Intel has a Pretty Big Problem..

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Zen was a big moment for AMD, but the per core performance of 1000/2000 CPUs wasn't much to write home about. It's easy with hindsight to say a better platform, but a lot of those B350/X370 boards at launch were pants.
If anything, the most interesting parts for those CPUs, were Threadripper.

Are Intel in trouble now? Absolutely, but it's not been a decade.

 

[Rroff]

If by can’t touch you ignore offering very similar performance for less money at third of the power and on a better platform, then sure.

Not at the price point - the only chip which has a similar price and performance point is the 7900s but they have very inconsistent performance compared to the 8 core CCD AMD chips and the 14700K. The 7800X3D and 7700X are waaay behind for productivity workloads, the 7800X3D can beat it in gaming but not by a huge amount on average. The 7950 chips are a lot more expensive than the 14700s.

The 14700 chips currently start at just under £350 from a reputable retailer, the 7950X cheapest from somewhere reputable is £470, the X3D around £550.

There are some applications as well the 7800X3D just falls so far behind the 14700K outside of gaming it is laughable, the average doesn't tell the whole story at all.

Also power usage isn't actually that hideous when you include full system power consumption at the wall - for many tasks there is less than 100 watt difference at the wall for the 14700K.

 

[jigger]

Zen was a big moment for AMD, but the per core performance of 1000/2000 CPUs wasn't much to write home about. It's easy with hindsight to say a better platform, but a lot of those B350/X370 boards at launch were pants.
If anything, the most interesting parts for those CPUs, were Threadripper.

Are Intel in trouble now? Absolutely, but it's not been a decade.

Ryzen 1 and 2 derailed Intels HEDT/Workstation gravy train. Threadripper 1 and 2 made Intel rage quit the market. Pre Zen I was paying £200-300 per core! for very little IPC performance uplift and 2 extra cores if I was lucky. Zen put an end to that nonsense.

 

[jigger]

Not at the price point - the only chip which has a similar price and performance point is the 7900s but they have very inconsistent performance compared to the 8 core CCD AMD chips and the 14700K. The 7800X3D and 7700X are waaay behind for productivity workloads, the 7800X3D can beat it in gaming but not by a huge amount on average. The 7950 chips are a lot more expensive than the 14700s.

The 14700 chips currently start at just under £350 from a reputable retailer, the 7950X cheapest from somewhere reputable is £470, the X3D around £550.

The 14700K is getting more than touched by AMD’s last gen’s. You have many system options that will murder a 14700k build in multi core for similar money. A discounted Lenovo TR system for example.

 

[Rroff]

The 14700K is getting more than touched by AMD’s last gen’s. You have many system options that will murder a 14700k build in multi core for similar money. A discounted Lenovo TR system for example.

But they won't touch it for gaming... same as the 7800X3D might best it for gaming but can't touch it for productivity work... (Also you are then looking at an ageing AMD platform probably on Zen 2 to get it into the system price range, maybe a 5000 series chip but still going to be an older platform, system power consumption similar to or even higher than the 14700K and way behind it for gaming).

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Ryzen 1 and 2 derailed Intels HEDT/Workstation gravy train. Threadripper 1 and 2 made Intel rage quit the market. Pre Zen I was paying £200-300 per core! for very little IPC performance uplift and 2 extra cores if I was lucky. Zen put an end to that nonsense.

But it hasn't been a decade. The first threadripper was even a good bit after Zen's initial launch.
I just wish both companies weren't so stingy with PCIe lanes on their normal consumer parts.

 

[KompuKare]

I think mentioning ThreadRipper is close but where all Zen's have extremely competitive was servers which is no suprise as that was the big target. Even Zen1 good performance, and excellent size and power usage. Luckily for Intel, server buyers are super super conservative so their sales didn't take as quickly as they might. Plus recently Intel have offered huge discounts - so much so that on a far larger market share they have made almost no margins.

Sure there are server workloads where the inter CCD thing matters, but for server those are mostly niches. Recently the huge hypervisors have been rolling their own ARM servers and with ARM doing server focused reference designs now those will only increase. So AMD finally got back into the lucrative server market only to find that between Intel's deep discounts and ARM it is no longer as lucrative as it was!

Work laptop is Alder Lake and the P and E cores give me so kind of grieve so much so that for some database tasks my old Haswell laptop was sat faster. So not all productive tasks are better on something like the 14700K. Inter-CCD latencies or hybrid Ev cores: both can cause trouble so pick your poison IMO.

 

[Rroff]

server buyers are super super conservative so their sales didn't take as quickly as they might

They tend to like to stick to what they know works, if Intel does have a big issue with these CPUs then that would rock the boat, albeit so far it doesn't seem to be an issue with the main server market with Xeons, etc. - the use of 13th and 14th gen with W680 boards, etc. is relatively niche to specific applications like certain types of game server hosting or where penalties from things like cross CCD or bus architecture matter.

So not all productive tasks are better on something like the 14700K

As I've previously noted I've not so far personally seen those issues with the 14700K and Windows 11 - I have encountered them on older stuff like 12th gen on Windows 10, etc.

EDIT: Can't remember if I mentioned it before but starting the 10th gen Intel is also a bit sneaky with laptop CPUs in that you don't actually gain much performance, potentially even lose some, if you fully load up the cores as the frequency drops right out i.e. if you limit some of the 8(P) core CPUs to 6 cores you don't really lose any performance due to the frequency falling off a cliff once you are loading up more than 6 cores.

