The ongoing and never ending war: Intel vs. AMD
Team Red vs Team Blue
The answer - Use the best tool for the job in your budget!
Personally I am an AMD Fanboy - mostly because I like the underdog, David vs Goliath sort of thing. (AMD being the much smaller company vs Intel)
In general, Intel is still the king for gaming at the very top end*, however again in general, AMD is currently winning at multitasking and general day to day tasks. This is mostly due to AMD coming out swinging in 2017 with its new Ryzen CPU’s, and Intel being stagnant between 2009 to 2017 with no real competition.
Intel is playing catch up from a performance standpoint however and it will be interesting in the next 12 - 18 months if they can retake their crown.
To make it easy in the consumer space, more numbers usually mean ‘more better’.
Intel Core i3 = Ryzen 3
Intel Core i5 = Ryzen 5
Intel Core i7 = Ryzen 7
Intel Core i9 = Ryzen 9
At Computer Clinic we like to generalize the numbers that hang off the end of these products eg Intel Core i5-2400 is 2nd Gen, Intel Core i3-7100 is 7th Gen, Intel Core i7-10700 is 10th Gen. In the same vein, AMD Ryzen 5 3600 is 3rd Gen for Team Red and so on.
In 2020 alone AMD Released a CPU - The Ryzen 3 3300x for $229incl GST. This outperforms and the 2017 Intel Core i7 7700 which was $660incl GST at launch. It is also on par with the 2020 Intel Core i5 10400F which is $265incl GST.
I am writing this post because of how impressed I was with the 3300x when putting a PC equipped with it into a business, and just wanted to share how great AMD can be in certain circumstances for the price! Unbelievable!
For businesses doing Office Tasks the AMD Ryzen 3 / 5 or Intel Core i5 is perfect. If you are looking for a bit more performance than the Ryzen 7 & Core i7 is the way to go. Anything else bespoke eg Point-Of-Sale, CAD, Detailing, Video Editing, and the like and we can come up with the best solution (regardless of team red or blue) for your budget no worries at all.
To conclude - at the end of the day if your application/vendor/supplier specifically only supports Intel then unfortunately you will be using Intel - no ifs, ands or buts. But if you are not bound by this, we won’t outright recommend AMD in all circumstances, but remember it’s a great alternative for both desktops & laptops.
P.S. As a side note, we don’t recommend Intel Celeron/Atom/Pentium nor AMD Athlon, E or A series CPU’s at all, due to how bad they perform day-to-day regardless of task/application.
*EDIT as of 20/10/20 - AMD have announced a new CPU line up that will be faster than Intel. For the first time since 2004 AMD will have the fastest CPU’s money can buy!