AMD/Intel battle rages on…
This week Intel announced it’s next generation “Comet Lake” CPU lineup. Already the internet is abuzz with mooted stratospheric overclocking speeds for the upcoming Core i9’s. The new CPUs are the 10th generation of desktop processors from Intel and will platform on a Z490 chipset - motherboards with Z490 Northbridge specs are already available for pre-order. Intel has clearly taken aim at the highest-end gaming configurations with their latest launch and is hoping to stop AMD continuing to eat into their market share with the Ryzen 3000-series. In our opinion, Intel finds itself in an oddly similar position to where AMD was about 8-9 years ago trying to squeeze every drop of performance out of their long-standing micro-architecture that, we think, is overdue for an overhaul. We also think that gamers and content creators don’t really care about micro-architectures and the like - they care about what type of performance can be delivered at specific price points. It’s too soon to tell, but based on some of the mooted clock speeds, Intel may end up back on top at the highest end of the spectrum with the new lineup.
AMD, for their part, has hit back - and we think landed a strategic blow that will ultimately see them continue to eat into Intel’s market share in the much broader segments of mid-level gaming and content creation setups and business-focused laptops. AMD announced availability of the Ryzen Pro 4000 series mobile processors which we think is going to see widespread adoption in commercial notebooks as the new standard. They also announced the new Ryzen 3 3100 and 3300X aimed at mid-level desktop use. They rounded it out by announcing the AM4 socket will see compatibility with an upcoming B550 motherboard chipset that will see PCIe 4.0 become available at a lower price point than X570 based motherboards which are currently the only choice for PCIe 4.0 compatibility. Here’s why this matters: hard drive speeds. In nearly all uses, the drive speeds are going to be more of a bottleneck in performance than the CPU given current CPU performance levels. Adding PCIe 4th gen support to a mid-level line of motherboards is going to bring 5,000 MB/s drive speeds to mid-tier setups. And Intel’s flashy new line of CPUs offers no answer for that.