Five years ago, the answer to this question was clear – Intel Core processors. However, today things are not so clear-cut. Therefore, together with HYPERPC, a manufacturer of gaming and professional computers, we will determine which processors are better. And for convenience, we will compare products relative to their price category.
Budget models
This category includes CPUs from the “i3” family from Intel and “Ryzen 3” from AMD. The current “blue” product is the Core i3-12100. And the modern budget solution from “red” is the Ryzen 3 5300G. The winner in the standoff is the Core i3-12100. Despite nearly the same price, its performance is higher. In most games, it outperforms the AMD counterpart by 15-20%. In popular eSports games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, the difference is 40-50%! The situation is similar in professional tasks as the “blue” processor is 20-25% more powerful than the “red” counterpart. However, the largest difference is in multi-threaded tasks, where the Core i3-12100 performance is 35% higher.
The only area where AMD Ryzen 3 5300G outperforms the competitor is in its Vega 6 integrated graphics, which is 2.5 times more powerful than Intel UHD Graphics 730. Therefore, AMD’s budget processor may be of interest only to those who do not plan to use a discrete graphics card.
Mid-budget models
This category is represented by CPUs from the “i5” family from Intel and “Ryzen 5” from AMD. Today, the current mid-budget model from “blue” is the Core i5-12400F. And from “red” is the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X. Again, the winner is Intel’s processor, which, with lower cost, shows the same performance in games and professional tasks. Yes, Ryzen 5 5600X is better in some projects, but the same applies to Intel. For example, in Need for Speed Heat, the AMD processor is 5% more powerful than the “blue” counterpart.
However, in Cyberpunk 2077, Core i5-12400F shows 10% higher performance. Yet, in most projects, there is no difference.
Premium models
This category is the most challenging yet interesting. We will divide it into two parts. The first includes CPUs costing from 20,000 to 25,000 rubles. And the second part includes those costing from 30,000 to 45,000. Why complicate it all? The thing is, there are many processors belonging to the premium category, and they all have many nuances. By dividing them into two groups, we will understand who the real winner is.
The first category includes Core i7-12700K and Ryzen 7 5700X and 5800X.
There is no clear winner among them. The representative from “blue” leads in professional tasks, being about 30% more powerful than its competitors, thanks to its new architecture and more cores. But Ryzen 7 5800X wins in games, outperforming its competitor by 5-10% in most projects.
The second category includes Core i5-13600K and i7-13700K, Ryzen 5 7600X, and Ryzen 7 7700X. Here, the clear winner is the “blue” processors. Core i5-13600K, in particular, outperforms both AMD CPUs in gaming and professional tasks. Today it is considered one of the best gaming processors in terms of price-to-performance ratio. Therefore, the company HYPERPC installs it in their prebuilt desktops. And considering that Intel processors can work with both DDR5 and DDR4 memory, the superiority of the “blue” CPU in this price category is unconditional.
Flagships
A couple of years ago, it was in this category that AMD took the lead from Intel. Their Ryzen 9 5950X became a real monster in the field of professional computing. However, today, superiority has returned to the “blues”. The Core i9-13900K is faster than its competitor, the Ryzen 9 7950X, in everything. The difference in games as well as in professional tasks varies from 5-10%. The specific value varies from one project to another. For example, in the KOMPAS-3D automated design program, the difference is as much as 15%.
In conclusion, in some categories, CPUs from “red” not only caught up but also surpassed the “blue” products. However, in the global competition between AMD and Intel, the palm of the first place is still held by the “blue” corporation. But the “red” team is sincerely wished luck and success in their future work. After all, if they hadn’t forced competition with Intel, we’d still be sitting on 4-core Pentiums without multithreading.
