Analysis: AMD and Intel can keep their bananas

Contents

Banana goods ripen at the customer. So much for the clichéd categorization of what AMD and Intel have been up against in desktop processors for several months now: Namely, a race for the best gaming CPU. In doing so, they ignore the fact that processors above the 500 euro mark must not only be of interest to gamers, but also to people who use them for their work and have to rely on their PCs.

An Analysis Nico Ernst

Nico Ernst has been writing about IT topics and occasionally about music for over 20 years. Hardware, photography, business and net politics are his favorite topics. Having grown up with ZX81, C64 and Atari VCS, he still can't resist the occasional game.

The fact that these are really unfinished products, i.e. not yet ready for the market, is no longer just speculation, but has been clearly described by the highest authority, namely Intel's Director of Technical Marketing Robert Hallock, since last weekend: Intel and AMD are pushing each other with their launch dates in the race for the fastest processor. Hallock said in a detailed interview about the sometimes disappointing gaming performance of the new Core Ultra 9 285K: "These are self-inflicted problems and we have to solve them." Although he claims to have felt "no external pressure" to bring the Arrow Lake CPUs onto the market in October 2024, but rather sees the results of the fourth quarter in Intel's balance sheet as the reason, the matter is actually clear.

One race with one false start after another

In July, AMD wanted to launch its new generation Granite Ridge with the top model Ryzen 9 9950X. This was postponed by four weeks before the planned date, meaning it was not yet ready. And then brought rather mediocre gaming performance. At the same time, AMD announced the X3D versions of the Ryzen 9000 with stack cache, which are particularly interesting for gaming. The 9800X3D, which is now available, is the new gaming king.

Intel probably had to squeeze the 285K into the small time window between the Ryzens due to marketing laws. It was released with all kinds of teething troubles such as blue screens, non-booting computers and also at such short notice that the independent testers did not have enough time to tease the last bit of performance out of the chips. Robert Hallock also had to admit this. He also states that the numerous new possibilities of overclocking may not have been explored at all due to the short test periods.

And that's what an "unlocked" processor is all about - it's not just an everyday tool but also a technology toy. It speaks volumes that Intel convened a crisis meeting with hardware testers just two days before the launch date, which our publishing house also attended, but by then it was far too late for post-tests. It was similar with AMD before: the manufacturer only tried to explain after the tests that they had achieved higher benchmark values with special settings in their own laboratory.

Games marketing no longer works

The outdated assumption is that what is fast in games is also good for work, so the products are marketed as such. This is the marketing strategy that has worked well for a good 30 years –, i.e. since PCs became attractive for private use by virtue of the Internet and games –. Today, technology and public perception are undergoing radical change on several levels.

As has been the case with ARM for around ten years, x86 processors also rely on large and fast as well as small and efficient cores. Windows has never seen this before. So Microsoft has to help, and this applies to both CPU manufacturers. Remember the crutch of the Windows Game Bar, which always had to run so that the 7000 series of Ryzens with stack cache occupied the cores with the cache as often as possible, and not those without. Not all cores are the same, just like Intel with its performance and efficiency cores.

It is obvious that the development of Windows and the firmware can no longer keep up with the innovations in the processors. But according to Robert Hallock, this is not due to Windows. Intel's firmware, i.e. the BIOS, should also help the 285K to achieve better performance by December. AMD, Intel and Microsoft have to work together much more than in the past to ensure that the CPUs can actually deliver their theoretically high performance to the screen.

In all of this, see above about the tests, the decisive factor is time. If launch dates are happily pushed back and forth and two largely new architectures appear in three months, Microsoft probably doesn't have the resources to adapt Windows to all of this. And then it has to reach users via Windows Update first. There are quite a few PCs that have not even received the latest Windows 11 24H2.

Errors have a much greater impact today

Apart from technology, the world of opinion-forming is different today than it was just ten years ago, driven by social media and YouTube. Problems with new products, especially in the lively gaming community, are immediately visible, mercilessly documented by professional testers with well-equipped laboratories and really fall on the manufacturer's feet. Today, a single YouTube channel has more reach than the websites of all hardware testers combined 20 years ago.

It is clear that Intel had to deliver something better quickly after the fiasco surrounding unstable and defective CPUs of the 13th and 14th core generation. However, rushing this so quickly that you have to make improvements months later – There should be updates by the end of November at the earliest –, doesn't help anyone. Neither Intel, who are unlikely to sell any of the banana goods, nor the customers, who are allowed to tinker with their computers instead of playing or working so that they run as they should.

FPS is not everything

So the question is whether this games marketing is still up to date. But not whether there is a target group for it: Professional e-sports players want every frame per second they can get, and prefer to play in less than 4K resolution to do so. Therefore, the tests in the CPU limit, where the graphics card does not slow things down, are definitely justified. And for all those who only play for fun, the professionals are the role models through which new products are sold.

For everyone else who wants to use their PCs primarily for work and not for hours of gaming every day, the only recommendation for the bright green banana products is not a new one, but one that is now all the more up-to-date: it's better to stick with what has been working stably for a few months or even years. But not buying the latest platforms is exactly what chip manufacturers don't actually want from their customers. Both AMD and Intel have only themselves to blame for the fact that this is now the better option.

(nie)