AMD CPUs are almost only in lower series and gaming laptops. Laptop manufacturers are still not convinced enough to invest in mobile AMD workstations. There are more branded AMD servers and desktops nowadays than 2-3 years ago, but in business, Intel still has a significantly larger part of the market and there are still many users who don't trust AMD for their past years. It's not that AMD is worse but that some things sit in peoples' heads and it's hard to change that with 1-2 good CPU/chipset generations.
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Enthusiasts and apologists: Why AMD?
- Thread starter P A U L
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2000
I've used both AMD and Intel on and off over the past 24 years for system builds. Early on, from 1999 to 2008 or so, I built a lot of Athlon and Opteron rigs, both single and dual CPU, but dumped AMD completely when Bulldozer came out and went back to Intel. I got on the AMD bandwagon again when Zen/Ryzen came out and rode AMD for almost 3 years through Zen, Zen+ and Zen2. The original Zen was a cluster F with RAM/AGESA issues and what was termed a Linux compiler segmentation bug. It actually wasn't just limited to that as I had weird issues with several Ryzen CPUs which all miraculously disappeared when I bought a week 25 Ryzen 7 1700X with the bug fix. All the previous issues, except memory speed issues, were solved with the bug-fix CPU. I had several Zen+ and Zen 2 Ryzens culminating in a Ryzen 9 3900X/MSI B450 12C/24T setup. I got off the AMD Ryzen train when Zen 3 debuted with another set of annoying issues. I stayed with B350 and B450 motherboards mostly from Gigabyte and MSI throughout my Zen/Ryzen phase. I did have one Biostar mini-ITX X370 that actually ran pretty well. I tried a few ASRock AM4 B350 boards which were iffy at times.Awesome details here (and Woo's post). Just in case the OP isn't aware of the (desktop) processor series that go with the generations, here's a list...
Zen = 1000 series
Zen+ = 2000 series
Zen2 = 3000 series
Zen3 = 5000 series
So now I'm back to Intel with a Gen 12 Alder Lake i7-1200F/Asus H610 system that has been totally issue free. But I would have no problem going back to AMD at some future time.
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2015
No preference really, depends on the generation and budget.
Except for bulldozer that was significantly underperforming compared to Intel, both brands have nice stuff (I did own a couple of BD though, as they were super fun to tweak).
Waiting for October to make my choice on AMD/Intel and AMD/Nvidia.
Fun times to come!
Except for bulldozer that was significantly underperforming compared to Intel, both brands have nice stuff (I did own a couple of BD though, as they were super fun to tweak).
Waiting for October to make my choice on AMD/Intel and AMD/Nvidia.
Fun times to come!
I started with Intel CPUs in 1995. When Intel didn't have a faster CPU to replace the 200MHz one I switched to AMD and didn't look back.
If AMD did not develop Ryzen they may have gone out of business. Five years ago the only thing that kept them going was making CPUs for Xboxs and Playstations.
I Pre-ordered the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X and ASUS Prime X370-Pro, I bought 16GB of 2666MHz RAM but had to run it at the default 2133MHz. It took 5 months a a lot of updates before I could run the RAM at its rated speeds. I replaced the Ryzen 7 1700X CPU with a Ryzen 3700X. I have no problem running 32GB of 3200MHz RAM. BTW, the Ryzen CPU was much better than the AMD FX 8350 it replaced.
I am waiting until after Zen 4 is launched to see if that is a worthwhile upgrade.
If AMD did not develop Ryzen they may have gone out of business. Five years ago the only thing that kept them going was making CPUs for Xboxs and Playstations.
I Pre-ordered the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X and ASUS Prime X370-Pro, I bought 16GB of 2666MHz RAM but had to run it at the default 2133MHz. It took 5 months a a lot of updates before I could run the RAM at its rated speeds. I replaced the Ryzen 7 1700X CPU with a Ryzen 3700X. I have no problem running 32GB of 3200MHz RAM. BTW, the Ryzen CPU was much better than the AMD FX 8350 it replaced.
I am waiting until after Zen 4 is launched to see if that is a worthwhile upgrade.
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2021
Earlier on (1990s, early 2000s), I liked AMD because I tend to gravitate to the "underdog" and against the huge successful corporation (Intel), similar to how (1980s and most of the 1990s), I resisted PC-compatible computers and used Apple II and Amiga computers instead, including in the case of Amiga, using on the relatively early internet.
