Tranced
Bluelight Crew
Anyone else fascinated with this? Intel have dominated the desktop CPU market for years with their i3, i5 & i7 range of processors, with AMD - their only commercial desktop competitor - trailing behind. Intel are quite a pushy & divisive company, whereas AMD seem more humble & somewhat honourable. The typical good vs. bad guy story, with the bad guys winning for way too long.
Processor clock speeds have been at roughly a stalemate for about a decade or so now, generally hovering at clock cycles of around 3-4ghz or so, due to Moore's Law:
Basically we are running out of the amount of transistors we can further cram on a circuit, and as such people have been fiddling with increased core counts, generally settling at around 4 processor cores, and 8 threads. If the transistor size can be be decreased then you can decrease power consumption, increase clock cycle's, improve performance, etc etc.
So here's where it starts getting interesting/heated: last year AMD released it's first generation of its Ryzen range, and they have been retailing their premium line (Ryzen 7) for like ?300, whereas Intels premium line (i7) has been retailing for at least ?6-700. Furthermore, whilst Intels core count was generally 4, and virtual core count (threads) were 8, Ryzen had a core count of 8, and virtual count of 16... for about half the price. Needless to say, Ryzens first generation, last year, did very well, and gained AMD a foothold in the market and widespread admiration/recognition.
In the spring AMD released their second generation, and Intel just this month have released theirs. Intels release has quite honestly been pathetic. Whereas the amount of threads previously = double the amount of cores, they have disabled this feature in all but their most expensive processor, in order to be able to compete with AMD on core count. Their fastest i9 processor has 8 cores, 16 threads, which is the same as Ryzen 7, but their previously premium i7's now have half the number of threads; so only 8 cores, 8 threads. This is really terrible for them, and anybody looking to upgrade might potentially be doing the opposite. Having double threads (aka hyperthreading) was a defining feature of an i7 processor.
Intel commissioned a third party company to perform benchmark testing for pitting their flagship i9 vs the flagship Ryzen 7, and were found to be completely skewing the results and disabling cores on the AMD processors during said tests (amongst other stuff), which has caused controversy.
So Intel is already in peril, with additional issues blighting the company such as supply issues and vulnerabilities which impact performance, but here's the real clincher: Intels chip transistors are 14NM, AMD's are 12NM... so get that number down and get increased performance. Intel were planning to release 10nm chips, but have experienced huge delays and issues with the chip, delaying production until as far back as 2020..
Meanwhile, AMD have perfected their 7nm chips (named zen 2), and plan to release them next year, potentially fast tracking their usual spring launch.
This means that AMD can acquire huge performance gains, increasing the clock speed to between 4-5Ghz or so, adding cores, etc. Intel are really going to struggle to compete with that, especially when their processors cost so much more.
It's ultimately going to be brilliant for consumers, and we'll finally see clock speeds moving forward again.
There is even a rumour that AMD have the ultimate smoking gun up their sleeve; which is that they have held back a competitor to Intels i9 processor to release if an when necessary. Given that independent testers have just had the embargo on publishing their benchmarks lifted yesterday, and we can finally see how the flagship AMD vs. Intel chips really compete, this would likely be in these next few days if anything, I'd imagine. Just a rumour, but would really be the cherry on the cake.
TLDR; Intel bad, AMD good. Intel were winning, now AMD are.
Most of the good info is being posted here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/
P.s I've never owned an AMD processor, but that will likely change with Ryzen generation 3.
Processor clock speeds have been at roughly a stalemate for about a decade or so now, generally hovering at clock cycles of around 3-4ghz or so, due to Moore's Law:
Basically we are running out of the amount of transistors we can further cram on a circuit, and as such people have been fiddling with increased core counts, generally settling at around 4 processor cores, and 8 threads. If the transistor size can be be decreased then you can decrease power consumption, increase clock cycle's, improve performance, etc etc.
So here's where it starts getting interesting/heated: last year AMD released it's first generation of its Ryzen range, and they have been retailing their premium line (Ryzen 7) for like ?300, whereas Intels premium line (i7) has been retailing for at least ?6-700. Furthermore, whilst Intels core count was generally 4, and virtual core count (threads) were 8, Ryzen had a core count of 8, and virtual count of 16... for about half the price. Needless to say, Ryzens first generation, last year, did very well, and gained AMD a foothold in the market and widespread admiration/recognition.
In the spring AMD released their second generation, and Intel just this month have released theirs. Intels release has quite honestly been pathetic. Whereas the amount of threads previously = double the amount of cores, they have disabled this feature in all but their most expensive processor, in order to be able to compete with AMD on core count. Their fastest i9 processor has 8 cores, 16 threads, which is the same as Ryzen 7, but their previously premium i7's now have half the number of threads; so only 8 cores, 8 threads. This is really terrible for them, and anybody looking to upgrade might potentially be doing the opposite. Having double threads (aka hyperthreading) was a defining feature of an i7 processor.
Intel commissioned a third party company to perform benchmark testing for pitting their flagship i9 vs the flagship Ryzen 7, and were found to be completely skewing the results and disabling cores on the AMD processors during said tests (amongst other stuff), which has caused controversy.
So Intel is already in peril, with additional issues blighting the company such as supply issues and vulnerabilities which impact performance, but here's the real clincher: Intels chip transistors are 14NM, AMD's are 12NM... so get that number down and get increased performance. Intel were planning to release 10nm chips, but have experienced huge delays and issues with the chip, delaying production until as far back as 2020..
Meanwhile, AMD have perfected their 7nm chips (named zen 2), and plan to release them next year, potentially fast tracking their usual spring launch.
This means that AMD can acquire huge performance gains, increasing the clock speed to between 4-5Ghz or so, adding cores, etc. Intel are really going to struggle to compete with that, especially when their processors cost so much more.
It's ultimately going to be brilliant for consumers, and we'll finally see clock speeds moving forward again.
There is even a rumour that AMD have the ultimate smoking gun up their sleeve; which is that they have held back a competitor to Intels i9 processor to release if an when necessary. Given that independent testers have just had the embargo on publishing their benchmarks lifted yesterday, and we can finally see how the flagship AMD vs. Intel chips really compete, this would likely be in these next few days if anything, I'd imagine. Just a rumour, but would really be the cherry on the cake.
TLDR; Intel bad, AMD good. Intel were winning, now AMD are.
Most of the good info is being posted here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/
P.s I've never owned an AMD processor, but that will likely change with Ryzen generation 3.
