AMD or Intel?

Thinking of a new build?

For the last week I have seen a lot of questions from people talking about the latest Ryzen chips that AMD announced earlier in the week. These new processors look absolutely absurd in terms of performance on paper, but who knows how they will act in real-world applications. Either way, the one question I am asked is, “Do I get this new AMD chip or do I stick with Intel?”

Before I even give my opinion on that, I want you to ask yourself if you think you need an upgrade. Some people get really wrapped up in performance numbers and the allure of a more powerful rig. As I have been stating on my Twitter, the situation is way more complex. Upgrading to either Intel’s 12th Gen or AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series is going to involve replacing a lot of components.

Let’s take a look at a little spreadsheet I made here and discuss who can benefit the most from each tier:

These are only a few of the AMD processors. Each one is a flagship for their respective area. The Ryzen 5 is great for baseline work and doing some advanced computing. I am currently using a Ryzen 5 in my rig and it does the job just fine and can handle most games I throw at it. AMD claims that this processor is going to run circles around the Intel 12th Gen i9, and if it does, which I totally believe, then getting a killer CPU for $299 is not a bad deal if you are looking for an upgrade.

The Ryzen 7 7700X is great for gamers and if you are running some advanced titles, that would be the one I would go with. Especially for just a mere $100 more, the Ryzen 7 seems to offer intense performance. How well will it handle multitasking like playing a game and streaming it? Hopefully it handles it fine.

Things get really interesting within the Ryzen 9 series chips, where we see even higher clock speeds with the max frequencies reaching over 5 GHz. While seasoned overclockers are able to reach these speeds on other processors unofficially, it is nice to see AMD break a barrier. The 7900X and the 7950X have price points at $549 and $699, respectively. I need to tell you that as a gamer, you do not need to go to either of these chips unless you are doing some really heavy work.

Graphic designers and producers are going to fall right into the Ryzen 9 area. If you are doing anything graphically intensive such as animation or CAD, you should definitely skip right to the Ryzen 9 series.

Gamers, you should be fine at the Ryzen 5 or 7 depending on what you play and what your budget is. If you need to cut a corner and maybe spend more on a GPU, then I can say that going down to a Ryzen 5 to save $100 is definitely reasonable, although you are leaving performance on the table for that delta.

If we were to compare it to Intel’s 12th Gen lineup, this is where it gets a bit confusing. There are so many different chips that you could choose from that it becomes a bit overwhelming, and they have a history of doing this. AMD does something similar, but they also tend to put a lot of focus on their top items that they think can do well.

You’ll also notice that on Intel’s website when looking at their processors, they will say that Core i5 12600K has 10 cores when that isn’t necessarily true. They have 10 cores but six of them are dubbed “Performance” and the rest are called “Efficiency” and this has caused a ton of issues upon launch.

Hybrid design is nice and all, but a lot of programs, even Windows 11, have experienced a ton of issues at launch when it came to thread optimization and general performance. Some applications and games wouldn’t run because the hybrid design just wasn’t meshing well. Eventually, these problems were fixed, but I couldn’t imagine the anger someone must feel when they put a new system together and it just doesn’t work.

Truth be told, I feel that Intel has really lost their way when it comes to modern PC development. AMD is sticking with standard core design while also staying power-efficient and within a decent price margin. That Core i5 I mentioned above is $20 more expensive than the Ryzen 5, has a higher TDP of 125W baseline, and doesn’t offer the same cache allocation.

Granted, we have Intel’s 13th Gen chips on the way and they could be quite surprising. Here is the issue though, I have two systems at my house. One is running that Intel Core i5 chip above while the other is running the Ryzen 7 5700G and my AMD build runs leagues faster than the latest Intel build.

There could be a ton of reasons why, but whenever I hit the power button on my PC, then my TV, I am always at my home screen right away while the other rig has me staring at the ASUS ROG logo for at least a minute. So, speaking from personal experience, I would hold off on building for now and wait to see what some of the reviewers say about AMD’s new Ryzen platform.