Why are People Still Using Intel... at all?

[MG240]

Please help me understand, with all the Hype and superiority of Ryzen chips (i.e. factory unlocked for OC, more cores, cheaper price, better benchmark scores); even with endorsement from Linus and pretty much every YouTuber; why are people still using Intel processors at all? I mean isn't Ryzen the best right now and there's very little point on using Intel? Or am I missing something about Intel?

Case 1, I've was watching a YouTuber do mine craft and they were using an Intel Processor. (8 cores only like come on)

Case 2. PC Gamer is using an Intel chip to review Doom Eternal.

 

Case 3. Lastly, according to Steam there are still more people using Intel rather than AMD (but AMD is rapidly gaining).

 

P.S. AMD fanboys, please be objective and not subjective because all people already know that AMD is in, Intel is out. Fanboying is not appreciated on this thread.

[JoostinOnline]

In many cases, more cores isn't better. It's worse. AMD started becoming a favorite for the majority of the community because it was "good enough" and offered plenty of upgrade paths, not because it was best at everything.   There are still plenty of cases where Intel still wins out. It's just not usually the best choice when you consider price or that you're locked to a platform.

 

On top of that, many people buy prebuilts, which are primarily Intel.

 

[PlayStation 2]

Here’s a relatively simple answer: ease of use. I speak from personal experience when I say that Ryzen has been somewhat of a pain in the ass to set up optimally. Intel has had a decade to get to the point where their shit just works a lot easier. 

Also, overclocking. 

[porina]

1 hour ago, MG240 said:

factory unlocked for OC

Which is mostly pointless on both sides, but especially so with Zen 2. Zen 2 is pretty close to its limit already out of the box. About the only thing you need to do is replace the cooler with a half decent one and you'll have most of its potential already. If you also turn on PBO, you're practically done. Manual overclockers just don't get much more unless you are willing to sacrifice stability in some conditions, or implement extreme cooling. 

 

1 hour ago, MG240 said:

more cores

Which only helps up to a point for most people's needs. 

 

1 hour ago, MG240 said:

cheaper price

Price isn't the whole thing, but if you mean value, then that has been AMD's play for a while. This really impacts tighter budget builds which does cover a large part of the market, but certainly not all of it.

 

1 hour ago, MG240 said:

better benchmark scores

In some classes of benchmarks that can use more cores. Which doesn't represent a lot of software out there. Cinebench is about the worst offender since it is near ideal scaling with cores and clocks, which doesn't represent most stuff out there.

 

 

People also don't replace their systems that frequently. How long do you keep a main system before a major upgrade? I think I'm pretty fast even at 2 to 4 years. Many stretch it longer than that. It is only with Zen 2 that AMD could have arguable leadership over Intel. Zen/+ was a good catch up, but still had many weaknesses, and was primarily selling on price, not performance outside of certain niches. I'm still running a 6 core Intel in my main system. I also have an 8 core Zen 2 system, as well as 12 core Intel systems. Why not switch to those over the 6 core? Because that 6 core is still the "best" CPU I have for gaming.

[TryHard_Dev]

AMD started it's business cloning Intel chips and making them ever so slightly better in some cases. Without Intel there would be no AMD but without AMD, Intel would be adhering to Moore's law and making innovations at a snail's pace. And Windows is better optimised for Intel chips. And AMD is just packing more cores and clocking their chips higher than it's counterparts. GO BLUE TEAM!!!

[TomvanWijnen]

I have three simple reasons.

 

1. I already had my CPU before AMD got big again. (3770k)

2. It was given to me for free. (6770k)

3. It was the only option in the laptops I could get heavily discounted through my university. (8750h)

 

If I'd buy new right now... I don't know what I'd do because I wouldn't buy a new cpu. I would get something second hand. Fortunately, there is no need for that right now as I still have plenty of horsepower left.

[Radium_Angel]

I enjoy using server chips (Xeons) in my system builds, and especially using mobos with dual Xeons cpus. Is it faster? Probably not, but damn it's sexy.

[BotBret]

2 hours ago, MG240 said:

 

 

37 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Here’s a relatively simple answer: ease of use. I speak from personal experience when I say that Ryzen has been somewhat of a pain in the ass to set up optimally. Intel has had a decade to get to the point where their shit just works a lot easier. 

Also, overclocking. 

I couldn't agree less. Setting up multiple Ryzen systems has been as easy as it could be. No additional headaches whatsoever. Memory on my 1600 was a bit of a crap time, but nowadays it's extremely easy as I have seen on a 3600.

