Intel is still top dog: ships 3x more CPUs than AMD and Apple combined | Hacker News Reader

Intel is still top dog: ships 3x more CPUs than AMD and Apple combined

pcgamer.com

11 pointsdingi44 comments

Almost nobody in their right mind (except gamers) would buy an Intel CPU - when people do, it's usually because system vendors only offer or strongly favor Intel coughDellcough.

Intel CPUs are slightly faster with a small number of threads, which is mostly useful for games. Intel desktop mainboards also seem to be less fiddly to set up. Intel CPUs are slower in heavy multi-core loads and much less power efficient than AMD, especially when both are power limited. AMD CPUs have a very flat power-performance curve, Intel not so much.

I built a 7700X system as an upgrade to my previous i9-9900K system. Performance and efficiency wise it's fantastic, but I've had TONS of problems. Memory unable to run at its rated speed, GPU not initializing at boot, glacially slow boot times even with MCR enabled, janky BIOS releases...

My old-old system is a Haswell Xeon E3 in a Dell and that sucker can boot from power button to the Windows 11 login screen before the monitor even wakes up on the Ryzen.

I really, really hope Intel can release something competitive with AMD in the efficiency space. I feel guilty using more electricity than absolutely necessary, but I also don't want to spend my evenings troubleshooting.

I have read something on Reddit that seems to make MCR actually work nicely on Asus boards (I wouldn't recommend Asus at this point, but I have one). You have to enable MCR in BOTH places in the BIOS. Under DRAM timings under the "A.I. Tweaker" tab (also enable "DRAM Power Down Mode" there, happened automatically for me when enabling MCR) and under... I forgot... something like CPU features, MCU, MCU features, Memory Context Restore. Boot time is pretty fast for me now, I think it's better than on the previous Asus AM4 board, which was also not bad.

New socket and new DDR standard teething, mostly, probably. Granted Intel seems to be doing a much better job with DDR5, so there's no excuse really for AMD.

For best results on AM5 prefer two-DIMM (1DPC) configurations, DDR5-6000 kits with EXPO, and avoid the Samsung B-die stuff (e.g. G.SKILL FlareX 36-36-36). If that's too complicated or whatever I would suggest waiting for Ryzen 9000 and the next wave of AM5 boards where this should all be ironed out, or go with Intel LGA1700 this generation.

Personally I am waiting for 64GB DDR5 UDIMMs and stable four-DIMM (2DPC) configurations before I can even contemplate upgrading from AM4. And since I'm already waiting I also want to see a faster chipset link (B650/X670 are still just PCIe Gen4 x4) and TB5 on my next board.

I unfortunately have the exact kit of ram you mentioned to avoid, it came with the Microcenter bundle.

I live ~2.5 hours from Microcenter, so I took a gamble-- reviews were very mixed but the price was insane. If I had bought this setup from my local BestBuy or online, I'd have returned it.

What's your plan if you can get that 256GB RAM config? Run some full-fat LLM's on your iGPU?

> What's your plan if you can get that 256GB RAM config? Run some full-fat LLM's on your iGPU?

No, mostly running lots of VMs and databases, which tend to chew up a ton of RAM. And I dabble in a few cryptocurrency projects that can be a bit RAM-heavy and/or sometimes benefit from a fast RAM disk.

I actually downgraded, going from 256GB on X99 to 128GB on AM4, so it'll be nice to get back to 256GB with modern features and CPU performance (without having to spend thousands of dollars on Threadripper or Xeon W).

I only came to the comments to see if my instinct (which matches your first sentence) was corroborated. I no longer do anything that particularly requires a cutting edge CPU, I've an M1 Pro MBP and an M2 Mac Studio and they're so far beyond fast enough for me. I've been toying with building a linux box for home but if I do it'll definitely be ARM - fast enough, low power, low heat - perfect.

Apple CPU's are well-implemented, wide and on a cutting edge process. That's why they're fast & efficient. In 2024 the architecture has approximately nothing to with it.

