Does this mean Ryzen is over? barely. Despite the differences in the performance of the chips themselves, there are many reasons why you should still want to buy Ryzen. In fact, these are eight.
8. Ryzen is more efficient
One argument that AMD could certainly continue to make is that per-core Ryzen could be more power efficient. In our tests, for example, the 16-core Core i9-12900K could consume 45 percent more total power than the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X, even though the Intel chip uses a combination of 8 high-performance cores and 8 high-efficiency cores. . If you’re going to power your PC all day with every single CPU core, Ryzen will generally provide you with more power than a comparable Intel chip. While that’s a feather in the Ryzen hood, we have to mention that at certain levels, 12th Gen Intel processors will also be faster in exchange for all that juice. For example, a Core i5-12600K can use 30 percent more power than a Ryzen 5 5600X processor under an integrated load — but it’s also 52 percent faster. Efficiency geeks though, Ryzen is hard to beat.
7. Motherboards are much cheaper
Although CPU prices for Intel and AMD chips tend to be competitive, you certainly tend to pay more for a motherboard to run the new 12th-gen Intel chips. It’s not crazy pricing, but you’ll generally spend at least $180 on an Intel Z690 board, with closer to $220. Intel hasn’t released any motherboard chipsets yet, so enthusiast-grade Z-series boards are your only option. You can get comparable AMD X570 motherboards in the $150-$180 range, or you can get no-frills motherboards for up to $50. The power of cheaper motherboards isn’t equal, but the prices aren’t, and at the moment Intel CPUs lack budget motherboard options. This can significantly reduce the overall cost of a similar Ryzen system by comparison.
6. No need to worry about DDR5
With the 12th generation, Intel introduced the first CPUs to support newer, faster DDR5 RAM that gives you much more bandwidth, at least twice the density of RAM, and ultimately much faster speeds too. Unfortunately, DDR5 is more difficult to get hold of than finding a genie wearing Air Jordan III OG kicks with a pair of dazzling green GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPUs hanging from his pocket. Honestly, you might find this genie before You can now locate DDR5. Yes, there’s DDR4 support for Alder Lake, and a lot suggests it makes sense to go this route, but for folks looking to pair their shiny new CPU with shiny new RAM, DDR5 pricing and display limitations are a major issue today. .
Fortunately, AMD will say you don’t need DDR5 to extract the best out of their Ryzen CPU, so you don’t have to worry about making that terrible decision. DDR4 memory remains plentiful and affordable — another way that Ryzen architecture can cost significantly less than a 12th-gen Intel system.
5. PCIe 4.0 is still a lot fast
PCIe 5.0 is the other shiny new feature on Intel’s 12th Alder Lake CPUs. We wouldn’t be haters and dismiss PCIe Gen 5.0 as a waste of time, since, when PCIe Gen 4 debuted on AMD hardware, we applauded its existence. But just like we said with PCIe 4.0, it was always nice to have, but not necessarily a deal breaker at first. For example, there are neither PCIe 5.0 SSDs nor any PCIe 5.0 GPUs today. Even when they arrive, they probably won’t change everything overnight, so don’t worry — PCIe 4.0 from Ryzen is in abundance, and PCIe 4.0 SSDs are pretty fast.
4. There is still an upgrade path
Consumers love the sound of the CPU upgrade path, even if very few have actually upgraded their desktop CPU. Ryzen’s AM4 motherboard socket was thought to be dead after the Ryzen 5000 was first introduced, but AMD’s reveal that the first root-cache CPUs will be AM4-compatible means that if you build a Ryzen 5 5600X today, it’s You will likely fall into the V-cache version eventually. Combine the motherboard’s low price with the promise of another upgrade, and the Ryzen 5000-series CPU will still be attractive. And yes, we know Intel’s 12th-gen LGA1700 will also see at least another upgrade as well, but just having that option on AMD instead of it being a dead-end socket adds to Ryzen’s appeal.
3. No need to run Windows 11
Intel’s unique hybrid CPU design for 12th-generation Intel Alder Lake chips works best with Windows 11, which includes an updated scheduler (the part of the operating system that distributes work across different CPU cores and threads) to support it. Although many things work well with Windows 10, Windows 11 is a favorite of Alder Lake. While Ryzen also gets a little bump on Windows 11, Ryzen was introduced with Windows 10 and has long been at home too, while many 12th-generation Alder Lake owners will feel compelled to run Windows 11.
2. Fewer problems with older games
Intel’s hybrid design is so new, some legacy applications simply don’t know how to handle the mix of high-performance cores and high-power-efficient cores, with some game copy protections refusing to run. This means that dozens of games will not run on Lake Alder. The problem is somewhat exaggerated as these games will likely be updated over time, but *cough* – Ryzen owners can simply bypass it entirely.
1. It probably doesn’t matter which CPU you buy
The final reason why you should buy a Ryzen-based system without validating concerns, even if that system cuts the bone – what you’re doing on your computer doesn’t really require a fast CPU, and if that’s the case, you know it. Yes, combing through dozens of revisions and zooming in on charts is fun, but the honest truth is that the vast majority of people don’t actually do anything where it matters enough to waste brain cells on it.
We can clearly say that the 12th-gen Core i5-12600K is faster in just about everything than the Ryzen 5 5600X, but do you really feel a 5 percent or even 13 percent increase while browsing or typing in Microsoft Word? Since gaming is largely limited by the speed of your GPU, we’d argue it doesn’t matter much either, as long as you buy a modern 6-core chip or better. Worrying about a faster CPU for your new computer is as good as worrying about a new car accelerating faster when you’re sitting 95 percent of the time in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
For more concrete buying tips, be sure to check out our guide to the best GPUs for gaming.