If you’re looking for the finest CPUs for gaming or the greatest workstation CPU, you only have two options: AMD or Intel. Because of this, both groups have nearly fanatical followings, and the subsequent AMD versus Intel flamewars make it difficult to acquire fair counsel regarding the best choice for your future CPU. However, in many circumstances, the answer is quite apparent. In fact, as you can see in our CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy, it’s currently a landslide in Intel’s favor for the vast majority of users. After AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPUs entirely upset the chipmaker’s decade-long supremacy, this is a rapid turnaround of fortunes.
This page discusses the never-ending debate between AMD and Intel desktop CPUs (we do not discuss laptop or server processors). We evaluate the chips based on seven criteria: what you want to accomplish with your PC, cost, performance, driver support, power consumption, and security, providing us with a clear picture of the competition. We’ll also talk about the lithographies and architectures that shape the shifting goalposts. Overall, there is a clear winner, but the CPU manufacturer you should choose is mostly determined by the features, pricing, and performance that are crucial to you.
If you want the fastest overall CPUs on the market, go no further than Intel’s new Alder Lake family. Despite AMD’s claim of having the single fastest gaming processor available, Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs outperform AMD in all of the most crucial price bands. Alder Lake also competes with or outperforms AMD in all relevant performance criteria, including as single- and multi-threaded productivity tasks. The surprising findings can be seen in our Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K reviews, and we’ve also uploaded our Windows 10 and 11 testing to our CPU benchmark database. We’ve also included findings from DDR4 and DDR5 memory for good measure.
Alder Lake, a revolutionary hybrid architecture from Intel, totally redefines x86 desktop PC CPUs and offers astounding performance levels. AMD unveiled its Ryzen 7 5800X3D, a new CPU with 3D V-Cache, so as not to be outdone. Thanks to an almost unfathomable 96MB of L3 cache attached to the souped-up processor, this chip wins the overall top rank for gaming, if only by a little percentage.
Our AMD versus Intel CPU Benchmarks Hierarchy shows how all of these CPUs compare, but AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X, not to mention the Ryzen 5 5600X, altered the game. In every important parameter at the time of its release, including gaming, application performance, power consumption, and thermals, the Ryzen 5000 series outperformed Intel, but Intel’s successful Alder Lake counterattack turned the tide in Team Blue’s favor.
To strengthen its Alder Lake defenses, AMD just unveiled six additional new Zen 3 processors, however we have discovered that their competitive posture is not significantly changed. Before the year is up, AMD’s Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 CPUs will also be available. This suggests that the AMD vs. Intel conflict may change in the latter part of the year, but for the time being, this is the market’s reality.
