The real benefit in terms of AMD's new chips are that they force Intel to stop price gouging.
That would be nice, if it were true. So where is the average price drop for any of Intel's chips? Blips on the radar, my friend.
Intel 'steadfast' on pricing
https://www.pcgamesn.com/intel-cpu-price-drop-analyst-report
https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/cpu/
If you look at the chips in terms of value, you got more cores / threads for the same money.
The only place Ryzen wasn't keeping up or out performing was gaming.
But more cores and threads does not necessarily equate to performance and benchmarks for Ryzen are a mixed bag for almost
everything... there is a small sliver of things it does "better" and a large sliver where it is "on-par" or worse.
I mean, look at these
benchmarks on Toms Hardware. Smacked in gaming, like you say, and then:
Winner: Tie. If you are primarily browsing the web, using office apps or even playing with Adobe's creative suite, Intel is faster. However, if you use a lot of multi-threaded, non-Adobe software for rendering videos, photos and animations, AMD is a better choice.
AMD won 6 out of 15 in the "Productivity Performance". As a general consumer, which parts of that list are you looking at? Hint: It's not the, "multi-threaded, non-Adobe software for rendering videos, photos and animations" - small market there.
The MSRP for a Ryzen 2700X is $329 whereas the 8700K is $369.... It's $40, not going to break anyone who is building or purchasing a system of this caliber.
So, I think some of us look at a $20 or $40 difference and cores/threads and say, "Oh ya, been here done that before when AMD dropped the ball a decade ago."
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing, as they say.
Bulldozer anyone? "
Wow, more Corez!"
But lets be real, all those crying "AMD fanbois" are really Intel fanbois themselves. Ryzen is a respectable competitor and a refreshing option in the market.
There is enough to legitimately dislike both companies. Refreshing? Yes. While 'options' are good for the market, the problem with AMD is they have the wrong vision IMO.. stop being, "almost, for just a
little less". Be, "Better for the same or a little more." - The market will follow and prices will drop via market conditions, more so than simply being the "undercutting dog" to gain short term capital.
I credit AMD for great things pre-2010, I had their stuff, on and off, for decades.
After 2006-10 - I give large credit to AMD for the downturn of the PC market. Cheap, POS laptops/desktops flooded the market and everyone hated them. Slow, crappy hardware all around, often failed CPUs or AMD chipsets... then laptop manufacturers and Intel were forced to compete.. so, consumers found alternatives in Apple and "other devices" because, "Windows Sucks" - As if their $279 laptop is representative of
all laptops. But hey, they were cheap and sold like hotcakes, so that must be good. Then AMD almost goes out of business and changes up the board and leadership. So, same strategy this time around to sell "cheap", "embedded", "
almost, but not quite" chips? Great.
AMD needs "Best" chips. Reliable too, no more excuses. "Memory timings" this, "Not optimized for" that.. Bullsh*t. No more! It's
everytime! I want my AMD chips to be like Intel chips.... 99.9% whatever is wrong with this computer.. it's not going to be the CPU or some half-baked patch of a driver. I don't care who is at fault.. MS, AMD, Intel or some other third party... fix your sh*t if you want to be in my desktop, 'cause I'll just spend the $30-$40 over 4-5 years to not have to deal with it.
Left without competition, Intel would continue to do next to nothing well constantly introducing new SKU's and slowly charging more and more for them.
Well, they basically
WERE left without competition for almost a decade, and in that time they produced chips with 10-40% improvements over each generation... so much so, that when AMD comes out with their chip, "well low-and-behold!" it looks like Intel IS at the top of innovation after all!
So, to me, that argument doesn't really hold water. If Intel was doing so horribly and "purposefully" holding technology back for "incrementalism", why is AMD still not the "best"? Wouldn't that mean AMD is holding back, just like Intel?
In reference to the First Ryzen chips and Bulldozer:
AMD’s first-generation Ryzen CPUs offered more than 50 percent improvement in instructions per clock over its predecessor chips.
Wow. Clap your hands, AMD has given us 7% gains per year, over 8 years. Woo... hmm.
Now, the Ryzen 3000 series chips are
"reportedly" 13% faster IPC than the previous chips... isn't this the same kind of "incrementalism", down to the percent, that people were complaining to Intel about, before? Why is it now "OK" for AMD to do the same?
So, I'm not saying "don't be excited" about AMD and Ryzen and they have done a fair/good job with this chip and architecture. I would only offer the warning of, it's got nowhere to go but down unless they can beat Intel at their own game, reliably and stably.. rock solid. If not, I for one, am not interested.
