cpu What is AMD/Intel good for?

[IchigoKeki]

Hello everyone, recently i have seen a lot of people saying that AMD is better than Intel, but i what to know what exactly both CPUs are good for, their pros and cons, etc...

[spartaman64]

once the ryzen 5000 cpus launch in early november amd will be pretty much better than intel in everything

[Semper]

7 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

once the ryzen 5000 cpus launch in early november amd will be pretty much better than intel in everything

Or so we expect. We still need independent performance numbers to verify this.

It gets a little more complex than "intel gaming | AMD workstation" because you have consumer, prosumer, and enterprise solutions that all differ in what they excel at.

With that said, AMD has been rapidly closing the gap that Intel has held for over a decade as the de-facto standard. Historically, Intel has excelled at single-core, AMD has been the go-to for super budget systems with their APU's, and more recently, with the Ryzen family and it's generations, they've put pressure on Intel for single core performance. The 'leaks' that we've seen from Ryzen 5000 put their numbers on a very competitive level single and multi core with Intel at a lower price point, but again, these need to be verified by independent reviewers.

[bellabichon]

Depends a lot on which specific CPU you buy, but in broad strokes:

 

Intel CPUs (at the high end of their price range) tend to have very fast single-core speeds. This means that in games which don't take advantage of many cores, an Intel CPU will be the smallest bottleneck on whatever GPU you choose.

 

AMD CPUs (at both the high end and mid-range level) tend to have many cores with decent single-core speeds. This means that they're greatly favored for productivity workloads, such as video editing and CAD work, because those workloads can take advantage of scaling over many cores. This doesn't mean they're bad for gaming, but at the highest end, Intel CPUs typically give the most FPS in the majority of modern games.

 

However, when it comes to value and sentiment, AMD is leagues ahead of Intel. Their mid-range offerings for the past generation have been fantastic. The Ryzen 5 3600 is an amazing CPU for the price, and in price-to-performance metrics, AMD kills it.

 

If you have infinite money and you want the best CPU you can possibly get that won't bottleneck your RTX 3090 (or other ludicrously fast and expensive GPU), and you do absolutely no productivity work whatsoever, you're probably better off going with an Intel chip. For the rest of us, there's AMD. 

 

That being said, Intel's title of 'fastest gaming CPU', which they've held by a thread for a long time, could be ripped away from them by Zen 3 in a few months. In my opinion, it's worth it to wait and see.

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

8 minutes ago, bellabichon said:

However, when it comes to value and sentiment, AMD is leagues ahead of Intel.

Now now, I wouldn't say AMD is leagues ahead. This is no where near as bad as AMD was when they still had FX and Intel was steamrolling ahead with their Core series. FX literally had no place at any price point because they were marginally better than CPUs that came 5 years before it. Intel while not leading the best "bang for the buck" or performance crown depending which workloads you're looking at, they are still right in the slipstream of AMD right now. With FX, well AMD was basically getting lapped by Intel constantly. 

[bellabichon]

2 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Now now, I wouldn't say AMD is leagues ahead. This is no where near as bad as AMD was when they still had FX and Intel was steamrolling ahead with their Core series. FX literally had no place at any price point because they were marginally better than CPUs that came 5 years before it. Intel while not leading the best "bang for the buck" or performance crown depending which workloads you're looking at, they are still right in the slipstream of AMD right now. With FX, well AMD was getting lapped.  

I disagree. I seriously can't imagine a situation where I'd recommend someone a modern Core i5 over a Ryzen 5. Gaming is so incredibly GPU-bound these days that any CPU with a decent single-core speed will work just fine, and when you take into account that AMD performs significantly better in productivity, the deal gets even sweeter. If you do any hobby streaming, video editing, CAD for your 3D printer, photo editing, rendering, etc, go with AMD. 

[tishous]

4 minutes ago, bellabichon said:

I disagree. I seriously can't imagine a situation where I'd recommend someone a modern Core i5 over a Ryzen 5. Gaming is so incredibly GPU-bound these days that any CPU with a decent single-core speed will work just fine, and when you take into account that AMD performs significantly better in productivity, the deal gets even sweeter. If you do any hobby streaming, video editing, CAD for your 3D printer, photo editing, rendering, etc, go with AMD. 

I agree. The only exception would maybe be an i5-10400f, but then you lose overclocking support and have to buy a more expensive motherboard, so it's still probably worth it to go with AMD.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

8 minutes ago, bellabichon said:

I disagree. I seriously can't imagine a situation where I'd recommend someone a modern Core i5 over a Ryzen 5. Gaming is so incredibly GPU-bound these days that any CPU with a decent single-core speed will work just fine, and when you take into account that AMD performs significantly better in productivity, the deal gets even sweeter. If you do any hobby streaming, video editing, CAD for your 3D printer, photo editing, rendering, etc, go with AMD. 

This difference is still not as bad as the FX days. FX was literal garbage. It was years outdated the moment it was released and got smacked around by its own predecessor the Phenom II. 

[bellabichon]

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

This difference is still not as bad as the FX days. FX was literal garbage. It was years outdated the moment it was released and got smacked around by its own predecessor the Phenom II. 

I never said it was as bad as FX. If AMD is 'leagues ahead' now, then I'd gladly agree that Intel was 'miles ahead' back then.

[Mark Kaine]

59 minutes ago, IchigoKeki said:

Hello everyone, recently i have seen a lot of people saying that AMD is better than Intel, but i what to know what exactly both CPUs are good for, their pros and cons, etc...

The truth is, the difference is small and mostly in pricing. 

[Orange1]

49 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

FX

Space heater daze (days).

[Orange1]

21 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

The truth is, the difference is small and mostly in pricing. 

Mostly fanboyism.

[piratemonkey]

2 minutes ago, Orange1 said:

Mostly fanboyism.

It's not fanboyying if it's actually a better value

[Orange1]

1 minute ago, piratemonkey said:

It's not fanboyying if it's actually a better value

I agree that AMDis a better value, but looking at it from the side of an Intel person, would be more along the lines of fanboyism.

[NineEyeRon]

Very generally speaking gaming leans towards single threaded performance, rather Intel vs AMD I would say it’s single vs multithreaded workloads.

 

Certain CPUs are better for single, some for multiple. As a gamer I look for the best single threaded performance for my money when buying games, I still need 6+ cores but things like hyper threading etc are less useful to me.

[HelpMyPcDoesntBehave]

4 hours ago, bellabichon said:

I disagree. I seriously can't imagine a situation where I'd recommend someone a modern Core i5 over a Ryzen 5. Gaming is so incredibly GPU-bound these days that any CPU with a decent single-core speed will work just fine, and when you take into account that AMD performs significantly better in productivity, the deal gets even sweeter. If you do any hobby streaming, video editing, CAD for your 3D printer, photo editing, rendering, etc, go with AMD. 

Same. AMD is just better in every other way other than single core witch doesnt even matter that much so the only thing that intel was known for being better than AMD is now just gone

[maizenblue]

Given amds price increase intel might have slightly better high end price to performance for gaming, at least until ryzen 5000 prices drop. Already cheap Ryzen 3000 should steadily drop in price tho so amd should still be better for budget gamers.