In the 2000s, I liked AMD because they seemed much cheaper for the performance I could get out of them, at least that was my impression. I really had to keep to very low budgets. I didn't build an Intel-based PC until 2016 (and then a similar one for my oldest brother in 2017), because I was curious, and possibly fed up with some performance problems on AMD that I don't particularly remember details of now. I was mostly very happy with my Intel PC, which is now my wife's. It has 32 GB of RAM.
My one and three-quarter's-old PC I most recently built uses AMD again - mostly because I like using many Hyper-V virtual PCs, so having many CPU cores (24 core/48-thread) and a huge amount of RAM (256 GB) helps. At the time, from my research, I would've had to spend an even greater amount on a similar Intel setup. Supply issues might've also been a factor. Enough time has passed that I don't recall all the reasons, but I suppose in general, the AMD setup was too good to pass up on.
All these years, whenever I was researching parts for a new PC for myself or to build for someone else, I always research both the AMD and Intel possibilities. I'm open to building another Intel setup in the future, if the price to performance ratio is right.
In the 2000s, I liked AMD because they seemed much cheaper for the performance I could get out of them, at least that was my impression. I really had to keep to very low budgets. I didn't build an Intel-based PC until 2016 (and then a similar one for my oldest brother in 2017), because I was curious, and possibly fed up with some performance problems on AMD that I don't particularly remember details of now. I was mostly very happy with my Intel PC, which is now my wife's. It has 32 GB of RAM.
My one and three-quarter's-old PC I most recently built uses AMD again - mostly because I like using many Hyper-V virtual PCs, so having many CPU cores (24 core/48-thread) and a huge amount of RAM (256 GB) helps. At the time, from my research, I would've had to spend an even greater amount on a similar Intel setup. Supply issues might've also been a factor. Enough time has passed that I don't recall all the reasons, but I suppose in general, the AMD setup was too good to pass up on.
All these years, whenever I was researching parts for a new PC for myself or to build for someone else, I always research both the AMD and Intel possibilities. I'm open to building another Intel setup in the future, if the price to performance ratio is right.
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- Joined
- Sep 19, 2015
Ah, the Amiga 500... Grabbed it (my parents did actually) in... was it 1988? with the second floppy drive and the 512kB memory extension. Dang good gaming machine for the time!
Price. I have built around 200 PC's in the last 10 years. I have only built two for serious work or hard core gaming. I used an Intel cpu for them but that was before Ryzen cpu's and I have built 44 PC's with Ryzen Cpu's. If you look at the combo prices for Cpu and Motherboard for home entertainment PC's, AMD will be around 250-350 dollars less expensive in the 7000 series and probably about 100 to 200 dollars less in the 3000-5000 series.
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I find Intel a bit cheaper in the current generation. Maybe it's just a matter of product shelf as I'm typically looking for something above average, good for overclocking, but not overpriced. CPUs cost about the same, and motherboards seem cheaper on the Intel side (at least comparing Z790 to B650E/X670E).
AMD was a cheaper option until they noticed that they beat Intel, and people would pay more for their products. Since Ryzen 3000, AMD has been bumping prices, and we saw how Intel was dropping their prices in the last 2 generations to improve sales (and they succeeded).
After a couple of reviews and additional tests, I just feel that AMD in the current generation has somehow better motherboards and CPUs that have higher efficiency. I mean, you can run 7950X at 180W while 13900K will hit 280W to deliver a similar performance. Nearly everything else seems similar. AMD motherboards have more PCIe lanes and support more (or faster) M.2 SSD or don't have to split lanes for additional devices. I also noticed that Intel hadn't improved M.2 performance in this gen too. They still can't make much more than 7000MB/s on top PCIe 4.0 SSD, while AMD can pass 7400MB/s in the last 2 gens. It really feels like they barely improved Z690. The only advantage seems to be RAM support above 6800 ... which gives 0-1% overall performance improvement.
Intel is more fun for OC (when you have a magical cooling that can keep it below the throttling point), but mainly for RAM OC.
AMD was a cheaper option until they noticed that they beat Intel, and people would pay more for their products. Since Ryzen 3000, AMD has been bumping prices, and we saw how Intel was dropping their prices in the last 2 generations to improve sales (and they succeeded).
