Our results clearly show that Intel’s performance, while substantial, still trails its main competitor, AMD. In a core-for-core comparison, Intel is slightly slower and a lot more inefficient. The smart money would be to get the AMD processor. However, due to high demand and prioritizing commercial and enterprise contracts, the only parts readily available on retail shelves right now are from Intel. Any user looking to buy or build a PC today has to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge their way to find one for sale, and also hope that it is not at a vastly inflated price. The less stressful solution would be to buy Intel, and use Intel’s latest platform in Rocket Lake.
This is Intel’s 10nm design backported to 14nm. It’s not great, and lags behind AMD substantially, but with the chip shortage, it’s probably the only processor you can get at a halfway reasonable price for the foreseeable future.
Oh my how the roles have switched from Bulldozer days. The power consumption of Intel is now atrocious.
I think we got a hint of that when the M1 came out. Intel needs to crack that die problem.
Yeah, Apple sure saw it coming from a mile away.
I would have never guessed that of the 3 vertical semiconductor companies: Intel, IBM, and Samsung. Only samsung would remain as a designer with a fab.
Last I heard Intel is in the process of contracting fab capacity with TSMC. Which is basically an admission of defeat.
Releasing a 14nm processor in 2021 is not good.
javiercero1,
Yeah, we’re suffering the consequences of that 🙁
Well, it’s undeniable that AMD looks great on paper, but so long as very few people are actually able to buy a high end AMD desktop, it really sucks to be an AMD customer right now. Intel might pull out of it’s tailspin relatively unscathed (but they’ve got to get their act together!). My next system looks more and more to be determined by parts availability more than anything else.
The other thing is that the trump administration’s 25% tariff remains in effect, chips were exempted up until 2021 and so far the biden administration has kept it. These are reflected in huge price inflation for consumers this year. Not to mention the effects of crypto miners and scalpers. This generation of hardware has been disastrous for nearly everyone.
Neither AMD nor Intel CPUs are made in china, so they should not be affected by the tariffs.
Yeah, the availability is ridiculous right now. Unfortunately COVID has disrupted most supply chains. And AMD has used whatever capacity TSMC can meet right now for the console CPUs.
javiercero1,
A lot of prices have gone up due the tariff exemptions ending.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/prices-for-graphics-cards-and-motherboards-go-up-as-us-tariffs-kick-back
Sorry, i thought you were referring to the CPUs.
Yeah, graphics cards and Mobos are mostly assembled in China. Hopefully the Biden admin take down those tariffs pronto, they make no sense. I’m sure NVIDIA et al are lobbying hard.
We jumped onto 5nm too early without enough fab capacity. And even when lower yields are solved (5nm seems better compared to 7nm), everyone is competing for the same infrastructure.
We read about nvidia 3000 cards, radeon xt, xbox, ps5, ryzen 5000, nothing being in stock for a while. And all are mutually exclusive at the moment.
Yet, power savings actually do not warrant an upgrade. My desktop already runs at about 25W average. Even if this was cut in half, it would be a very loooong time before it pays the $500 for the new CPU.
So,. if my computer is running well, I can wait until all these dust settles, and we have Apple M3, Ryzen next gen, and Intel 7nm.
Most of the shortages are on 7nm and 8nm parts.
Most of the shortages are due to the fact that there is a pandemic that has disrupted the supply lines globally and because large amounts of idiots are trying to generate value out of wasting insane amounts of electricity.
What you said sounds plausible. However there are three factors that indicate otherwise:
1) Intel is still chugging along chips. I never saw any shortages of i7 or i9 processors (though they are 14nm)
2) There is real competition for TSMC’s new processes. For example Apple is said to tie up more than half of their 5nm output: https://www.phonearena.com/news/apple-and-qualcomm-should-be-the-top-two-5nm-customers-for-tsmc-this-year_id129967 . And their 5nm competes for the same factory space.
3) Gaming consoles, Zen 3 CPUs (which cannot be used for mining), and even auto manufacturers are unable to meet demand either.
I am not saying crypto had zero effect. But the current situation shows that would be very small at best.
