EVOLUTION OF PROCESSORS AND THE DEBATE : INTEL or AMD? (Review by Sayan Das)

The CPU has undergone many transformations to become what it looks like today. The first major challenge it faced dates back to the early 2000s when the battle for performance was in full swing.

Back then, the main rivals were AMD and Intel and they still are the main rivals. At first, the two struggled to increase clock speed. This lasted for quite a while and didn’t require much effort. 

                                 

Generations of microprocessor:

1. First generation –
   From 1971 to 1972 the era of the first generation came which brought microprocessors like INTEL 4004 Rockwell international PPS-4 INTEL 8008 etc.
2. Second generation –
   The second generation marked the development of 8 bit microprocessors from 1973 to 1978. Processors like INTEL 8085 Motorola 6800 and 6801 etc came into existence.
3. Third generation –
   The third generation brought forward the 16 bit processors like INTEL 8086/80186/80286 Motorola 68000 68010 etc. From 1979 to 1980 this generation used the HMOS technology.
4. Fourth generation –
   The fourth generation came into existence from 1981 to 1995. The 32 bit processors using HMOS fabrication came into existence. INTEL 80386 and Mororola 68020 are some of the popular processors of this generation.
5. Fifth generation –
   From 1995 till now we are in the fifth generation. 64 bit processors like PENTIUM, celeron, dual, quad and octa core processors came into existence.

Rivalry between AMD and Intel:

Both AMD and Intel have been around for decades—however, Intel is slightly older. Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore founded the company back in 1968—though it wasn’t until 1974 that Intel made the 8080 processor. This set the basic scene for the x86 processors and for nearly 30 years, these processors were the foundation of desktop PCs.

                                 

Renaming the x86 brand as “Pentium” helped Intel reach out and become a familiar name to the general population and acquire the market domination that they have to date. For years, Intel continued to make solid decisions emphasizing computing powers balanced with long battery life. This helped them to be competitive.

AMD was founded in 1969 (just a year later than Intel), when co-founder Jerry Sanders was named as AMD’s first president and CEO. AMD established its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. Now it’s important to make a couple of distinctions between AMD and Intel as companies. First off, AMD is by far the smaller of the two companies. Secondly, AMD doesn’t actually build their own chips they design the chips “but outsource the manufacturing.” Meanwhile, Intel has over a dozen fabrication plants stretched around the globe in the USA, Ireland, Israel and China.

Comparisons between AMD and INTEL:

With cost serving as a major factor in building, upgrading, or purchasing a PC, choosing the right CPU often comes down to finding the one that offers the best bang for your buck.

                               

In the past, AMD CPUs offered lower prices paired with lower performance. That’s not the case with it's latest generation of CPUs. While AMD still represents great value for the money, it does have several costly options that are even more powerful than the Intel alternative in some cases.

At the very low-end of the scale, AMD and Intel chips cost between $40 and $60 for a couple of cores and energy-efficient clock speeds. At the top of the scale, however, both camps have amazingly capable $500 chips.With AMD, the Ryzen 9 3950X is the current king with 16 cores and 32 threads. It pierces that $500 range with a suggested price of $722.Intel announced the “world’s fastest” gaming processor on April 30, 2020, the Core i9-10900K for a suggested price of $488. The unlocked tenth-generation “Comet Lake-S” chip sports 10 cores,20 threads, and boasts a maximum clock of 5.3GHz on a single core using its new Velocity boost algorithm. It can hit a maximum of 4.8GHz across all cores simultaneously.

Intel introduced 11 new desktop processors with Comet Lake, ranging from the 10-core flagship to the four-core i3-10100. Half are unlocked “K” variants, such as the i7-10700 and an unlocked i7-10700K version. All desktop parts remain on Intel’s 14nm process node and support PCI Express 3.0, unlike AMD’s latest CPUs.Intel Core i9 and AMD Threadripper CPUs targeting enthusiasts and prosumers offer even more multithreaded performance and continue to expand core and thread counts. Intel’s seventh, ninth, and tenth-generation i9 CPUs offer between 10 and 18 cores and up to 36 threads thanks to hyperthreading.

Gaming Comparisons:

AMD introduced the Ryzen 9 3950X 16-core processor for $749 in November 2019. AMD’s chip outperforms every core i9. CPU in multi-core workloads and is the best gaming CPU AMD has ever made, even if it’s only by a percent point or two. That’s not really its focus, as it acts as an HEDT-lite chip, but it’s still an amazing achievement to pack so many cores in a single die, but not lose any single-threaded performance.

AMD’s CPU momentum makes recommending Intel for gaming harder now than in the past. If you only game, then Intel’s 9700K, 9900K, and 9900KS are currently the best CPUs you can buy until we see how the new Comet Lake-S chips perform. If you do anything alongside or when you aren’t gaming, however, Ryzen 3000 chips are a better bet. They’re sold at similar prices, deliver comparable performance in games, and offer much better performance elsewhere.

Final Winner:

During an everyday workload, a top-end AMD chip and a top-end Intel chip won’t produce radically different outcomes. There are clear distinctions in specific scenarios and benchmarks, but the CPU isn’t the keystone of PC performance that it once was.That said, AMD’s CPUs, especially its newest Ryzen 3000 models, offer amazing value and performance throughout the whole range. From the modest 3600 right up to the 3950X, the bang for the buck is arguably much better with AMD CPUs, even if you’re mostly a gamer.Intel CPUs are still great, but if they are to remain hotly competitive with AMD, Intel will need to lower its prices — which might be worth holding out for if you’re only interested in buying Intel.

 

                                

When it comes to choosing your next upgrade, your best bet is to look at the individual performance numbers of the chip you want to buy. You should also consider these general guidelines to give you a good foundation of where to start.AMD Ryzen 3000 processors offer the best bang for buck throughout almost the entire value range. Intel does hold a slight edge in gaming at the very top end, but even then, the benefits of AMD CPUs outside of that easily outweigh such a slight lead. They have a better upgrade path too, as AMD promises existing motherboards will continue to work with new AMD chips in 2020.If you can find Intel chips at a great price, you’re still getting great performance for your money, but know that you could be leaving some performance on the table if you ignore the new landscape that AMD processors gave us in 2019.

By Sayan Das