After a couple of reviews and additional tests, I just feel that AMD in the current generation has somehow better motherboards and CPUs that have higher efficiency. I mean, you can run 7950X at 180W while 13900K will hit 280W to deliver a similar performance. Nearly everything else seems similar. AMD motherboards have more PCIe lanes and support more (or faster) M.2 SSD or don't have to split lanes for additional devices. I also noticed that Intel hadn't improved M.2 performance in this gen too. They still can't make much more than 7000MB/s on top PCIe 4.0 SSD, while AMD can pass 7400MB/s in the last 2 gens. It really feels like they barely improved Z690. The only advantage seems to be RAM support above 6800 ... which gives 0-1% overall performance improvement.
Intel is more fun for OC (when you have a magical cooling that can keep it below the throttling point), but mainly for RAM OC.
Just an FYI, AMD processors cost as much or MORE than Intel this last gen or two/three (see post above yours).
EDIT: I think AMD very recently dropped the price on the processors so they are closer to Intel... maybe below now. But MSRP was A LOT higher. They made market adjustments after release and seeing Intel's notably lower pricing across most of the product stack.
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Yes, but you get a 7600X, a decent motherboard, RAM and it will last. Intel will throw you under the bus after two cycles, trying sticking in a Z590->Z690->Z790Just an FYI, AMD processors cost as much or MORE than Intel this last gen or two (see post above yours).
I was thinking of getting i5-12600KF for £181 on Cyber Monday but then the Z790 are steep; with Z690 you will probably be excluded from the iX-14xxx range. That's the thing with Intel it's a one time use case, pretty much like my AM4 build...
You can get a decent motherboard and RAM with Intel too and it will last....and if you're good with DDR4 vs DDR5, you can save quite a bit of cash and lose very little (if any) performance as with Intel you can choose DDR4.
Timing is everything. If you jumped on board Intel with Z690, you get 12th and 13th Gen processors. Or, in your case, jump on AM4 late, and you get none (like Z790 now). So, again, timing is everything.
If you're good with sitting on the same mobo for like 10 years through three CPUs cycles, more power to you. If I think back 10 years ago... the fastest USB out was 2.0 (480 Mbps compared to 20/40 Gbps today - to maybe 3.0 at 5 Gbps), M.2 sockets didn't exist, I'd be stuck on a PCIe 3.0 boards putting a small glass ceiling on gaming performance. But that's up for the user to decide.
Intel make more money than AMD & nVidia put together; they're even ahead of IBM with all the services they (IBM) provide. Looks you'll never get fired for speccing Intel, in the commercial space. If a division by zero bug is found and it in an Intel processor, nobody is going to hold you accountable; you spec AMD and there is a bug found then your superiors are going to ask 'remind us again why were using AMD'. It's like Cisco, Intel, Redhat, IBM, & Oracle. You tell your superiors were using Windows & SQL Server and you'll get fired on the spot
More like 99% people have no idea and don't care what is inside the computer as long as it does its work. Another thing is that AMD runs in most supercomputers nowadays and most largest cloud services use AMD. Somehow the largest corporations have no problems with AMD. The story was totally different 10 years ago.Intel make more money than AMD & nVidia put together; they're even ahead of IBM with all the services they (IBM) provide. Looks you'll never get fired for speccing Intel, in the commercial space. If a division by zero bug is found and it in an Intel processor, nobody is going to hold you accountable; you spec AMD and there is a bug found then your superiors are going to ask 'remind us again why were using AMD'. It's like Cisco, Intel, Redhat, IBM, & Oracle. You tell your superiors were using Windows & SQL Server and you'll get fired on the spot
In a nutshell: -Intel make more money than AMD & nVidia put together; they're even ahead of IBM with all the services they (IBM) provide. Looks you'll never get fired for speccing Intel, in the commercial space. If a division by zero bug is found and it in an Intel processor, nobody is going to hold you accountable; you spec AMD and there is a bug found then your superiors are going to ask 'remind us again why were using AMD'. It's like Cisco, Intel, Redhat, IBM, & Oracle. You tell your superiors were using Windows & SQL Server and you'll get fired on the spot
1.) AMD do not have the resources to compete with Intel. Intel are too large and have too many resources. They (AMD) need to find niches that will allow them to be profitable. One such niche is 'value for money' and that can apply to a platform like AM4.
2.) Market perception was/is if a product from a large established company like Intel or Cisco has an issue it will readily accepted by management but a product by a smaller, lesser known company like AMD you'll be drilled on why we just didn't go with one of the big companies.
Post magically merged:
Definitely it is changing, AMD64 & Threadripper CPUs have helped a lot...
