I see people constantly recommend the 7700X/7800X3D if you’re primarily gaming and an Intel chip if you’re doing both gaming and productivity tasks. Even I make that recommendation based on the benchmarks I’ve seen.
That got me thinking though. Are there any reasons to get an Intel chip if your primary use case is gaming? I’m not trying to dig at Intel, I genuinely want to know if there’s anything I’ve overlooked about Intel chips regarding their gaming performance and factors around them. Maybe more future proof thanks to the extra cores for when games inevitably start using more cores.
I just got a 7800x3d. It’s good but not perfect.
Reasons to go Intel:
- Might be cheaper depending on the other parts you get (am5 motherboards are still expensive)
- more stable memory and less headaches with retiming each boot. This is motherboard dependent on am5. MSI is slow to boot.
- some games might actually favor intel. It’s worth checking out reviews for your games
- you want some Intel soc features like quick sync
No reason to buy an Intel CPU at all. They screwed us over for decades until AMD finally started stepping up.
for budget builds, the 12th gen i5s are pretty great value (as has been the case with most recent i5s… 10400f, 11400f, 12400f, 12600k are all great)
If you play in 4K, there is negligible difference in games as it’s mostly GPU bound but I feel like 7800x3D is the better choice all-round
It doesn’t matter which modern cpu you get. For all intents and purposes they will perform the same with the same gpu and normal graphics (not some weird 1080p low settings benchmarks).
Why I switched back to Intel
no.
3d cache is too good
Yes.
They handle specific scenarios better, usually handling open world games, where resource packs saturate memory
If you look up “AMDip” you’ll see the results of that
It also overclocks higher if you’re into dabbling and investing into that
Their software tends to be more refined and mature and integrated on launch as well, so if we’re talking the very newest hardware, expect Intel to work bette - less emergency updates, less bios fixes, etc for the first ~2 years or so
That’s my experience with them both so far
Stability would be my number one reason to use Intel, not necessarily the most important variable if you’re just gaming.
If you look at certain price points Intel makes sense. People complain about power consumption, but in games something like the 13600k doesn’t pull that much. I’d have check again, though. These days I kind off like tuning Intel CPUs more for performance. If you disabled the e-cores on a 14700k, use that extra power to bring the clocks slightly higher, and then tune memory, and ring bus, or whatever its called now, I wouldn’t be shocked if you could match a 7800x3D, at not too bad of power consumption.
I’d like to see some actual tests, though.
Some games do perform better on Intel’s high clockspeed architecture if they aren’t super bound to gobs of cache like the 7800x3d benefits from.
The only reason, at this moment, would be if you could not afford to build a system with a 7800X3D. Slightly older gen Intel processors (12600kf / 13600kf etc) provide great value for money in the $250 range, and you can run them with ddr4 memory so you may be able to save money by using an older ram kit. Going AM5 is still the clear best financial choice in the long run if you plan on upgrading again in the next 5-8 years, but it really depends on your budget. If you’re an extreme high roller, you could also just go for a 14900k, which would be the “objectively best pc” if you don’t consider the price.
What a lot of people don’t tell you is that Intel CAN be cheaper than AMD depending on how you shop. I’ve seen fully featured ddr5 z690 motherboards for only 125.00. Couple that with a 12600k or 12700k and you’ve got a very competent computer for cheap. AMD does have some cheaper makes these days but, for the price, they aren’t spec’d as nice as z690 in all honesty.
Really just depends on what you want. AM5 motherboards will have processor options though. Although, by the time you’d want to upgrade…AM6 will probably be either here or very nearly…so there’s that.
Idle consumption is generally lower with the Intel chips, especially with C-states on. So if you don’t do anything but game infrequently and mostly just do general low intensity productivity tasks, most 12th-14th gen Intel CPUs will have much better average power efficiency than Zen 4 variants.
It doesn’t really matter. All the modern high end CPUs are more than enough.