PC World - USA (2020-12)

34 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020

REVIEWS AMD RYZEN 5000

9 5900X have so utterly destroyed Core i9 that

we’re still stunned by the severity of the sweep.

But at the same time, we really shouldn’t be

surprised, as this has been building ever since

AMD first showed off its Zen core in August

2016 (go.pcworld.com/zn16)—just across the

street from where Intel was ironically wrapping

up its 20th and final Intel Developer Forum.

BEFORE RYZEN.

AFTER RYZEN.

You can see just how disruptive Ryzen has

been by looking at the table below, which

summarizes the last five years of consumer

desktop computing history. At the top you

can see the calm, blue waters of Intel, whose

only competition was itself, testing the limits

of just how much it could charge a consumer

for a CPU (Hint: it was $1,723).

The Ryzen 7 1800X, AMD’s original Ryzen

processor, would upend it all by offering an

8-core CPU for less than half of what Intel had

been charging the year before.

From there it’s just been one duck and

weave after another. As Intel’s chip architecture

languished at 14 nanometers, AMD has literally

danced around its rival’s aging body in the

ring. AMD goosed its process, slightly

improved its performance, and then cut prices

even further with its Ryzen 7 2700X.

With Ryzen 9 3950X, AMD shocked the

world with a consumer CPU packing 16 cores

on a 7nm process at a reasonable price. While

we don’t show it—the Intel equivalent—the

BEFORE AND AFTER RYZEN

MODEL Cores

Boost

Clock Intro Price Per Core $ Process Socket Code name

Intel Core i7-6700K 4 4,200 Sep 15 $349 $87 14nm LGA1151 Skylake S

Intel Core i7-6900K 8 3,700 May 16 $1,089 $136 14nm LGA2011 Broadwell E

Intel Core i7-6950K 10 3,500 May 16 $1,723 $172 14nm LGA2011 Broadwell E

Intel Core i7-7700K 4 4,500 Jan 17 $349 $87 14nm LGA1151 Kaby Lake S

Ryzen 7 1800X 8 4,000 Mar 17 $499 $62 14nm AM4 Summit Ridge

Intel Core i7-8700K 6 4,700 Sep 17 $359 $60 14nm LGA1151 Coffee Lake S

Ryzen 7 2700X 8 4,300 Apr 18 $329 $41 12nm AM4 Pinnacle Ridge

Intel Core i9-9900K 8 5,000 Oct 18 $488 $61 14nm LGA1151 Coffee Lake R

Ryzen 9 3950X 16 4,700 Jun 19 $74 9 $47 7nm AM4 Matisse

Intel Core i9-10900 10 5,300 May 20 $488 $49 14nm LGA1200 Coffee Lake S

Ryzen 9 5950X 16 4,900 Oct 20 $799 $50 7nm AM4 Vermeer