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I am and looking to purchase a new desktop as my current one is about 6 years old. I don't keep up with the latest in terms of hardware, and as I am looking and researching, I am surprised by an apparent large price difference between Intels I7's and AMD's.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

If you search for Ryzen 5 1600X, you will see a surpringly capable CPU for a great price in comparison to the other CPU's surrounding it.

My question is there more to this than what's on the surface? Are there other benefits the Intel processors provide, or is it just that Intel has 80% of the market and can charge what they want?

INFO: I casually play games of all types, I'm not obsessed with the highest graphics possible, and no particular interest in VR. In addition to games, I do use this for work, developing reports and working with databases. So I don't have any particular requirements, just looking for a new system to replace my outdated one.

Issel
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  • Intel has better IPC and I think scale slightly better to high frequencies (heat, maybe?). Still, if you aren't doing anything demanding, I might try and downsell you to an R3/i3. Any specific games that you play? What's your current specs, and how much are you looking to improve them? – timuzhti Dec 03 '17 at 14:17

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Maybe your current hardware is still enough? Would be nice if you could list it, programs like speccy and HWinfo can list your stuff if you do not know. Target (or native display) resolution , budget and and current games you would like to play are of help for you and us to help you.

The remark concerning the 1600x is spot on.

To answer your question I will take a look at Intels current similar priced counterpart to the 1600x(6C,12T): The core i5 8400(6C, 6T). The CPU has no SMT so no additional 6 threads like the 1600x which means that demanding programs which need a lot of threads will run slightly slower on the 8400 but Intels gaming performance is slightly ahead. The CPUs are roughly equal but that depends on your settings and programs.

4K gaming the performance is similar, lower resolutions result in 10% - 20% advantage in fps for the Intel and 10% better frame times. Demanding stuff with lots of threads will run 10% faster on the AMD, maybe more, maybe less. The Intel CPU has also a slightly lower power consumption in most if not all possible scenarios, maybe 5W - 10W difference idle to medium loads and up to 20W in peak loads. Comparison without any overclocking on either side. You can flip a coin, let your software decide or - most importantly - look if your CPU is available since here in Germany right now the 8xxx Intels are hard to get or overpriced. Data for the performance is from a German PC site: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-10/intel-coffee-lake-8700k-8400-8350k-8100-test/5/

Additional info: The Ryzen is slightly cooler thx to soldered and not glued heatsink, the 1600 non x should have a decent reworked cooler which allows decent overclocking to save some bucks, Ryzen can be used with cheaper mainboards for like 75$ since only 3xx chipset socket 1151 boards work with Intels 8xxx CPUs right now which cost at least 100$, cheaper boards are rumoured to come 'soon'.

CrispWisp
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