[BotBret]

As far as I can tell, mainly brand trust and misinformation when it comes to current sales. It is unhelpful when people say the 9900k is the fastest gaming CPU, as it IS, but only by a few percent. Unless you have a 2080ti/Titan RTX, the most you probably want to spend on a CPU in a system meant for purely gaming, or mainly gaming is a 3700x. It is only slightly behind the 9900k, and yet is often close to half the price, which frees up more budget to go to the GPU in a build, which would be far more beneficial for gaming. The main reason Intel is so far ahead overall is the years of AMD being so far behind, with so few customers that it will take them generations of being ahead of Intel to even catch up to Intel, i.e there have been many years where AMD is significantly slower across the board, and Intel had complete market dominance. However, I see this changing relatively quickly with the higher and higher core counts AMD is pushing, and specifically the 8 ( or 7 depending how you look at it) cores in the new consoles meaning developers should start optimising for more cores finally, which would probably lead to a massive amount of people upgrading from older quad-core Intel chips, and if Zen 3 is as fast as AMD have claimed then these people looking for upgrades will have a company that is faster at everything at a lower price to go to over Intel. I see the consoles as a way for AMD to showcase their new GPU architecture, but also as a way to enhance their gaming CPUs even more, and I think they've been playing this game since the first generation of Ryzen with 8 cores, establishing themselves as the high core count company, knowing that it would become important later on when the consoles launched. 

[emosun]

this thread kinda reminds me of the whole "why dont homeless people just stop being homeless" thing

[harryk]

In terms of boost clocks and overclocking, AMD is still quite far behind Intel. 

 

My 8700K runs at 5GHz on all cores and that's barely even pushing it. I'm not aware of any Ryzen chip that can even come close to that. Clock speed isn't everything but it is the most universal performance improvement whereas more cores must be utilized in an effective way by software.

[Zando_]

I still use Intel because I just enjoy it more. Didn't have fun with my Ryzen stuff, in fact it was incredibly disappointing because it didn't do what I wanted it to, and I paid more for that hardware than I did for my current stuff (to be fair, said current stuff was used/on sale). 

That and I'm mainly on an HEDT flick, and 1st/2nd gen TR performance is meh, while 3rd gen TR costs make X299 look budget. 

[BotBret]

2 minutes ago, harryk said:

In terms of boost clocks and overclocking, AMD is still quite far behind Intel. 

 

My 8700K runs at 5GHz on all cores and that's barely even pushing it. I'm not aware of any Ryzen chip that can even come close to that. Clock speed isn't everything but it is the most universal performance improvement whereas more cores must be utilized in an effective way by software.

I would say IPC is more important than clockspeed, as Ryzen's IPC is far superior to 'Coffee' lake, which is why in artificial benchmarks similar core count ryzen CPUs match or beat higher clocked Intel parts. In fact, if Intel was on 10nm right now they would likely face a clockspeed degredation due to years of tuning the 14nm silicon, and it would truly be a war of IPC. Intel would still probably win, however, in games, due to Ryzen's CCX design adding latency in any game that uses potentially more than 1 core, as it assigns random cores in a CCD, not CCX. 

[Commodus]

The tone of the question is the same as "why does anyone buy a non-gaming PC?" or "why doesn't Android have a total monopoly?"

 

That is, it acts as if the criteria that pleases a subset of people should apply to absolutely everyone, that there couldn't possibly be valid reasons for using the alternative, and that the 'ideal' is a homogenous market where competition is non-existent.  Intel still does some things better than AMD, particularly in laptops; and as we've seen before, just because AMD has some advantages now doesn't mean it'll remain that way.  It was just a few years ago that you would only buy an AMD system because it was cheap.

[Dylanc1500]

48 minutes ago, BotBret said:

I would say IPC is more important than clockspeed, as Ryzen's IPC is far superior to 'Coffee' lake, which is why in artificial benchmarks similar core count ryzen CPUs match or beat higher clocked Intel parts. In fact, if Intel was on 10nm right now they would likely face a clockspeed degredation due to years of tuning the 14nm silicon, and it would truly be a war of IPC. Intel would still probably win, however, in games, due to Ryzen's CCX design adding latency in any game that uses potentially more than 1 core, as it assigns random cores in a CCD, not CCX. 

Keep in mind, you can't just say one has better IPC than the other without discussing the first part of it, "instructions". Depending on what instruction set/s you are dealing with could vary heavily. For example, if I'm running heavy AVX2 or any AVX-512, any intel CPU with two 512 FMA units is going to be a better choice. In other instances it may be worthwhile to go with Zen or if you can take advantage of quick sync then you might want something compatible with that, like coffee lake.