I'm an idiot when it comes to chips, but the one thing I thought I knew was that ARM CPUs run considerably cooler and more efficient in terms of performance per watt, especially compared to Intel. Isn't that why they're in every mobile device?

It's historical. In the 80's when an extra 10,000 transistors for decode could be 20% of the chip, ARM had an efficiency advantage. So it got used in certain markets. Which meant chips were designed for that market. So because there were chips specifically designed for the market, they were used. Feedback loop, essentially.

Your explanation is great except for the beginning of the story: in the 80s and early 90s, CISC cores didn't have a CISC to RISC decoder frontend - they implemented complex instructions directly (though with the help of microcode). The size penalty of that was more like 300%, and it was slower, too(!). RISC was a really big deal at the time. It was even mentioned in the, ahem, documentary "Hackers" from 1995.

A "CISC to RISC decoder" isn't properly a decoder, it's a translator. What they had in the 80's were proper decoders: instruction's in, enable and clock lines out.

I don't want to argue about that. My point is just that the size (transistor count) and performance differences were massive at the time, like 2-3x the performance at 1/4th or so of the size.

Thanks for the explanation!

> Almost nobody in their right mind (except gamers) would buy an Intel CPU

I recently was at a computer shop (looking for keyboard repair) and someone brought in their PC because it kept freezing, ended up they are getting a new PC and even when the salesperson recommended an AMD based PC the guy said that he didn't want to because he didn't have good experiences with AMD. Mind you that PC had an Intel 6000 series CPU in it, so best case that experience likely is 10+ years ago.

I kinda died inside while standing there.

I wanted to buy an AMD laptop for my work, but as soon as I read about AMD CPUs are running hotter than Intel, I decided to stay with Intel. Because I run on Intel since 20 years and I know what I get when I buy one. With AMD I can't be sure and I don't have the time to find out. Just give me a working laptop, I don't care about benchmarks.

Dunno. With quality laptops, the fiddliness of the platform is the laptop manufacturer's problem. My AMD Thinkpad is just as dumb (basically no performance-related options, but the preset is fine) and reliable as my previous Intel Thinkpads. And there's no reason why a CPU would run hotter at the same power consumption and cooling solution. Probably different biases in the thermal sensors or whatever.

AMD desktop chiplet CPUs draw almost 3x power compared to Intel at idle. It makes a huge difference in overall power consumption. Of course they are much more efficient in the top end, but my PC is not running full load most of the time, so I don't see that efficiency.

Of course their monolithic CPUs are much better (just look at the APU in the Steam Deck), but you can't buy them directly. They are either an APU or only available in laptops.

So, I stick to Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU for the power efficiency. I can't even switch to AMD GPUs because they are bad even at top end.

In Windows or Linux? Or have you tested both?

Both, it is an inherent drawback of using chiplets.

{admittedly, my experience (since about 2000) with AMD has been dominantly server not workstation/laptop}

i have found AMD x86-64 CPUs to be overwhelmingly better than intel's poor mimicking of AMD's innovation!

If you want to live in x64-64 Land ... AMD is the winner. Hands down. And has been for a quarter century.

The world is full people who say things like "I used an AMD video card or CPU once in 1967 and it had driver problems, never again."

I'm one of those people. The thing is, I try again every decade or so, and every time without fail there are issues. Intel is the 1990s Apple of the CPU world. "It just works", and I'll pay a fairly high premium for that.

a gamer would wind up with worse power efficiency from an intel CPU because of how much wattage they draw under load, there's a reason i'm on ryzen and not core atm

Meh, I recently built 7700X and 13700K towers. Both with premium ASUS motherboards. The Intel one was faster, the CPU was cheaper when I bought it, it booted insanely fast compared to the AMD system and it accepted the overclocked RAM without fuss or tinkering. On top of that it ran cooler (even though it uses more wattage at load) and had true Thunderbolt (rather than USB4) out of the box. It’s also well known that AMD systems use much more power at idle.

Their momentum and influence on OEMs is massive.