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2002
What? Did you get fired for buying AMD or speaking from personal experience? Are you speaking to a specific instance of a bug with a divide by zero error? This all seems very odd. I could see in businesses where the differences don't matter, they just need a computer that turns on and runs Excell and Word and Outlook, sure they won't want to change and some ignorant manager could blame problems on a sticker. But in applications that can actually benefit from the advancements that AMD has made, I doubt anybody cares about the sticker on it as long as it does the job.
The fact that AMD had no problems with their CPU production in the last years while Intel was waiting in the queue, only proves that Intel means as much as AMD nowadays. Who pays first is more important in the current moment. Because of that, Intel had problems to deliver a huge amount of CPUs to servers and laptops, so AMD took over a quite large % of orders. There were 2-3 months when 90% of branded laptops available in distribution were only on AMD.
Another thing is that Intel 10nm process was a fail, they were trying it for a year and finally released next 2 gens based on 14nm. Now we have old technology maxed out only to beat AMD while AMD jumped to another smaller process. I'm not talking about the performance as this is comparable, but AMD actually releases something new and leaves a lot of space for upgrades while Intel just finished the "tock" phase and in a couple of months will release another socket.
Intel is slightly faster in games now at the cost of much higher wattage. It will probably change when AMD release 3D cache version of Ryzen 7000 in a month, while Intel has nothing better to show.
The main problem which I see with Intel is that at least since 2nd Ryzen gen, every new Intel generation has design flaws or isn't tested right before release. They try hard to keep up with AMD processors. It looks like there is a premiere, 3-6 months of BIOS updates, manufacturers start to work on another generation while everything that wasn't fixed is a users' problem. After next 4-6 months we get a new chipset which gives us barely anything new and the story repeats, making from users' beta testers. If you work closely with business hardware, then you know that not much better is with branded servers, but at least warranties cost a lot and manufacturers work hard to fix any issues. There is still about 6 month period after release when something may not work.
Another thing is that Intel 10nm process was a fail, they were trying it for a year and finally released next 2 gens based on 14nm. Now we have old technology maxed out only to beat AMD while AMD jumped to another smaller process. I'm not talking about the performance as this is comparable, but AMD actually releases something new and leaves a lot of space for upgrades while Intel just finished the "tock" phase and in a couple of months will release another socket.
Intel is slightly faster in games now at the cost of much higher wattage. It will probably change when AMD release 3D cache version of Ryzen 7000 in a month, while Intel has nothing better to show.
The main problem which I see with Intel is that at least since 2nd Ryzen gen, every new Intel generation has design flaws or isn't tested right before release. They try hard to keep up with AMD processors. It looks like there is a premiere, 3-6 months of BIOS updates, manufacturers start to work on another generation while everything that wasn't fixed is a users' problem. After next 4-6 months we get a new chipset which gives us barely anything new and the story repeats, making from users' beta testers. If you work closely with business hardware, then you know that not much better is with branded servers, but at least warranties cost a lot and manufacturers work hard to fix any issues. There is still about 6 month period after release when something may not work.
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Not specifically AMD but not using Cisco, EMC or Sequent. I have seen people drag over the coals for not using the established brand. It's a bit more than running a spreadsheet. Mainly equities/FX/FI trading systems. Outages/inability to scale can be very expensive.
Cloud computing is a nice idea in theory but ideally you want to be cross-connect (direct router to router connection) for high frequency trading. This means you'll have to be co-located in the same data-centre as your clients. Some clients will look for people that are distributing prices a few 100 milliseconds behind the market so they can buy or sell to them depending on whether the price is going up or down...
Cloud computing is a nice idea in theory but ideally you want to be cross-connect (direct router to router connection) for high frequency trading. This means you'll have to be co-located in the same data-centre as your clients. Some clients will look for people that are distributing prices a few 100 milliseconds behind the market so they can buy or sell to them depending on whether the price is going up or down...
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2002
Maybe I misunderstand but this seems like a different topic. You could say that based on your experience w/ xyz, you would expect businesses to be resistant to change, but this seems more like comparing apples to oranges. Additionally you're speaking now about a very specific industry with well documented requirements for latency, in my own words, "a business where the differences matter." I feel like this discussion has gone a long way from, "the commercial space," and I feel like market share tells the whole story. 5 years ago even you could say the business sector was skeptical of AMD but I just don't think your niche experience is generalizable to business and industry as a whole. No AMD isn't the leader in market share, but they're making huge inroads, especially as Woomack mentioned, in the server space.