1) Intel supply chain was also disrupted. They had massive chipset shortages through 2020, and they had limited fab output due to shortages in materials and packaging/distribution. A lot of OEMs were not able to get enough Core parts for their consumer lines, since intel had to prioritize Xeon over everything else (most large data centers had their 2-year upgrade cycle in 2020).
2) New nodes are always introduced in stages, with customers paying more for the initial risk production runs (which have lower yields). Apple has the deepest pockets so they contracted most of those runs.
Each node is it’s own contained production facility, either on a whole new fab or as an extension annex to an existing one. Each node production is isolated.
3) AMD had to prioritize console CPUs over all their other products, since those are their guaranteed revenue streams. Just like how intel prioritize Xeons. TSMC’s capacity for 7m was constrained because a lot of raw materials/chemicals were not being supplied on time due to issues with suppliers and distribution during COVID.
Basically global shipping has been severely constrained, with a lot of raw materials not arriving on time. A lot of finished product sitting on containers for months.
And on top of that, about 10% of DRAM fab capacity went off line at a few points during 2020.
So it’s been a shitshow of the perfect storm of basically: huge demand for consoles for Christmas, Crypto going crazy, the 2-year cycle for most large data centers being last year, DRAM fabs going off line, and COVID tying it all together by creating chaos on all distribution/supply chains.
So it’s been an interesting year for those of us working in the semi business.
javiercero1,
I’m not going to rule out the possibility that some intel vendors may have experienced shortages in 2020, even though I didn’t really see it myself. Regardless intel shortages were short lived and nowhere as systematic as the rest of the industry. I’m scrolling through a few pages of newegg’s intel product listing and I don’t see a single model that’s out of stock.
When it comes to semiconductors, a big problem has been putting too many eggs in too few baskets. And I think this has helped shield intel from the shortages that have effected everyone else so severely.
The article is also kinda bullshit as I checked a half a dozen online E-tailers and…really not hard to get a Ryzen at MSRP, as they all had the new 5600X as well as the Ryzen 3s in stock and most had the entire Ryzen 5xxx line in stock and ready to ship.
Soooo yeah, not really any point in buying Intel unless they do just as AMD did with bulldozer and sell the chips much MUCH cheaper. I still have my FX8320E as a backup box and I was happy to buy it with the 8320e at only $110 USD which was less than half what a Core i5 at the time cost but I really cannot see any reason to buy a power sucking Intel these days at current prices.
bassbeast,
Where?
Right now on AMD’s own store the only processor available is 5800X
https://www.amd.com/en/direct-buy/us
Places I’d normally order stuff from like Newegg Tigerdirect Bestbuy are still experiencing shortages especially for ryzen 5000 series models.
Amazon shows some stock, but all above MSRP with the exception of the 5800X that AMD has in stock.
For example, the 5950X (which is out of stock at AMD) normally goes for $799 is going for $1249 on amazon right now. The 5900X normally goes for $549 at AMD, but is $826 at amazon right now. I see less price gouging on lower end parts like 5600X, which is normally $299, selling for $355-$400 on amazon, but then a lot of these are through 3rd parties where you might risk AMD not honoring manufacturer warranties (my experience with warranties being honored through 3rd party sellers has been very poor).
A lot of the official product specs and prices are actually good on paper, but this has been marred by months of chronic shortages. I really do hope things are getting better/will get better soon.
Uhhh use something like pricechecker or PCPartsPicker? When I wrote that they had several listed at MSRP and I went to the links and…yup there they were, Newegg had the 5600, Bestbuy had the full boat and IIRC Amazon had 5600 and 5800. And all of them had the Ryzen 3xxx line which still kicks ass, especially the 3600 and 3800 and looking at Amazon they have 5800x in stock right now.
Ironically the only ones I’m seeing with a crazy markup is the APUs, good lord the price shot through the roof for those but considering the GPU drought that is probably not surprising. Hell I’m gonna end up having to spend $100+ USD to get either an HD7870 or R7 370 for the granddaughters PC when last year before the WuFlu hit I was grabbing those all day for sub $50.
bassbeast,
Can you at least give a link?