While I'm not a mainstream user, and it's hard to wrap my head around choosing a hot, power hungry Intel chip over something from Apple or AMD, just walk into any store (or go to an online store) that sells laptops. 90% of your options will be powered by Intel. Most consumers are going to buy what's readily available. Most businesses (corporate, maybe not "tech") will continue to buy what they always have.

They're selling everything they make anyway. There isn't enough fabs on Earth to saturate demand.

I'm not fond of Intel, but I recently bought a laptop with an Intel CPU. I'm stuck with them for a few more years. My PC is already AMD-based, and I loved the new mobile CPUs from AMD, but they are either hardly available or in undesired packages (bulky gaming laptops).

I assume that they have great deals with laptop manufacturers. You can't find a Dell XPS with a Ryzen, for example. Ultrabooks are mainly Intel-based. The Framework laptop is not available everywhere yet.

It's the same frustration I had many years ago when I had to choose between a diesel car in stock and waiting 8 months or more for a gas one.

I got a nice Thinkpad T14 Gen 4 recently with a 7840U, if you like Lenovo Thinkpads. I've used many Intel ones before and I like them all equally.

Thanks for the recommendation. Thinkpads are excellent, and honestly, I wanted one. Unfortunately, I'm not too fond of the company.

This is because they've done shady security and privacy-related stuff in the past, for example, shipping laptops with malware in 2015 or selling US Marines' laptops with altered hardware to send data back to China [1].

To make it worse, they also have weird practices regarding buying used products: they recommend you avoid buying used laptops (saying they might have viruses but later removed the page [2]) or saying that once you unlock your phone, you are not allowed to sell it [3].

TL;DR: Lovely machine, but I can't trust the company behind them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahw1cppZi-g [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2k9D81fbpA

Fair enough. I have blind spots for sketchy things done by companies that make products I like.

Isn't AMD used by basically all consoles now, both CPU and GPU? The article doesn't even mention consoles which I guess make sense because it's "PC" gamer, but still.

PCs still outsell consoles by a large margin.

If ChatGPT and some rudimentary Googling can be trusted, Sony has sold a total of 50 million PS5 consoles so far in three years.

For comparison, about 240 million PCs are sold per year.

> For comparison, about 240 million PCs are sold per year.

Also for comparison: Apple alone sells around that many smartphones per year. And they're not nearly the biggest manufacturer. I don't think any major phone manufacturer uses Intel CPUs.

They don’t make mobile chips for phones…

They have tried a few times, but were too power hungry and didn’t have the volume to justify it, so they went back to their bread and butter

Stats they looked at are for desktop & laptops, so consoles are not considered. Neither are servers, which I suspect is mostly Intel too still. They also haven't looked at tablets, so all those M2's in iPads are not counted. Not sure if that is significant.

The Switch uses Nvidia, but no console since (I believe) the original Xbox has used Intel, yes.

If we don't count the CPU people use the most, in their pocket computers, AKA smartphones, Intel leads by a wide margin. Otherwise, they are in 4th place.

Apparently they're not counting any of the mobile CPUs in their numbers ... because there is no way in the last quarter Apple "only" shipped 6 million iPhones

And Samsung sure shipped more than that

This is what the PC Gamer article says:

> global PC shipments

> desktop and laptop CPUs

The PC is becoming increasingly irrelevant. "Personal" computing happens on phones now.

so ... a pretty meaningless article

thanks for the confirmation :)

server, mobile, etc are far bigger than "PC" ever was

I recall watching Dave House, Intel VP, present the i486 at a CHIPS(?) conference in San Jose(?) in about 1988. He stood up, looked at his watch and said will folks it's about 11am and Intel has made more i486 this morning than all the RISC chips vendors (MIPS, SPARC, POWER, etc) have ever shipped.

Or was it the ill-fated i860?

Anyway the point is that all you have to do is not manage Intel like a penny pinching accountant and it will remain #1 just because it has more money to plough back into (process) R&D.

Sadly (for Intel) this is what they did for a couple of decades and only Joe Biden can save their bacon.

Intel is back baby

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