Why did YOU choose AMD for your processor?

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bretaincrab3

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I'm interested what reasons people had when there bought Ryzen. Was coming from a i5 4460, upgraded this year to a Ryzen 2700 for an incredible price (215€). In the beginning, I was leaning more towards the 8600K/8700K, but after researching I decided more towards AMD CPUs. At that time, Intel still didn't had the "shortage" price increase. I'm mostly "gaming", but also do a lot of multitasking, streaming and content creation. AMD CPUs just offered me more for a better price, are soldered, come with a useable stock cooler, the idea to switch to the latest AM4 CPU in 2020 if needed, actually dropping prices when a new generation comes out, and and and... Intel offered me better fps, but do I really care if I'm never getting the highest end GPU and not playing @1080? I'm always GPU bottlenecked, so are a lot other people, explaining that and showing them what the difference is if you run Intel vs Ryzen in a not "everything high end but playing on a 1080p"-build, converted a lot of decisions to take AMD over Intel. Pretty much always advicing to put more money on your display and GPU these days. You will be shocked positively how much you improve your gaming enjoyment if you save money from buying just a 2600/x and taking the saved money to buy 1440p 144hz/better Graphics card over taking a extremely pricey Intel Core CPU and staying at 1080p/lower the Graphics card budget. These are my reasons why I ended up with a AMD CPU, now tell me yours please.
 
Price/performance, simply put. I game at 1440P so while Intel may offer slightly better framerates it's not big deal. But my multithreading performance is so much higher than a 9900K, and even some of Intel's HEDT parts. I can also get PCIe 4.0 down the road if I upgrade motherboards (however now I'm on X470 so don't have it). I also like how socket AM4 is sticking around for a bit, Intel never keeps sockets for more than a few years. It's great that someone who bought X370 at launch can upgrade to any Zen 2 CPU with a BIOS update, and probably can even upgrade to Zen 3 when it comes out.

This is the first time in a long time IMHO that AMD is competitive. Seems like since Core2Duo Intel has had a pretty big lead and AMD was just a budget choice that couldn't compete. Can't wait to see the upcoming Intel and AMD CPU performance in the coming years. Given Zen 2 has decent IPC, high core count and good value I hope this pushes Intel to really come out with some good CPUs. Competition is really good for consumers, would be nice for better price/performance across the board from both Intel and AMD.
 
I was running an Intel 5820k / X99 setup. Being a hex-core chip combined with a nice overclock, I thought it was still plenty fast, and I wanted to hold onto that for one more generation at least. Unfortunately I began to have a very strange issue that would cause the computer to freeze under specific circumstances. I spent a year or so trying to diagnose the issue, while trying to play around the specific situations where the computer would freeze. It got to the point where, during the process of my diagnostics, I had swapped out literally every component except for the motherboard and CPU, and even tried stock bios settings / no overclock, etc. It had to be something with the motherboard or CPU, and I was just tired of dealing with it at that point. It's probably the first time in my whole life that I didn't upgrade purely for performance reasons.

I had been following the developments with Ryzen for a while, and when I looked at what I would want for a replacement build, X570 + 3900X seemed like a good choice. I probably don't actually need 12 cores, but I've always preferred to have more cores than I needed. I ran a dual-xeon rig back in the single-core era, jumped on the quad-core bandwagon back when most gamers still used dual-core, went hex-core when all mainstream chips were still quad-core, and having a 12-core chip now appealed to me in that same regard. Game performance seems to be about the same as it was with my 5820k @ 4.5Ghz, but at least it's rock-solid stable and I don't have to deal with any BS anymore.
 
At home both my Ryzen 2700 linux fileserver / pvr / svn server and my Ryzen 3900X Windows workstation the #1 reason was support for ECC memory. Although with that said my Ryzen 3700X desktop at work does not have ECC and neither do any of the other Ryzen 2XXX systems I purchased last year at work.

Most of work systems amounted to a bit of price / performance from the limited available choices. I mean last year I could spend $800 to $1000 US and get a 4C / 8T or possibly 6C /12T Dell desktop from the approved link which seems to be always 1 CPU generation behind current technology or I could get an 8C /16T Ryzen 2700 and now 3700 at Amazon (finally an alternate approved vendor).
 
