JAMES GORBOLD / HARDWARE ACCELERATED
James Gorbold has been building, tweaking and overclocking PCs ever since the 1980s. He now helps Scan Computers to develop new systems.
OPINION
O
ver the past few weeks, theenthusiastPClandscape
has seen a seismic shift awayfromInteltowards
AMD. It’s not the first timethishashappened,but
the last time was back in the earlynoughtieswhenAMD
launched Athlon 64. AMD has spentthepastfewyears
building towards this moment, withthelaunchofZenCPUs
in March 2017, and Zen+ in April 2018.
But while Zen was competitive,andZen+wasgood,the
new Zen 2 CPUs are truly great, runningcirclesaroundIntel’s
Coffee Lake CPUs. What’s more, Zen2 CPUsareaggressively
priced – they not only perform betterthanIntelCPUs,but
undercut them too. If you combinea
Zen 2 CPU with an X570 motherboard,
you also get full support for PCI-E 4
GPUs and SSDs.
There was, of course, overwhelming-
positive media coverage of Zen 2, with
Custom PC being no exception. However,
unlike the Zen and Zen+ launches, which
did gain AMD some market sharebut
didn’t fundamentally change the market,
Zen 2 is a real game changer. If the CPU market were using
Dungeons & Dragons rules, AMD just rolled a 20 for initiative,
20 to hit and 20 to damage. The only area I’d score AMD
down would be 15 for critical damage, because while there
was some stock available at launch, the supply situation
could have been better.
Even so, AMD has done significant damage, with Zen 2
not just competing with Coffee Lake, but for the first time
in many years, an AMD processor range is largely outselling
Intel’s at Scan. That statement is broadly true across the
board, but to take one specific example, the AMD Ryzen 9
3900Xhasbeenoutselling the Intel Core i9-9900K at a ratio
ofalmost7:1atleadingresellers.
Thisseismicshiftisn’trestricted to the enthusiast market
either,asZen2 isalsostarting to build moment with corporate
buyers.Sure,itwillalways take longer for these decision
makerstoswitchbrand,but it will happen.
Allofwhichmakesme wonder how Intel will respond.
Intheshortterm,wealready know from Computex that
theCorei99900KSiscoming soon, but while an all-core
5GHzprocessorisundoubtedly cool in terms of numbers, I
can’tseeit havinga massive impact on the market. Looking
further ahead, there’s plenty of rumours
andleaks online about next-gen CPUs
andplatforms. I can’t comment on
them officially, but you can see Richard
Swinburne’s analysis on p8.
What I can share is my opinion, which is
thatIntel can’t afford to simply continue
with its current plans and needs to be
more radical. A good start would be
recognising that the X platform as it
stands has had its day. While lots of PCI-E lanes and quad-
channel memory are still desirable on paper, most applications
and games, even high-end graphics, barely receive any benefit.
As a result, customers simply won’t pay the premium that the
X platform commands. The move away from X to K started
a while back, but Zen 2 will only accelerate that change.
I recognise that it may takes months, if not years, for
Intel to truly regain the initiative and overhaul or abandon
the X platform, but with a new CEO in place, and intense
competition from AMD, serious change is required. In the
meantime, AMD can reap the benefits of being on top.If theCPUmarketwere
usingDungeons&Dragons
rules,AMDjustrolleda 20
forinitiative, 20 tohitand
20 todamageRYZEN SHINE
AMD’s Zen 2 processors are reconditioning the CPU
market, and James Gorbold is thankful