So being as I am a huge scrub when it comes to computer specs and technology i was wanting to know, why is Intel still better then AMD. The reason i ask is i just recently got the AMD Ryzen 5 and i was told a overclocked Intel i5 was still better. I don’t know the history of either company enough to know why one would be better or worse. I was told that i shouldn’t get a graphics card from them as they haven’t performed well so i stuck with the nvidia 1080, but this was never really detailed out on processors.
The one i had ended up getting was this:
AMD RYZEN 5 1600X 6-Core 3.6 GHz (4.0 GHz Turbo) Socket AM4 95W YD160XBCAEWOF Desktop Processor
Cost: $250
I ask this as i want to keep improving especially now that I have learned more since getting a tech job at bluehost and working with people that actually know stuff. So feel free to give me any info you would like to share even if it is outside of Intel vs AMD
the ryzen chips are great jack of all trades chips, they do gaming, workstuff both goodish, while a intel chip is great at gaming and sucky for workstuff, thats my current overall understanding of the 2 chips.
The Ryzen 1600X costs ~$250, in Battlefield 1 with the same specs (only difference being motherboard and cpu) a 1600x overclocked to 4.0, is out performed by a i5-7500 (~$200) which isn’t over clocked. The is a much bigger cost difference when you factor in no need for anything other than a stock cooler on the i5 7500.
GTA V the two processors have about the same performance.
While power usage of the i5 7500 is 40% lower.
Intel has a better process for making processors, and for gaming there is little reason to buy an AMD chip today unless it is a very low budget build.
Being an AMD guy for quote some time, I’ll try to shed some light on this.
First, let me preface this by saying that AMD does make good chips…They just don’t make them as good as Intel. Historically, AMD chips have been very weak “pound for pound” in that a 4 core, 4ghz AMD chip will get the pants kicked off of it by a 4 core, 4ghz Intel chip.
Intel is much better at anything requiring heavy math (like compression) and are well known to be better at handling single thread processes than AMD.
AMD chips are historically better at things like video editing, etc…
That being said, IF you can optimize your machine correctly, you can get sort of (not really) in the same ballpark (but way out in left field) as Intel.
With the Ryzen chips (and I was ALL ABOUT building an all AMD box soon) they are able to keep up with Intel much better than AMD chips of the past but still can’t keep pace. AMD claims that all kinds of firmware patches and other nonsense are coming which will make the Ryzen processors run better BUT I, for one, don’t want to spend all of my time optimizing, patching, enabling and disabling windows and BIOS features, etc…to get the performance bump from it.
Hence, I will be slapping together an I7-7700K system pretty soon…That 4 core chip is stomping the ever living bejeezus out of the Ryzen 1800X.
ah ok sweet, that is good info to get behind. I was going to go for a intel chip originally but i had decided to try AMD. Now that i understand them better i think i’ll stick with Intel in the future till i hear otherwise. But for what i got right now i should be good, just not amazing. 1st build and all so even tho i did make mistakes i’ll make sure to improve on them next time round.
Eh, I wouldn’t worry about it, Tartan; unlike previously with AMD’s Bulldozer lineup (which was not competitive w/Intel for gaming), you really can’t go wrong with either the i5 or Ryzen 5. I’ve been thinking it might finally be about time to upgrade from an i5 2500k and I’ve followed reviews for Ryzen closely. The consensus seems to be that gaming performance differences are relatively minor between similarly priced processors, overall a 5-10% difference in average FPS in favor of Intel when at 1080p on a top of the line GPU (1080 Ti), but with the i5/Ryzen 5 there’s an advantage for Ryzen in the low end (0.1/1% frames). If you’re playing at a higher resolution or a mid-range GPU, you’ll be GPU-bound and get the same average frames with any of them (and many older processors, for that matter). If you plan to overclock, there’s little point to spending the money for the x versions from Ryzen; stick to the 1600 if going with AMD.
At the upper tier, for a gaming rig, Intel’s 7700k/6700k is king and does have a reasonable lead on the 1700/1700x/1800x somewhere in the 10-20% range for average FPS across the board. I have seen anecdotal claims of stutters on the i7s from a smaller subset of users, but I haven’t seen any hard data supporting Ryzen having a smoother experience at this level; for a gaming setup I think Intel’s the clear winner here.
At the i5/Ryzen 5 level, however, things are closer, and I’d argue that the extra cores and threads give Ryzen the edge, especially if you plan to keep the build for a while. Since you’ve already bought a Ryzen processor, the worst case for future games is that you’ll still have slightly lower average FPS than you would with a 7500 or 7600k, but you’ll have a slightly smoother experience since Ryzen’s got better minimums. The best case for you is that Ryzen will catch up or surpass Intel if games continue to trending toward making use of more cores/threads - I can’t speak to other ADI games, but Star Citizen devs have stated their intent to make use of as many cores/threads as possible.
First, why on earth would you use a 1080ti to drive a 1080p monitor? A 1060 should be able to run a 1080p monitor just fine on virtually all games.
Second, the devil is in the details, Ryzen NEVER out performs Intel, that is just a fact. You’re always paying more for the cpu/cooling, and have extra power and heat to have to deal with when buying an AMD chip. If you’re building a cheap computer there might be use cases for AMD chips, once you get above $150 for the CPU, Intel is the best pick period.
The fact is that cpu/gpu review sites have a vested interest in setting up examples that show a close horse race so they can talk about both chips as competitive, when in reality they aren’t.
I own 100’s of AMD and Intel processors that are running 24/7, I spend a large part of my day thinking about using CPU’s and GPU’s for workloads, and which one’s perform better dollar for dollar.
