. But having attitude that AMD is just the same, we just haven't found them yet sounds awful lot like something Intel fanboy would say... Everyone has that, so you can't use it as an excuse. Hell, Intel had that until it was found their CPU's have tons of holes dating back many generations.

Any security focused person would know that there is a chanche AMD will have the same issues or new ones.

 

For the time being AMD is seemingky more secure than Intel

[GoldenLag]

2 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

There are tons of games that use almost as many cores as you give them to work with. It's not 2015 anymore when i7 6700k was still a thing... And 6600k is from the same generation. Just without HT and with lower clock.

Offcourse, doesnt mean the experience is bad however. 

 

Its for the same reasons i dont like the 9400f. It lacks ht.

[RejZoR]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

Any security focused person would know that there is a chanche AMD will have the same issues or new ones.

 

For the time being AMD is seemingky more secure than Intel

Yeah, but you can't shit on a company for "may be vulnerable sometime in the future, maybe". And I'm getting that vibe just about now towards AMD... Uh oh AMD is just the same, we just haven't found the vulnerabilities yet. I mean, just read your comment a bit and think about it.

[Albal_156]

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

Any security focused person would know that there is a chanche AMD will have the same issues or new ones.

 

For the time being AMD is seemingky more secure than Intel

Well weren't Intel on the same process node for like 4 generations? AMD is changing the process nodes between Zen and Zen 2 so you would think that would have an effect.

Plus Zen 2 uses a chiplet design. There might be vulnerabilities discovered but doubt it. And even if there are I doubt it would affect all the CPU's going back to the 2nd generation of the architecture.