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AMD is dominating Intel in Amazon's best-selling CPUs list

203 points| ekoutanov | 6 years ago |techspot.com | reply

91 comments

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[+] _nickwhite|6 years ago|reply
Better performance [2] with less cores, much better pricing, and the kicker for me is PCI Express 4.0 [1]. Intel doesn't even support the newest generation of NVMe storage. So yeah, AMD is dominating for a good reason- for now anyways.

[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/3400176/pcie-40-everything-y...

[2] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

[+] judge2020|6 years ago|reply
I think you mean "with more cores", not less.
[+] mey|6 years ago|reply
Plus ECC support
[+] Proven|6 years ago|reply
Not everyone has use for those advantages. To me they are meaningless (I have no need for "better" performance, I have no use for PCI 4.0, etc). I buy Intel CPUs because lower heat dissipation and power consumption at the performance level I need. I have avoided buying the relatively cheaper but power hungry Intel CPUs for many years.

By all means, please buy AMD. The more people do that, the better deal I get for Intel models I want to buy.

[+] nknealk|6 years ago|reply
They’re also making headway into the data center space. AWS has recently announced that compute dense instances will have an AMD powered version. They already have AMD offerings for GP and RAM dense instances.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powere...

[+] pavelevst|6 years ago|reply
Hetzner also have some well priced offers with AMD cpus
[+] xiphias2|6 years ago|reply
If I look at the AMD stock price it seems like when Lisa Su took over AMD in 2014 she brought it back from the dead (and made a 10x valuation in 5 years).

Here's a relatively fresh iterview with her if others are interested as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amBe2bofVas

[+] ac29|6 years ago|reply
I'd give far more credit to Jim Keller, who returned in 2012 and designed Zen. AMD also benefited from Intel stumbling on 10nm and TSMC leapfrogging them. Zen 2 wouldn't be nearly as compelling if it was stuck on Global Foundries 14/12nm process (which is actually licensed from Samsung).

To AMD's credit though, they've executed very well - Jim left in 2015 with more than several Zen generations designed, but there has obviously been significant effort by far more people than just the project lead.

[+] NOGDP|6 years ago|reply
I'm no expert but the 200x P/E ratio seems risky in terms of investing.
[+] Roritharr|6 years ago|reply
It's really fascinating to watch them capture market share as you see where Intel is still entrenched for all kinds of reasons which are not price/perf wise.

For example, we can't use AWS t3a instances with EPYC Cores as our Management Provider has all their images only compiled for, optimized and tested on Intel based VMs.

The difference is still not large enough to bother to look into it, but next generation I expect the difference will be so large they can't ignore it.

[+] rwmj|6 years ago|reply
Another couple of differences: No support for rr because of some lack of performance counters[1]. I also found that lm-sensors can barely see my AMD Ryzen at all, missing all core temp information. I'm hoping that both of these will be fixed since it doesn't seem that AMD is missing anything intrinsicly.

[1] https://github.com/mozilla/rr/issues/2034

[+] TheBobinator|6 years ago|reply
Intel owns their own manufacturing process so they can crank out more volume than TSMC can on the smaller process nodes. TSMC Has a roadmap to 3nm by 2023, Intel is looking at 7nm by 2021.

Unless Intel manufactures on TSMC's line, AMD will have a clear, near double to triple performance advantage for the next 2 generations. You're going to see Intel become the value brand for awhile and they're trying to avoid that because they are used to a cash cow.

[+] tyingq|6 years ago|reply
Interesting for sure, but the market for people that buy a CPU chip as a standalone item probably doesn't relate much to the overall market.

I am rooting for AMD though. Competition was sorely needed.

[+] topspin|6 years ago|reply
> Interesting for sure, but the market for people that buy a CPU chip as a standalone item probably doesn't relate much to the overall market.

The question then becomes how much the 'overall market' relates to profits. These manufacturers have consistently marketed to the enthusiast/home builder end of the market for decades now; they've never seriously neglected it. I suspect these sales are highly lucrative despite the relatively small volume. It astonishes me that one can mail order a 4096 pin device (sTRX4) and install it by hand in the kitchen, yet here we are, and it's been that way for a rather long time now. If it wasn't profitable the manufacturers would have stop feeding this market long ago.

[+] beatgammit|6 years ago|reply
Eh, gamers buy CPUs directly, and that's a growing market. That's smaller than the enterprise market, but many gamers are also tech professionals that make decisions about what hardware they buy.