This is what came up in the search engines and it’s nothing but a login page, is this what you were talking about??
https://cloud.pricechecker.io/
Given that I can’t access the site and I’m not even sure this is what you are talking about, I cannot independently confirm your claim.
As for newegg frequently and the shortages there are absolutely real.
Over at PCPartsPicker the high end parts are literally “Out of Stock” there too with the exception of 3rd party marketplaces like amazon, which are way over MSRP. I grant you it’s a useful aggregating tool, but it can’t really solve these shortages.
I do concur that lower end parts are easier to get, but the 5600X has fewer cores than what I have now. The 3900X has more cores but is slower. I’m sure these are fine products for what they are, however I’ll be perfectly honest I wouldn’t ordinarily purchase these because I usually aim to bump up specs when I upgrade. The thing is that AMD sells worthy parts at decent MSRP prices, but it’s hard to find stock.
I just hope things will look better going forward.
The 5xxx Ryzen 9 have been unobtanium so far.
Hopefully stuff comes back to normal in a couple of months. The mark up over MSRP in some places is ridiculous.
javiercero1,
Here here. Thankfully I’m in pretty good shape on my upgrade cycle, but I’m concerned over what I’d have to do if something broke.
I wouldn’t buy AMD CPUs due to issues like this:
https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2020/07/19/silentpatch-mass-effect/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/egwz58/why_does_winrarwinzip_perform_so_poorly_on/
AMD CPUs have spent so much time in relative obscurity that there is less optimization by developers for them. Remember, benchmarks are always vendor-agnostic and optimized equally for all brands, but the games and apps we actually run aren’t necessarily so. But I am glad AMD is back in action and enough people will buy their CPUs, thus bringing down the price of Intel CPUs.
kurkosdr,
Yes, I remember discussing that…
http://www.osnews.com/story/132094/fixing-mass-effect-black-blobs-on-modern-amd-cpus/
It seems like a direct-X implementation bug more than a CPU bug per say. It makes me wonder how common this actually is. It could be a rare exception to the norm.
That’s such a large discrepancy that it makes me think there might be a local problem with his system. Alas I don’t have an AMD system to test it myself.
It depends, I find benchmarks based on real world applications (like GCC, gimp, etc) can give a fair idea of real world performance. A few years ago I preferred intel over AMD, despite AMD’s higher core counts because desktop workloads tend to hit single threaded bottlenecks before multicore bottlenecks. However intel hasn’t been able to keep up using it’s older fab technology, giving AMD a sizeable lead with specs.
With rumors that intel is outsourcing to TSMC, they should be able to close the gap with AMD, but my gut feeling is that it is a bad idea for intel to go fabless.
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/intel-set-to-outsource-select-cpu-production-tsmcs-5nm-process/
Maybe it’ll be short term, but I fear the transition could be irreversible leading to even less diversity in the supply chain.
Use 7Zip instead. And the general throughput of multi-threaded AMD overcome a few single-threaded APP that behaves badly.
@kurkosdr
This is another reason why portability layers and abstracting early and abstracting often help. It’s trivial to target different OS and OS versions and architectures and compilers and API backend hardware. Testing against different platforms helps iron out bugs which might not otherwise be spotted. Any developer who doesn’t do this is lazy. It’s going to be like 1% of the total project time.
HollyB,
That’s a valid point, but take note that the game was already using directx abstractions, specifically D3DXMatrixInverse and that the game used to work on older AMD CPUs, so it’s likely something the devs did test successfully. Directx takes a different code path on new AMD CPUs and the abstraction wasn’t producing consistent results on different CPUs for an undetermined reason, so it’s hard to blame the game developers here.
When the author patched out D3DXMatrixInverse and replaced it with XMMatrixInverse the game started working as designed on all CPUs. Out of curiosity I wish the author would have pinned down a specific test case to show why this was happening, but he didn’t.
@Alfman
What part of NOT talking to you didn’t you hear? Go away.
HollyB,
I’m not being mean or disrespectful and I’m not going to self-censor just because your holding a grudge over a difference of opinion several articles back. it’s time to bury the hatchet and move on.