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Price, performance, 8-core availability. This was early summer 2018 and the Intel competition was the 8700K. The computer was (and is) for development and DBMS work, so more cores won easily. Also, I wanted to see how our product ran on Ryzen. (answer: fine.) Same for the backroom cluster, 6-core 1600's off ebay for IIRC an average of $70 each, didn't even try looking for Intel 6-core units.

I also was a bit concerned about ECC memory, and likewise ended up with regular non-ECC memory. Hasn't been an issue yet.
 
Performance, price, upgradeability (can get 16core in the future, or potentially a Zen3 CPU!). This was 90% of the decision.

Last 10%: after 10 years of quad cores, I'm not getting another Intel anytime soon.
 
I first got into this thing of ours back in 2008 but I was always broke. AMD gave me quad core CPU's that were unlocked for under $100. Intel had nothing even close. So AMD got my money and since they used the same socket for many years, my AM2+ motherboard was able to be upgraded from Athlon all the way up to Phenom II chips. It made it a lot easier on guys like me with limited funds to upgrade out systems significantly by simply dropping a newer CPU in and not having to buy a new mobo.

So I've just always stuck with AMD for that reason. They always gave me CPU's that were unlocked and fun to tweak on, sockets that last 2 to 3 generations and all at a price a lot lower than Intel. 12 years and 7 CPU's later, I don't regret a thing.
 
I picked the Ryzen 9 3950X for it's performance and availability. I would be running an Intel Core i9 10980XE right now if I could actually find one in stock and for MSRP or less. I could have gone Threadripper, but the price for a 3960X is considerably higher than the other two options. I also don't have a motherboard for that on hand. Where as I have plenty of X299 and X570 motherboards to choose from.
 
Because I am an AMD fan and have been so since the AMD Duron and Thunderbird days. Other than a 6700k, a 733MHz coppermine Celeron processor, a 486SX 25Mhz and a Pentium 200 Mhz processor, I have owned AMD only. (This is for my personal machines, not necessarily builds or purchases for others.) Now I have a 2600, 3600 and 3700X.
 
X58 Dell T3500 was at max upgrade and it spun the power meter pretty fast.. AMD with the 3600 finally surpassed the level of processor I had ( W3680 software OC 4.0 ghz ) enough that upgrade was finally worth it..
 
I was coming from an i5 2500k overclocked to 4.5ghz paired with a GTX 1080 FE. I just wanted the newest tech available and the thought of an upgrade path with the same motherboard was what finally made me pull the trigger. My 3800x has been great. Now I’m just waiting for Nvidia to release their next gen because I’m on a GSYNC 1440p monitor.
 
I've been an AMD fan for a long, long time. My second computer was an AMD 386 DX 40. For my personal gaming rigs after that, only 3 weren't AMD. I had one Celeron, a Pentium 90MHz and a Cyrix 6x86 P166+. After those it was back on AMD all the way through a Turddozer 8150. I've had so, so many different AMD rigs, for other purposes as well. After FX everything fell apart for AMD and I now have had 1 Sandy Bridge, 1 Ivy Bridge, 1 Sandy-E and now an Ivy-E. My router and NAS builds were also mostly AMD up until the latest builds.

However my next build will be an AMD. For me, there's no reason to stay on Intel for now.
 
OFaceSIG said:
I've been an AMD fan for a long, long time. My second computer was an AMD 386 DX 40. For my personal gaming rigs after that, only 3 weren't AMD. I had one Celeron, a Pentium 90MHz and a Cyrix 6x86 P166+. After those it was back on AMD all the way through a Turddozer 8150. I've had so, so many different AMD rigs, for other purposes as well. After FX everything fell apart for AMD and I now have had 1 Sandy Bridge, 1 Ivy Bridge, 1 Sandy-E and now an Ivy-E. My router and NAS builds were also mostly AMD up until the latest builds.

However my next build will be an AMD. For me, there's no reason to stay on Intel for now.
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You reminded me that I had also bought an AMD 486 DX2 80 at one point. :)
 
I've had AMD CPU's off and on since the i386 days. Back in the day it was when I couldn't afford Intel. Today, it's because AMD is generally the better option right now in most price points. I like AMD, but being a fan of the company never factored into my decision to go that route. Being the best option out of what was available at the price I was willing to pay was what led me that direction.
 
