I heard on the AMD earnings call yesterday that there was some tightness in the lower end of the Ryzen laptop lineup due to AMD under-anticipating the demand. Here's a quote:
So certainly, when I look at the semiconductor environment in 2020, it was very strong. So we saw a strong revenue ramp in our business, as well as across some of our peers. It's fair to say that the overall demand exceeded our planning.
And as a result, we did have some supply constraints as we ended the year. Those were primarily I would say in the PC market, the low end of the PC market, and in the gaming markets. That being said, I think we're getting great support from our manufacturing partners. The industry does need to increase the overall capacity levels.
And so we do see some tightness through the first half of the year, but there's added capacity in the second half.
So I anticipate that Intel is going to keep the pricing pressure on, to recapture market share. We already see this in the desktop processors, where AMD now sells at a premium versus Intel (admittedly, for good reason).
And you'd need to budget for a time machine, first!
AMD has done a poor job with naming for their new processors and architecture.
The architecture is called 'Zen'. The consumer SKUs have a model name of 'Ryzen'. I'll ignore the server parts for now (model name 'Epyc').
The Zen architecture progressed as follows: Zen-->Zen+-->Zen2-->Zen3
The Ryzen model numbers for desktop progressed as follows: Ryzen 1000-->Ryzen 2000-->Ryzen 3000-->Ryzen 5000.
The Ryzen model numbers for laptop SKUs progressed mostly as follows: Ryzen Mobile 2000-->Ryzen Mobile 3000-->Ryzen Mobile 4000-->Ryzen Mobile 5000.
Some of the newest Ryzen Mobile 5000-series are actually Zen2, aka rebadged Ryzen Mobile 4000-series.
So, Zen4 is still upcoming and not available to anyone except AMD's engineers who are currently developing it.
The laptop I ended up buying comes in a Ryzen 5 4500U flavor as well as a Tiger Lake i5-1135G7 flavor. I would have preferred the AMD-powered device but it was not available from my preferred retailer and sold out from the manufacturer, so I ended up going with the Intel version.
Thanks for the explanation. I didn't realize that the leading number didn't denote generation.
The interesting part of all of this is something that you've experienced directly, here. People crap all over Intel for being stuck on 14nm, and there are definitely good reasons to do so.
But the upshot is that they are sitting on a ridiculously mature, optimized manufacturing node that has ample capacity. They can pump out enough silicon to meet demand, or at least get much closer to it than anyone else right now.
Current-gen Intel & AMD processors are pretty much neck-to-neck in both performance and price.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+9+5900X&i...
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i9-10900...
Also, not to be overly pedantic but technically that 10900K is not the current generation (see the "10" at the beginning of the model designation); the 11th-gen Rocket Lake is coming out imminently.
I think this is only if you ignore multi-threading but I might be wrong, did Intel release better multi core CPUs or cut down the prices?
It's worth pointing out that their new chips aren't out yet ("Q1") and Intel has completely given up on matching AMD's 12C or 16C parts.
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-9-5900X-vs-I...
This chart from Tom's Hardware shows a similar story:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/auqNuTshdmehuqLXX32BBF-970...
AMD Zen3 has a lead on Intel 10th gen, but the cost/performance story has shifted.
Or PCIe Gen 4 support?
I wouldn't say Intel has anything worth looking into if you want 32 or 64 cores on the desktop.
There's more to PCIe than just graphics cards. SSDs, Thunderbolt, 10G Ethernet, USB 3.1-2 are some bandwidth demanding applications that could benefit
PCIe NVME drives only get 4 lanes through the m.2 port, and drives run close to the bandwidth limits on 3.0, I think I've seen benchmarks showing 30% improvements on 4.0 compared to 3.0
I'd also be interested in what difference there is running a PCIe 4.0 graphics card with only 8 lanes on 4.0 vs 3.0
it's measurable, but not very significant. take a look at these charts: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-p... (pcie 2.0 x16 is equivalent to or slightly worse than pcie 3.0 x8)
Even if I were to buy a new CPU, I don't want to buy a new motherboard too just to have access to 4.0 slots.
For example, Cinebench R20: Ryzen 9 5980HS (35W) scores 4517, Core i9-10980HK scores 3484. Other benchmarks follow suit, but that's the first one listed.
> With Ryzen 5000, and by extension the Ryzen 9 5980HS, AMD is delivering much better single-thread performance. The 5980HS provides a ~20% gain versus the 4900HS, which is significant for an architectural improvement on the same process node. This takes the 5980HS above Intel’s 10th-gen H-series in all workloads, and allows Zen 3 to trade blows with Intel’s Tiger Lake featuring Willow Cove CPU cores
Tiger Lake is competitive in single core, but I believe they currently top out at 4-core CPUs.
> The Ryzen 9 5980HS is by far the fastest mobile processor available in the 35W power class, and easily offers 20-30% more performance than Intel’s best chip, the Core i9-10980HK, at a lower power level.
I would by lying if I said that market perception didn't feed into my decision, it did.
I do hope Intel can fight back with their new CEO, ultimately this level of competition should only be a good thing for consumers.