Single-threaded benchmarks without additional information are pretty much meaningless, because the single-threaded performance is easily increased to beat any competitor just by accepting a higher power consumption.

The best Intel core for single-threaded performance, Lion Cove, has an IPC (instructions per clock cycle) about 2% higher than AMD Zen 5.

Currently both cores are made by TSMC and they reach the same clock frequencies, therefore the Intel core is negligibly better in single-thread performance.

Nevertheless, Intel Lion Cove has a much greater area than AMD Zen 5, despite being made with a superior TSMC process. Because of this, Lion Cove is inefficient for multi-threaded performance (because in the same area more smaller cores could be crammed), so Intel is forced to use it in hybrid configurations with Skymont cores, in order to achieve an acceptable multithreaded performance.

The worst is however that Intel is not able to use its up-to-date cores in server CPUs, because they are too slow at design/validation. Their new server CPUs, Sierra Forest and Granite Rapids, use obsolete CPU cores that are not competitive with AMD Zen 5, instead of using the best Intel cores.

Unlike Intel, where 1 year or more of delay between using a core in consumer CPUs and using it in server CPUs is normal, at AMD they launch the corresponding server CPUs only a few months after launching consumer CPUs.

Which is not particularly important without the context of price, heat, availability, multicore perf, etc. As a whole, there appear to be better values on most fronts, though necessarily when all is combined in some opinionated way. There are certainly good values to be found in the intel world, but I can't think of a time where they have been so comprehensively challenged.

Maybe. My point was more that it's complicated. For example: I couldn't care less about how much power my desktop uses.

Single desktop chips are becoming a niche market. What matters is mobile and server, and both cases require low power consumption.

Hey - I totally get the single-threaded CPU fixation, but it's such a narrow slice of what matters in computing today. We really need to look at the whole picture: power draw, heat output, physical space, AND speed. Cherry-picking just one metric doesn't tell you much.

The biggest compute demands right now are all about GPU power, especially with the AI boom. And Intel... well, take a look at those DirectCompute benchmarks. You'll need to scroll past 100+ other cards before you even see them listed (https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/directCompute.html). They make great CPUs, no doubt, but they've got some serious catching up to do in the GPU space if they want to stay relevant in today's parallel processing world.