 

[jonneymendoza]

That's fair, but there's enough architectural performance differences to show that they still have an impact and I would say it's more relevant than productivity workloads to a lot of people here. That's why I made that statement.

Even in productivity though there really isn't a lot between similarly priced Intel and AMD processors most of the time. Just Intel generally needs a higher power budget to do it.

How so?

Not everyone here just uses there computers for gaming.

This forum is technically not a gaming forum per say.

For productivity, amd smashes Intel off the park.

Gaming as I said is gpu bound unless u play at 800x600 resolution

 

[Sargatanas2511]

How so?

Not everyone here just uses there computers for gaming.

This forum is technically not a gaming forum per say.

For productivity, amd smashes Intel off the park.

Gaming as I said is gpu bound unless u play at 800x600 resolution

At individual tiers cost for cost, productivity really isn't that far apart most of the time. As is shown by the TPU benchmarks posted above by @Rroff . Yes Intel has to use a lot more power for the same thing but that's irrelevant for the user who just wants a product that can do the job.

Without going HEDT the 14900k even now is still competitive in terms of performance (when it works) with the 7950X3D for most things, same with the 14700k and the 7800X3D and the 14600k and the 7800X/7700X.

 

[chaparral]

Aside from the 14700K - AMD have nothing which can touch it at that price point - the 7800X3D is way behind for productivity, the 7950 chips are a lot more expensive and it isn't hideously behind the 7950, 13900 and 14900 at a lot less money. As long as it doesn't break :s

The 7900 chips have the disadvantage of 6 core CCDs making for performance inconsistencies.

Agree I also think the 14700k is the best all round CPU’s you can buy at the moment

 

[Rroff]

At individual tiers cost for cost, productivity really isn't that far apart most of the time. As is shown by the TPU benchmarks posted above by @Rroff . Yes Intel has to use a lot more power for the same thing but that's irrelevant for the user who just wants a product that can do the job.

Without going HEDT the 14900k even now is still competitive in terms of performance (when it works) with the 7950X3D for most things, same with the 14700k and the 7800X3D and the 14600k and the 7800X/7700X.

One of the problems is just how big the performance variations can be especially when considering both gaming and non-gaming types of workload - one CPU might do OK for average application performance but that hides where it might really really fall down in certain applications and/or certain applications one CPU is way out ahead of the others i.e. for certain MT workloads nothing can touch the 7950 chips, whereas in some other ST heavy workloads nothing comes close to the higher end 13th and 14th gen, etc. etc.

 

[Rroff]

Agree I also think the 14700k is one the best all round CPU’s you can buy at the moment

I'm also hoping, but we don't have the evidence yet, that it is mostly not affected by these Intel issues like the i9s seem to be. One of the reasons I went with the 14700 over the 14900 was hearing some rumours of issues with them from people I trust, though mostly was due to intending to air cool the CPU.

 

[Sargatanas2511]

One of the problems is just how big the performance variations can be especially when considering both gaming and non-gaming types of workload - one CPU might do OK for average application performance but that hides where it might really really fall down in certain applications and/or certain applications one CPU is way out ahead of the others i.e. for certain MT workloads nothing can touch the 7950 chips, whereas in some other ST heavy workloads nothing comes close to the higher end 13th and 14th gen, etc. etc.

100% agree, that's why I tried to be sure to say for most they are competitive with eachother. Both architectures will have beneficial outliers and both will have things they struggle with but on the whole performance tends to be roughly equivalent.

There is no one absolutely definitive superior performing platform, and that's good for everyone.

 

[chaparral]

I'm also hoping, but we don't have the evidence yet, that it is mostly not affected by these Intel issues like the i9s seem to be. One of the reasons I went with the 14700 over the 14900 was hearing some rumours of issues with them from people I trust, though mostly was due to intending to air cool the CPU.

I still feel a bit stupid for paying out the huge extra cost for the 14900k over the 14700k
The only reason I did was because I kicked myself for years for buying the 6 core 8700k instead of the 8 core 9900k

 

[j4ska]

How so?

Not everyone here just uses there computers for gaming.

This forum is technically not a gaming forum per say.

For productivity, amd smashes Intel off the park.

Gaming as I said is gpu bound unless u play at 800x600 resolution

Can't agree with 800x600 ;p 1440p gaming is cpu bound, only 4k is gpu bound in newish titles

 

[Rroff]

I still feel a bit stupid for paying out the huge extra cost for the 14900k over the 14700k
The only reason I did was because I kicked myself for years for buying the 6 core 8700k instead of the 8 core 9900k

That was something I considered quite a bit - but especially with the desire to air cool it the 14900 wasn't working for me.

 

[jigger]

But it hasn't been a decade. The first threadripper was even a good bit after Zen's initial launch.
I just wish both companies weren't so stingy with PCIe lanes on their normal consumer parts.

I suppose not, it’s well over a decade Intel has been in trouble.

 

[Worthy]

Can we not turn yet another thread into an AMD vs Intel debate please chaps? No matter the thread title, they all end up the same way.

 

[jigger]

100% agree, that's why I tried to be sure to say for most they are competitive with eachother. Both architectures will have beneficial outliers and both will have things they struggle with but on the whole performance tends to be roughly equivalent.

There is no one absolutely definitive superior performing platform, and that's good for everyone.

Competitive-ish right at the end of a Zen product cycle with a 50% failure rate.

If you had the choice of buying AM5 and whatever Intels latest socket is and didn’t pick AM5, you made the wrong choice.