I have had a lot to say about the desktop CPU market over my years on Steem and now Hive. When I first joined Steem in mid-2016, Intel had been an utterly dominant position for years, with AMD nowhere to be seen. Yet, I had started writing about how AMD is the company to watch moving forward. Still, I couldn't imagine how completely the industry would change in less than 4 years. Today, Intel is totally on the back foot.
With the 10th gen Core CPUs releasing for desktop today, Intel's trying its level best to eke out as much performance as they can out of the aging Skylake-derived architecture and 14nm process. Well, 14+++++ or whatever it's being called these days...
Given all of those limitations, it's quite impressive that Intel has been able to pack in 2 extra cores and a slight frequency boost into the Core i9 10900K, versus the outgoing 9900K. These names are terrible, by the way - there's actually a completely different Core i9 10900X on a different platform! Anyhoo. VideoCardz has an excellent roundup of the reviews, so you can check out some of those to get the detailed benchmarks and reviews. I'll sum everything up here.
In short, the Core i9 10900K is now the outright fastest gaming CPU today. However, it's a pretty pointless CPU, as the Core i7 10700K is almost as fast for less than $400. The Ryzen 9 3900X is also within touching distance, and vastly superior for everything else. Realistically, most gamers don't play at high-refresh monitors above 144 Hz, and most find a balance between graphics, framerate and resolution. I mean, let's face it, most people are still gaming on 60 Hz monitors, in which case there's no difference between a $120 Ryzen 3 3300 and a Core i9 10900K in almost all games. Still, if money is no object and you bought a 2080 Ti and all you do is game on a 240 Hz monitor, then by all means, Core i9 10900K is the CPU to buy at $500.
Core i7 10700K is a much better choice for the hardcore high-refresh gamer, at $388. Unfortunately, with a Ryzen 9 3900X going for $410 nowadays, it's a tough sell as it's destroyed by the AMD CPU in everything else. Even in gaming, it's close enough to not matter unless you have 120+ Hz monitor and prioritize framerate at all times.
Core i5 10600K is a pretty good product, though. At $260, it's a pretty damn good gaming CPU, but once again, at everything else it falls far behind the Ryzen 7 3700X. Of course, at less than $200, the Ryzen 5 3600 remains the killer product - faster than 10600K at all production workloads, while not far behind in gaming.
In the end, the narrative hasn't changed. Intel gets a little more competitive versus AMD, but AMD is just far ahead on pretty much every metric - except raw gaming performance and some niche Intel-specific workloads. With AMD's Ryzen 3rd gen already on the market for nearly a year, and Ryzen 4th gen late this year, it's all too little, too late for Intel. Still, it's better than nothing.
I'd expect the 4th gen Ryzens to wipe the floor with 10th gen Core CPUs in every respect, conquering it's last challenge - gaming performance. As next-gen consoles ship with 8 core Zen 2 CPUs, I'd expect gaming performance to further favour AMD over time. Unfortunately, there's no miracle on the horizon for Intel. Yes, the 10nm process is improving and viable for mobile CPUs, but the single core frequency on 14nm is simply impossible on 10nm. I'd expect 2021 to be another lost year for Intel. But this is Intel - it's a massive juggernaut of a company with billions in reserve and some top notch talent on its payroll. I'd expect Intel to come back strongly in late 2021 or 2022 with a competitive product for the first time in nearly 3-4 years. The thing is, I don't think AMD is going to make their past mistakes. They are hungry and focused, and they are relentlessly iterating on Zen. When Intel does release a next-gen part, be rest assured AMD will be there with Ryzen 5th gen using Zen 4 architecture.
Competition is wonderful. It's hard to think that less than 4 years ago, Intel's flagship CPU was a 4 core part selling for $350. Today, you get an 8 core CPU with much higher clock speeds, or, you get a Core i3 at $100-odd with 4 cores. Remember, Intel was stuck at 4 cores for nearly 8 years! Shows you the wonders of competition, and how terrible things can be for consumers without it.
Damn, my whole youtube feed is intel cpus reviews :)
Also one thing worth to mention - you need new motherboards for those intel cpus, while in AMD world one motherboard can support multiple generations of their cpus.
Haha, yes, the reviews all go live at the same time. I actually discussed the topic about motherboard support just yesterday.