I've always preferred to go AMD just because they typically offer more bang for the buck and there's just something alluring about the smaller guy that's able to compete (though I've had a fair share of very good intel processors, core 2 q6600, i5 750, and i5 4670k). Bought the 1600 around launch with a b350 motherboard, using the same b350 today with a 3600.
 
Subject line said "AMD", so I was going to post why I got my dual Athlon MP system and later a dual Opteron 265 and later a dual Opteron 6128.

Then I realized that I really need to dye my hair.
 
Bang for buck and not having to replace the MB every new cpu upgrade, even if it's not "new". The last 2-3(?) Intel have been new MB for new cpu.
 
cjcox said:
Subject line said "AMD", so I was going to post why I got my dual Athlon MP system and later a dual Opteron 265 and later a dual Opteron 6128.

Then I realized that I really need to dye my hair.
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With that said, you'll see all Intel in my sig right now. I wanted a 1950X, but at the end of the day it was way cheaper to get dual E5-2667v3's... so I went that route (but I am keeping my eye on AMD).
 
I don't really have brand preference when it comes to CPU's. I suppose if performance was virtually identical across the board, I'd go with Intel simply because I feel their chipset and chipset drivers are a bit more polished right out of the gate.

That said, I felt like AMD had the very clear upper hand in both chipset features and CPU performance this round, so I went with a 3900x and x570 board. There is also an excitement factor with both the CPU/Chipset being brand new, figuring out their quarks and personalities and helping others do the same. For me, all the factors came together. It won the performance crown, value per core was on their side, everything was new (except for the socket) and most importantly, I was due for an upgrade. It was a pretty easy choose actually. My previous system was Intel fwiw.
 
DrDoU said:
intel just wanted to much money!
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So does AMD. AMD has charged more than Intel at times when it could get away with it. AMD's current top end HEDT CPU is $4,000. Intel's only at a quarter of that. When the Core i9 10980XE paper launched, AMD's top end (at that time) 3970X was $2,000. It's entry into the HEDT space was already $400 more than the 10980XE. On the mainstream segment side, AMD's top offering is more than $200 more expensive than anything Intel has. Now, on the AMD side you get more performance than Intel offers in everything but gaming above and below the 10980XE. Even where Intel is competitive, it's often still more expensive. For example, the Ryzen 5 3400G is less expensive than the Core i5 9400K. The 9400K is a good deal better, APU vs. iGPU not withstanding, but you do pay more for it.
 
Dan_D said:
So does AMD. AMD has charged more than Intel at times when it could get away with it. AMD's current top end HEDT CPU is $4,000. Intel's only at a quarter of that. When the Core i9 10980XE paper launched, AMD's top end (at that time) 3970X was $2,000. It's entry into the HEDT space was already $400 more than the 10980XE. On the mainstream segment side, AMD's top offering is more than $200 more expensive than anything Intel has. Now, on the AMD side you get more performance than Intel offers in everything but gaming above and below the 10980XE. Even where Intel is competitive, it's often still more expensive. For example, the Ryzen 5 3400G is less expensive than the Core i5 9400K. The 9400K is a good deal better, APU vs. iGPU not withstanding, but you do pay more for it.
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Yes, if AMD was pricing the stuff like Intel would, the 3990WX would be $8000 and the 2990WX would be $4000. Heck, the 3950X would be $2000 so, AMD pricing is where it actually should be, in comparison to what Intel charges.
 
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Dan_D said:
So does AMD. AMD has charged more than Intel at times when it could get away with it. AMD's current top end HEDT CPU is $4,000. Intel's only at a quarter of that. When the Core i9 10980XE paper launched, AMD's top end (at that time) 3970X was $2,000. It's entry into the HEDT space was already $400 more than the 10980XE. On the mainstream segment side, AMD's top offering is more than $200 more expensive than anything Intel has. Now, on the AMD side you get more performance than Intel offers in everything but gaming above and below the 10980XE. Even where Intel is competitive, it's often still more expensive. For example, the Ryzen 5 3400G is less expensive than the Core i5 9400K. The 9400K is a good deal better, APU vs. iGPU not withstanding, but you do pay more for it.
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True, but today's prices aren't the same as yesterdays prices. Intel has not only dropped prices but IIRC, also expanded it's core counts in the mainstream segment since Zen 2's launch. In anything heavily threaded, you NEEDED an Intel HEDT to compete with AMD's mainstream.
 