For a general purpose gaming PC nothing beats an Intel once you’re above $125-ish in price for the CPU, PERIOD. Anybody that suggest it’s a horse race in some form or fashion isn’t being honest with you.
Agree with everything Jay said. Only thing I want to point out is there seems to a bit of wishful thinking and public perception. Back into the 90s, AMD was the Rebel Alliance to Intel’s Empire. Intel was fairly hostile to overclocking, with AMD coming in to fill the need. Most of the time though, Intel was still the best bang-for-buck when you factored in performance and stability. For a brief period AMD started to get ahead of Intel on 64-bit dual core CPUs, but they soon lost out again.
I’m glad AMD has been around, competition was needed in this space. I also credit them and others for Intel being more friendly to overclocking now. But current hardware considered, there just isn’t a question on where to spend on a new system, IMHO.
I’ll admit that I am biased towards AMD because I own stock in them, and have made a decent bit of money for it. However, what everyone else has been saying is true. Intel has consistently been a better chip. However, AMD tends to be more budget friendly. Especially if you are looking to drop your money on a good graphics card, which IMO is the best way to spend your money for gaming purposes. And from what I have seen, unless you are a serious overclocker and trying to get every little bit out of your CPU, like for maxing the graphics on Flight Sim X, you probably won’t notice a big difference between either chip.
For anything other than low end gaming - where you’re spending $110 or less for a CPU - AMD just isn’t a cost savings. And graphics cards just aren’t the answer is some games.
ArmA is a perfect example of an AMD killer game, you just can not build an AMD rig that can run ArmA well at any price, they just don’t have the high end single core speed needed to compete with Intel. SC is likely to be a CPU heavy game where single core speed is critical, and Intel is going to out perform dollar for dollar with anything AMD is currently making.
Sure, if you’re going to build a $400-500 system, AMD might be in the running, once you get above $600-$700 system price, AMD isn’t even on the radar scope anymore.
Yeah, I’ll admit that I am sure I could have gotten more out of my rig getting away from AMD. But like said, I am biased. I’m running an AMD FX 8 core with a Radeon R9 graphics card. I’ve been able to max out games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls (never played ArmA). I’m a casual gamer (my wife would chew my head off if I played anymore) so the rig works great for me. But I agree, if you want to maximise your system for the money then you are best off with Intel.
Right, barring 144 Hz gaming, a 1080 Ti is overkill for 1080p, but this is a way of removing GPU bottlenecking, which, as I stated in my first post, makes the processors perform identically in many games that are commonly benchmarked in reviews. In that case, it makes little sense to get an Intel apart from something dirt cheap like the G4560, which seems to be the clear winner for low-budget gaming builds.
ARMA’s an example of a game using an older engine that relies heavily on IPC and clock speed for performance; Intel’s high-speed chips are far and away the better choice for these sorts of games (and thus, older games and arguably lower-budget games in general). To say that an AMD build can’t run it well at any price, however, is flat-out false. It’s not a game that gets benched much, but Ryzen 7 performance, even during it’s absolute mess of a launch due to a variety of motherboard issues, was well into the 70 FPS range, which is perfectly playable: techspot.com/review/1348-amd … page4.html
I can point to another game, Crysis 3, that’s built on a newer engine that takes advantage of available CPU cores and threads (far more relevant to predicting Star Citizen performance). The Ryzen 5 1600x stomps the i5 7600k, and the 1500x even edges it out: techreport.com/review/31724/amd- … part-one/5
You’re right that Star Citizen’s likely to be a CPU-heavy game - this points to Ryzen 5 being a better option over a comparably priced i5. The devs aren’t going to hamstring the game’s performance by relying solely on clock speed and IPC, they’re going to take advantage of that as well as any available CPU cores and threads (like the Crysis 3 example). Both Chris Roberts and Sean Tracy have explicitly said that Star Citizen’s engine will make use of additional cores and threads to improve performance:
I recommend that anyone looking to build a new rig not simply take my or anyone else’s word for it here, but to research reviews from a variety of sources and to pay attention to testing setups. One decent spot with links to a variety of reviews comparing Ryzen 5 and Intel i5 chips is here: reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/c … egathread/
Again, these gaming review sites have major flaws in their testing methods. Even in your best example while Ryzen performs well on a Cyris benchmark, these benchmarks are showing high end chips which are designed for over clocking (you shouldn’t buy a K proc if you’re not going to overclock), yet don’t overclock the chips? Why is that, what would have overclocking these chips have shown performance wise?
There are issues in their testing data they aren’t mentioning that show flaws in the design of the test… Look at the ‘Frame time in ms’ chart very carefully, why would you see that? That points to an I/O problem, probably having to do with disk speed/cache, then we look at the disks they used, and surprise surprise, they used a $400+ dollar PCI-E specialized SSD drive from Intel designed for server work loads that has MUCH higher performance than the high end consumer M.2 drive they used for the Intel based systems which costs around $200.
When you’re running a game and trying to pump out 100+ frames per second, all sorts of little issues matter a LOT. The fact they weren’t running a demo loop over and over again but playing by hand could also be borking the numbers a good bit.
While the Ryzen did do well on Crysis in the test you picked, every other game they tested $250 Intel chips were beating out the $450 Ryzen 7…
Finally, Chris Roberts says the game will benefit from more cores, and that very well maybe the case, but today it doesn’t, and in my experience if you’re 4 years into development and a game requires high clock speed to perform better, it’s probably going to be that way in the end.
I’m not an AMD hater, the fact is I probably have more AMD CPU’s in production right now than the next 10 guys in the org, I use a LOT of them. We did a LOT of real world workload tests on the Ryzen 5 and 7 CPU’s and they have use cases where they are a great choice, GAMING PC’s is not one of those use cases.