[PhantomJaguarr]

6 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

On top of that, many people buy prebuilts, which are primarily Intel.

I’m one of those. Got mine at Best Buy during Black Friday sales last year with some custom additions. Only game that gave me problems was AC Origins. i7 9700K always runs at 100% for some reason.

[Nine Tailed Fox]

lol amd

[Just Monika]

AMD hasn't been a strong competitor against Intel for many years, before the Ryzen 3000 series came out (imo), so many people probably just stuck to Intel out of habit.

 

From what I see on posts discussing builds, I've seen many cases where people defend their choice in an Intel CPU when others are suggesting a Ryzen instead not because of performance reasons, but because of things like:

• "I trust Intel more"
• "AMD CPUs are spaceheaters"
• "I've had problems with AMD CPUs in the past and I don't trust them anymore"

 

[Delicious Cake]

It's basically the equivalent to racial profiling.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, MG240 said:

-snip-

I built my system back when AMD was not at all competitive, so I went with a Haswell chip from Intel as the best bang for my buck. And honestly, even though I'm like six or seven generations behind the current one, this CPU has been a complete beast. Ryzen does have some tempting numbers but realistically, I don't need to 'upgrade'; I'd LIKE to of course, but my needs are being met as of now. When it is time though, AMD may make the cut for price to performance. Till then, I'll ride out my Intel chip until it dies or it stops meeting my demands.

[Beerzerker]

NB4 thread lock.

 

The same question by the OP could have been (And actually was - Repeatedly) asked 10 years ago and today we have our answer.
Intel isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

 

[atxcyclist]

8 hours ago, handymanshandle said:

Here’s a relatively simple answer: ease of use. I speak from personal experience when I say that Ryzen has been somewhat of a pain in the ass to set up optimally. Intel has had a decade to get to the point where their shit just works a lot easier. 

Also, overclocking. 

Agreed for the most part, Intel drivers for me have been historically less finicky. The R5 1600 build I did for my office was fairly smooth, but it took some driver work and a BIOS update to get everything sorted including the memory speed. However, my B450/2700x at home was pretty easy, memory got to the right frequency with no fuss, and the drivers worked immediately. AMD has put some effort in here.

 

Overclocking potential is still an Intel win, so that’s a personal decision. AMD lets you overclock nearly every chip they make though, and you don’t have to buy the highest-end chipset for it, so that favors AMD a little.

[OU812]

Because my HTPC was free to me and it makes sense to just upgrade parts.

 

[PlayStation 2]

6 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

Agreed for the most part, Intel drivers for me have been historically less finicky. The R5 1600 build I did for my office was fairly smooth, but it took some driver work and a BIOS update to get everything sorted including the memory speed. However, my B450/2700x at home was pretty easy, memory got to the right frequency with no fuss, and the drivers worked immediately. AMD has put some effort in here.

 

Overclocking potential is still an Intel win, so that’s a personal decision. AMD lets you overclock nearly every chip they make though, and you don’t have to buy the highest-end chipset for it, so that favors AMD a little.

I had actually helped out @pinksnowbirdie with an issue with RAM and his motherboard (he has a Ryzen 7 1700 and a B350 board, not unlike me) a few months ago as it would just instantly crash when trying to boot into Windows. Turns out the BIOS just needed to be updated. Which, easy enough, but still, one of the weird quirks that can make Ryzen annoying. 

My own issues go directly to how capture cards really don't work well with Ryzen because of how it handles PCI-E lanes.

[atxcyclist]

8 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

I had actually helped out @pinksnowbirdie with an issue with RAM and his motherboard (he has a Ryzen 7 1700 and a B350 board, not unlike me) a few months ago as it would just instantly crash when trying to boot into Windows. Turns out the BIOS just needed to be updated. Which, easy enough, but still, one of the weird quirks that can make Ryzen annoying. 

My own issues go directly to how capture cards really don't work well with Ryzen because of how it handles PCI-E lanes.

No experience with PCI-E issues, but I did have boot failures running the LPX memory in that machine any higher than 2933, though it was 3200 memory. The BIOS update worked, it was only about a month after the platform became available so I was ready for a few hiccups.

 

I'll give Intel a few props; I have an HTPC with an i5 4570 and 8gb of memory, and it's solid for a lot of older stuff with the GTX 950 in it. I have a 4790k in my personal workstation at my office, and it's still a beast. Older Haswell gear is a bargain if someone isn't looking for cutting edge or playing the absolute newest games in 2020.