AMD is often the top choice when you’re looking for value in a processor, but soon, it may take the crown of top performance from Intel—at least in the short term. Consider AMD when building your next PC.
AMD made a big splash this spring with the introduction of its Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs and the accompanying X570 chipset. This duo starts shipping July 7, 2019, with promises of zippy PCIe 4.0 transfer rates, and a killer value proposition in terms of cost, core count, and power usage.
Value has always been AMD’s advantage over Intel, with its Zen, Zen+, and now Zen 2 architecture. We won’t know for sure how well the new Ryzen 3000 processors perform until independent benchmarks and tests appear. Nevertheless, it sure looks like Ryzen 3000 will be impressive.
Intel, meanwhile, isn’t making a move on new desktop processors any time soon (with, perhaps, one exception), strengthening the rather convincing argument to consider AMD for your next desktop build.
AMD vs. Intel: The Struggle Is Real
AMD owned the Computex trade show in May when the company introduced its Ryzen 3000 desktop processors, which are based on the Zen 2 architecture and the new X570 motherboard chipset. The new CPUs use a 7nm (nanometer) process, with a wide range of core and thread counts at lower heat generation (TDP) and, presumably, lower power usage than previous models.
At E3, AMD followed up its Computex triumph by introducing yet another Ryzen 3000 processor, the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X. Before the Ryzen 3000, you would only find 16-core chips at the enthusiast level, requiring high-end motherboards at a high-end price.
AMD’s 16-core chip, by comparison, has a sticker price of $749. That’s still expensive, but Intel’s 16-core chip (the Core i9-9960X) is more than double that price. Perhaps that’s not quite a fair comparison, as the Intel chip is overkill for most people. It supports a whopping 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes compared to 24 PCIe 4.0 lanes in the new AMD chip, and Intel’s CPU can handle a boatload of memory.
Then again, that’s the point. The AMD 16-core chip is a mainstream CPU that fits into mainstream boards. That’s something Intel doesn’t have. If Intel intends to provide a more affordable response to Ryzen 3000, we won’t see it for a while. The next generation of Intel CPUs, called Ice Lake, are headed to notebooks around the end of the year, but there’s been no word on when the next round of desktop CPUs will appear.
AMD’s Value Proposition
AMD’s new processors are offering a lot of value over its previous generation parts and Intel’s current desktop processors. Let’s take a simple example with the $329 Ryzen 7 3700X and its predecessor, the Ryzen 7 2700X, currently selling for about $280. The newer processor has the same core and thread count as the older version, and it offers around the same clock speeds. But the newer CPU has a bigger total cache at 36MB, compared to around 21MB for the 2700X. This suggests the 3700X will be better with heavy workloads, such as video processing. A CPU’s cache is like its onboard memory. It lets the processor access instructions faster than fetching it from the system’s memory.
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Source : Why You Should Buy AMD’s 2019 CPUs for Your Next PC