Hopefully that's enough to counteract the deals Intel has made in the past. Enterprises should run on the best products, not the best contract.

[+] puranjay|6 years ago|reply
But this market influences purchase decisions at an enterprise level. You get the enthusiasts on your side and they'll recommend you over others when the CIO needs to find a new vendor.
[+] rubber_duck|6 years ago|reply
Meanwhile Intel is still the only good option for laptops and I haven't used a desktop for 5+ years. Not saying this to bring down Intel success just wondering how much volume is in desktop vs laptop and hoping AMD can transition here as well.
[+] Redoubts|6 years ago|reply
I’m waiting for January where they release their mobile offerings. Hopefully they’ll be able to impress a little more this time around.
[+] neogodless|6 years ago|reply
Nah Zen isn't perfect for laptop but I've seen them in action and they are good options. Of course, Zen 2 APUs will help things there.
[+] gameswithgo|6 years ago|reply
laptops are hard for amd due to oem backroom deals with intel, but with the popularity of zen2 that should start to crack i think. once zen2 mobile cpus hit the market we will start to see more amd laptops i think
[+] agumonkey|6 years ago|reply
Some supermarket ads in the mail last month showed 3 laptops, 1 very low end atom x5 "skype machine" and 2 amd zen based medium class.

I think zen will make a lot of sense for the majority of people. price/perf will reign over intel potential hedt products. If you give a 4 core + good gpu to the average joe for half the price of an intel he'll probably never look back.

[+] majewsky|6 years ago|reply
My notebook (2018 Thinkpad E485) has a Ryzen 5 2500U APU and I'm happy with it. The only bad thing about that notebook is lack of Thunderbolt.
[+] jaredtn|6 years ago|reply
AMD is blowing Intel out of the water with the latest benchmarks. Intel's lone remaining advantage is its MKL performance in single-threaded performance (and they've done some shady handicapping of AMD CPUs to get there), but in multiprocessing and most ML workflows AMD is the clear winner. The ThreadRipper series is an amazing product.
[+] shaklee3|6 years ago|reply
I would say that AMD should make their own mkl if they want to compete. It's fine that it runs on AMD, but it is, after all, a closed-source library made by Intel.

At some point amd needs to take the software side seriously. Same goes for GPU.

[+] puranjay|6 years ago|reply
The 3950x Threadripper numbers make Intel look like a chump. The only areas where Intel still has an edge is single core performance. In anything multicore, AMD's numbers are downright outrageous
[+] Bootwizard|6 years ago|reply
That's a last generation processor...their current generation is much more impressive. Twice as powerful than anything Intel has to offer at the SAME price as Intel.
[+] zaroth|6 years ago|reply
Can anything beat the price/performance of the 2700x for $160 though?
[+] jedisct1|6 years ago|reply
Is it worth buying a Macbook Pro 16", or is Intel going to react with far better CPUs in the forthcoming months, including for laptops?
[+] ComradeUlyanov|6 years ago|reply
Not a surprise. AMD offers better CPUs at better prices.
[+] ChuckMcM|6 years ago|reply
My TR3960X came in today, the TR3990X is on order :-). Since my current chassis isn't configured for liquid cooling I went with an air cooling solution and it is freakishly large, seriously.
[+] qes|6 years ago|reply
> My TR3960X came in today

From where?!? All I can find is B&H Photo with a pre-order estimating a month wait.

[+] Shorel|6 years ago|reply
Now I want all these AMD CPU innovations to apply to Laptop processors too. Most computers sold nowadays are laptops.

I am writing this from a Ryzen 5 laptop that's not really faster than the i5 laptop it replaced. If any, it is a bit slower, even with double the cores.

The Radeon GPU on the other hand is way ahead of the previous integrated Intel GPU.

[+] hu3|6 years ago|reply
Got me curious. What laptop model?

I'm in the market for a new laptop.

[+] eklavya|6 years ago|reply
I wish apple started providing an amd macbook.
[+] terramex|6 years ago|reply
Right now AMD mobile chips are still less power efficient than Intel's.
[+] mycall|6 years ago|reply
I wonder how much of this is due to brain drain due to political immigration policies.
[+] spicyramen|6 years ago|reply
This is great news for competition, same goes for GPU where Nvidia is still a monopoly
[+] jacek|6 years ago|reply
When we consider deep learning practitioners and others relying on CUDA then yes, nvidia still has monopoly. But for gamers AMD's Radeon GPU is a compelling alternative.