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Dan_D said:
So does AMD. AMD has charged more than Intel at times when it could get away with it. AMD's current top end HEDT CPU is $4,000. Intel's only at a quarter of that. When the Core i9 10980XE paper launched, AMD's top end (at that time) 3970X was $2,000. It's entry into the HEDT space was already $400 more than the 10980XE. On the mainstream segment side, AMD's top offering is more than $200 more expensive than anything Intel has. Now, on the AMD side you get more performance than Intel offers in everything but gaming above and below the 10980XE. Even where Intel is competitive, it's often still more expensive. For example, the Ryzen 5 3400G is less expensive than the Core i5 9400K. The 9400K is a good deal better, APU vs. iGPU not withstanding, but you do pay more for it.
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you are using a 3950X and i assume you use this for more than playing games. 3990X is aimed at a specific segment because Intel can not compete. At the high end they are charging alot. I am not a Intel hater by any means. For one thing i can not afford these outrageous prices from either camp. I just want all round good performance. Have a 3600X for gaming and looking to replace it with a 3700X,becuase i want to do some rendering ect. not put my self into poverty.
 
I have been almost AMD exclusive since my first PC.

AMD 386DX40 (with Cyrix x87 FPU) > AMD486 DX4 100 > AMD DX4 133 (5x86 P75 i believe it was named) > Cyrix 6x86 P166+ > AMD K6 200 > AMD K6-2 300 > AMD K6-3 450 > AMD Athlon 500 > AMD Athlon (Thunderbird) 1.33Ghz > Athlon X2 3800+ > Phenom X4 2.3(?) GHz > Phenom II 940 3Ghz > FX 8150 > Ryzen 1700 > Ryzen 3900X

I probably forgot a few along the way :)

Most of these systems after the DX4 100 were overclocked.

The Cyrix was sadly not a good CPU. It would have been good with a third player in the x86 CPU market, but that was not to be.

I remember the K6-3 450 as a very good CPU, except for the slower FPU. The on-die L2 (first time on x86 AFAIR) made the motherboard cache into an L3 cache, and its performance (integer IPC) was good. It didn't OC very well though. It was a drop in replacement for K6-2 300.

The Athlon 500 lived most of its life OC'ed to 850Mhz. Very easy OC, if you had a golden fingers device. And faster than anything Intel had at the time.

The first Phenom was not a paticularly good CPU, and would not OC very well. Phenom II was better and would OC to 3.4GHz.

The FX8150 ran at 4.5Ghz most of the time, and I had it for many years, basically waiting for AMD to become competitive again. The Bulldozer architecture was so promising on paper, but turned out a major disapointment ...

Almost immediately that Ryzen was released, I got a 1700, that I ran at 3.75 Ghz most of the time. The first mainboard B350 sadly died, so was replaced by a B450 model. The 1700 was replaced with the 3900X on the same motherboard but with clocks on auto this time.

I have had no intel desktop setups, but my current laptop is Intel based.

At first I bought AMD mostly for the price / performance. I didn't have anything against Intel as such, their products were often just not as apealing to me because of higher prices.

But around the Athlon times, when Intel was playing dirty, basically forcing manufacturers to not use AMD, I became an AMD supporter, and has been ever since. I will avoid buying an Intel CPU if at all possible.

My Intel based laptop is the exception to that rule, my old AMD based laptop was dying, so I bought a second hand laptop that was Intel based.
My next one will be AMD again :)
 
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I'm going to avoid saying "price/performance" - that was the reason many people gave for buying AMD when Intel were clearly superior.

I'm going AMD with my new build because it's superior to Intel. Simple as that.
 
^ I really appreciate this answer!

AMD is in many ways superior so the decision to pay less for a better product is easy.
 
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It fit my needs for a good price. I do a lot of development, databases, servers, compiling source code. The amount of cores and speed is incredible. I paid $200 for my 1600 + b450 fatal1ty m-itx motherboard. Really hard to beat! Looking to update eventually to a 3600 (or 4600 at this point) and replace my old Dell server with the more efficient 1600 when I decide to jump to a needed generation. Honestly, I have to need to though, more of a want.
 
