If I were to take the average person, sit them in front of a computer, and have them identify for me the most important piece of the computer, they probably wouldn’t be able to. I would expect quite a few to identify the power button. A few more might identify a hard drive upon close inspection, which would impress me a bit. But the odds of someone taking off the side panel and revealing the Central Processing Unit, or CPU? Slim to none.
Don’t get me wrong. I know that people have heard of processors, and in fact actively make purchasing decisions based around them. “Should I buy an i5 or an i7? Well I know the i7 is better so I should probably just go with that.” This is not a fabrication. This is a legitimate discussion I overheard in my family living room on Black Friday this year. And, to be fair to the non-tech savvy people of the world, they are not technically incorrect. The i7 is a more powerful processor yes. But that also depends on what you are doing with it. In the case of my mother and father, who were the ones talking about this, they certainly don’t need an i7 8th generation processor to run Quicken and Outlook.
On top of that, for the first time in nearly nine years, they don’t need an Intel processor. AMD, a hardware company that has lived in the shadow of Intel for nearly a decade, has finally struck a decisive blow against the tech giant. AMD’s newest Ryzen chipsets have outperformed Intel’s chips (which, by the way, are priced roughly 60-70 dollars higher than AMD’s) in nearly every category when looking at similar spec models. Intel still technically holds the edge in gaming, boasting higher frame rates, but only by around 2-3% at a maximum.
(NOTE: I use the term “spec” often in this post. All that means is that I’m comparing an AMD processor with an Intel processor that has similar internal hardware specifications and a similar price point. For example, Intel i5 9600k would compete against a Ryzen 5 3600x because they are similarly spec’d processors.)
So, why do you, as the consumer, care? Well first and foremost, this has introduced the concept of a competitive market back into the processor game since 2011-2012. If you were buying a processor between 2012 and roughly 2 weeks ago, you were buying an Intel processor. They just offered better outright performance and higher clock speeds (the speed at which the processor can process the data you feed it) than AMD ever could muster. But, that also meant that there was nobody to force Intel to price their products competitively. Intel could charge as much as they wanted to charge for their top of the line CPU’s. $350? Steep price, for sure. But you weren’t buying AMD so that was the cost of doing business.
Not anymore. Just look at Intel’s market prices for their processors this holiday season. Compared to their 8th generation, their 9900k, which sports 8 cores, is nearly half of what Intel originally charged for a similarly spec’d processor in their 8th generation line-up. In layman’s terms, Intel is charging half the money for the same level of hardware as opposed to a year and a half ago. AMD is putting the pressure on Intel to make their processors competitively priced, and on top of that, AMD is outright beating Intel with cheaper alternatives.
What do I mean by “beating Intel”? When you put a processor head to head with another one, you often test it in very rigorous, stress-testing measures such as video editing. Keep that in mind. Then, you plug the same video file into each one, render it out, and see how long it takes for that processor to finish the file. The processor that can accomplish this faster is the winner. In nearly every test that TechTubers and IT outlets have released, AMD has handily beaten Intel within the same spec. Cinebench scores, Adobe Premiere tests, Render models, all of these have been taken by AMD. It makes more sense than ever to switch to Team Red, and it will even save you a couple of dollars.
What’s more is that Intel knew it was going to lose, and did everything it could to try and avoid being put head to head against AMD. When a hardware company like AMD sends out products to be reviewed, they institute something called an embargo date. This is the date when all of the reviewers they have sent their product to are allowed to publish their review on the product. This year, AMD set the embargo date for November 25th, full weeks in advance. Then, twelve hours prior to AMD’s embargo release, Intel lifted the embargo on their products.
Why would they do this? Simple. Their products get reviewed first, ahead of AMD’s. Therefore, it becomes impossible for a tech reviewer to put Intel’s product head to head with AMD until AMD’s embargo has been lifted. Furthermore, many tech reviewers and YouTubers do not benefit from releasing multiple videos on the same day due to the way that YouTube’s algorithm works. It is much better for them to release one video, reap the revenue from it, then release another video the following day. Intel knows this. So, by sneaking in their products mere hours before AMD, they gain a full 24 hours of free promotion time through these reviewers without running the risk of being compared to their competition.
Unfortunately for Intel, the tech world has caught on and dealt out some serious backlash due to these underhanded marketing tactics. YouTubers like Linus Tech Tips straight up called out Intel and said that “an executive should be fired” for making this decision. And I tend to agree. Why spend time attempting to weasel your way out of losing the processor war when you could spend your time on figuring out how to deliver the best possible product you can to the consumer? That’s what AMD did, and it has paid off for them in spades. On top of that, AMD hasn’t even released their Threadripper lineup yet, which promises to be even more impressive in terms of it’s processing power.
As the dust settles on the battlefields of the processor wars this Christmas, AMD stands tall with Intel having taken some serious wounds. Will they recover? Who is really to say. I doubt seriously that a tech giant like Intel won’t come up with a response to this loss. But this holiday season, the win clearly goes to AMD, a deserving champion who has fought hard to get where they are now. The real winner though? The consumer. I’m excited to see how these companies push each other and provide us with the best possible tech they can in an effort to take that top spot on the Buyers Guide for 2019. Finally, in a market that has been monopolized by one company for nearly a decade, we as the consumer are getting some choice.