Situation normal
Carry on.
It’s on again. Intel vs AMD. The world is back to normal. Phew. I’ve missed this…
As Chris discovered through his long hours of testing fore this issue, Intel has indeed come back into the fight – though it’s not a ‘win’. Taking the lead in a few games with the usual single-digit percentage nose ahead isn’t decisive, and for multi-core productivity work Intel is still playing catchup. Still stuck on the 14nm node, and still with an albeit evolved Skylake core that’s been with us since the 6th gen, Intel has taken the relatively obvious route of cranking up the clocks with new and aggressive Turbo modes.
That makes sense. It’s disappointing not to see a die shrink, or a new architecture, but it is pleasing to see that Intel’s pricing is in the sensible zone, which is clearly a response to AMD’s attack on the market when Zen 2 launched with up to twice the performance at half the price.
There are many that only trust Intel. There are many that have looked past AMD’s Ryzen and
“There are many that have looked past AMD’s Ryzen and Threadripper range thinking all the noise coming from enthusiasts around the world, and media reviews, and, APC, is just background noise and AMD is still not to be taken seriously. ”
Threadripper range thinking all the noise coming from enthusiasts around the world, and media reviews, and, APC, is just hype and AMD is still not to be taken seriously. The market says otherwise, though, which makes this 10th gen desktop launch such an important one for Intel. Based on the Labs results we can see this isn’t a slam-dunk for Intel, but it is still on the court and playing hard. Intel’s strategy to milk its current technology and process is an obvious one. Improve the engineering (which it did in one area with a long overdue improvement to the thermal interface material used on these chips), and crank the clocks. That can’t go on much longer though, so the fascinating game continues. We went high-end this month with our CPU reviews, and in the next APC we’ll be taking a close look at new budget chips, as we hit the Labs with the Ryzen 3100 and 3300X, along with a bunch of B550 boards to go with them.
Fun times are back, and it’s nice to see it all play out. Hope you’re all doing well. See you in a month. BEN MANSILL