Dan_D said:
So does AMD. AMD has charged more than Intel at times when it could get away with it. AMD's current top end HEDT CPU is $4,000. Intel's only at a quarter of that. When the Core i9 10980XE paper launched, AMD's top end (at that time) 3970X was $2,000. It's entry into the HEDT space was already $400 more than the 10980XE. On the mainstream segment side, AMD's top offering is more than $200 more expensive than anything Intel has. Now, on the AMD side you get more performance than Intel offers in everything but gaming above and below the 10980XE. Even where Intel is competitive, it's often still more expensive. For example, the Ryzen 5 3400G is less expensive than the Core i5 9400K. The 9400K is a good deal better, APU vs. iGPU not withstanding, but you do pay more for it.
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Why are you comparing the price of a 32 core 64 thread CPU to the price of an 18 core 36 thread CPU? Of course the 32/64 CPU is going to 'cost' more.

As for why I chose AMD. It was all about what I could get for the money I wanted to spend at the time. Then it progressed into me spending even more money since I then upgrade AMD CPU's around 6 months after I first built the rig. Went from a 2600 to a 3900x. Then I wanted a better MB so I upgraded that. Did I need to, no, but I wanted to. When the 4000 series comes out I will most likely upgrade the chip again, not the MB because I am happy with that. But in this case at least I can just buy a new CPU and use everything else I already have, unlike Intel where I would need a new board as well. Which would lead to me probably buying other crap because, why not I already have to remove everything and install it again.
 
price/performance. Had an old i7 920 rig that was severely outdated and wanted something to hold me over before the new GFX cards and Ryzen 4000's come out. Went with a 3600 for now. Will convert this to a HTPC as I upgrade down the road.
 
Jamie Marsala said:
Why are you comparing the price of a 32 core 64 thread CPU to the price of an 18 core 36 thread CPU? Of course the 32/64 CPU is going to 'cost' more.

As for why I chose AMD. It was all about what I could get for the money I wanted to spend at the time. Then it progressed into me spending even more money since I then upgrade AMD CPU's around 6 months after I first built the rig. Went from a 2600 to a 3900x. Then I wanted a better MB so I upgraded that. Did I need to, no, but I wanted to. When the 4000 series comes out I will most likely upgrade the chip again, not the MB because I am happy with that. But in this case at least I can just buy a new CPU and use everything else I already have, unlike Intel where I would need a new board as well. Which would lead to me probably buying other crap because, why not I already have to remove everything and install it again.
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I'm simply pointing out that AMD wants money just like Intel does. This was in response to a post which implied that Intel was too expensive and therefore greedy. My point is that AMD isn't some benevolent underdog that's a champion of the people. It charges just as much or more for its products when it can. It always has.
 
grifter_66 said:
Because everyone else is doing it?
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These aren't charities. They are in the business to make money. Some people choose one companies products or the other for reasons which aren't technical, price or performance related. People will choose a product based on some sense of loyalty or because of some emotional sentiment about one company or the other. Use whatever criteria you want, but don't pretend that these companies are anything other than corporate entities who are out to make as much money as possible. They have a responsibility to shareholders to increase profits. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
Dan_D said:
I'm simply pointing out that AMD wants money just like Intel does. This was in response to a post which implied that Intel was too expensive and therefore greedy. My point is that AMD isn't some benevolent underdog that's a champion of the people. It charges just as much or more for its products when it can. It always has.
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When you make a new MB every time you come out with a new or even not new CPU, then that is severely greedy.
Champion to the people? In a way yes. Being able to use a low budget 4 core CPU on a MB, and then upgrade to a 16/32 core CPU on the same one is pretty close.
 
Dan_D said:
These aren't charities. They are in the business to make money. Some people choose one companies products or the other for reasons which aren't technical, price or performance related. People will choose a product based on some sense of loyalty or because of some emotional sentiment about one company or the other. Use whatever criteria you want, but don't pretend that these companies are anything other than corporate entities who are out to make as much money as possible. They have a responsibility to shareholders to increase profits. Nothing more, nothing less.
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I'm not sure why you quoted me. The thread subject is "Why Did You Choose AMD For Your Processor?" I answered "Because everyone else is doing it?". My comment had nothing to do with your previous posts.

Not once have I ever said AMD was "Champion to the people" nor would I care if they were. I buy my hardware based on performance / what I can afford / personal reasons, in that order. I went with AMD this time because they are a smarter buy over Intel at the moment and everyone else is doing it and liking it so I figured "what the hell, may as well".
 
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