I am a long time AMD user. I got into PC gaming back in 2001, I was fresh out of the Military, I was in college, I was broke and was pulling my hair out knowing that I may not afford to build a decent gaming computer until one of my college instructors suggested I look into AMD Processors. At this time in my life I knew nothing of AMD when Intel dominated the television ads etc. So I did, I started looking at AMD and what I liked about AMD was the price point! I thought to my self wow! The reality of building a gaming computer was actually in my reach. I will have to say that I was a little worried what my friends with Intel builds were saying but that little machine I built took off and I was gaming with the best of them. I was so proud of that first build. I was very impressed with AMD that I made AMD the base for every build there after. What can I say I am a fan of AMD and Radeon that they have been my "go to" brand, and I will say that I have been loyal to the brand since 2001.
Currently I am running and AMD FX8350 with a Radeon RX 580. and I am looking to upgrade the Processor in a new build. I have been looking at the Ryzen 7 1800X, for my next build. However realizing that the Intel i7 8700k is in the same price point and seems to out shine the AMD Ryzen processors. This has me at a cross roads and I want to stay true to the AMD brand I started with but abandoning AMD and moving to Intel seems so tempting at this point. Am I reading too much into this? What are the reasons to stay with AMD? HELP!
Well you are comparing an 8 core 16 thread processor against a 6 core 12 thread processor, so you should really be comparing it to a R5 1600X, which is a good 30% cheaper than the 8700K. Also, Zen 2 processors will be released in the next couple of months, which will shrink the performance difference between Coffee Lake and Zen 1, which is currently on par with Skylake (which says a lot as the FX 8350 was in a different time zone than Skylake). Also in terms of performance Intel's final impact from the Spectre and Meltdown patches hasn't been fully realized because they keep pulling and reissuing the blasted things, and it won't get fixed until the next generation.
I can only tell you why I have chosen AMD so many times. I'm cheap! It is true that AMD, with Ryzen processors has forced Intel to be very competitive in price. Very true only $50 more for their top enthusiast processor.
Now to answer your question of why choose AMD, still price, but not just the price today. I have found that AMD systems are not just cheaper today but I typically get at least 1 if not 2 cheap upgrades off the same motherboard. Intel almost always requires an new motherboard. So next time you might only be buying a new top end AMD processor, that's $50 cheaper, plus not buying a new motherboard and ram!
This is where I thing the AMD decision shines.
Plus A is before I in the alphabet, pretty good reason if you ask me! :-)
Yeah, I still like bang for buck, we all do. With my current build I have to upgrade the mobo and memory anyway. I am not sure if the Ryzen gen 2's wil still use the AM4 slot or not. I really havent read up on it. One thing i am not liking is the whole Ryzen compatible memory thing that i have been reading about. It seems to be a little more cumbersome ro selecr parts than how its been in the past.
I did however decide to stick with AMD on my newest build going with the Ryzen 7. Im still on the fence with the 1800x or the 1700x.
Yes, the current am4 boards will support the new Ryzen 2 chips which are actually Zen+ not the Zen 2 which I'm guessing will be Ryzen 3. But I know that this next processor will be supported on current boards, assuming your board partner updates the bios. Then next gen who knows. If I were you though, I know the new chips are coming with new chipsets too. So likely those will support R3, plus probably have a decent amount of stability fixes to them. Unless you need it now. Wait a couple months then be future proof that much longer. Even on the Intel side, I wouldn't buy one until their corrected silicon comes out later this year. Again I wouldn't wait if you need it, but if it is a luxury upgrade than, it may be cheaper in the long run to do that, plus the benefit of better tech.
Stipulating up front: this is out of my area of expertise.
Although the current problems with speculative attacks clearly do not fall into the category of deliberate, manufacturer or government instigated vulnerabilities, I believe AMD could earn a lot of friends (and end-user customers) by formally committing to produce exploit-proof processors and processing environments. The Intel Management Engine clearly demonstrates Intel's design priorities, to the point where I question whether I'll ever buy another Intel based system.
Re: Meltdown & Spectre
Unfortunately, the last time I wrote any assembler code it was for a Z-80, back in '84, so it would be tough for me to do this myself. However, while I believe its essential that manufacturers provide measures to prevent speculative attacks ASAP, given the processing speed penalties, if AMD engineers could come up with a set of benign exploit "tools", capable of mimicking Meltdown and/or Spectre, I believe that approach could enable end-users to run 'attack detector daemons' (ADD's) which would profile their own operations on a clean system. Subsequently, run the ADD's in 'detect mode', which would include comparing the live performance with profiles. Presumably, two attackers running simultaneously might interfere with one another, in a way which could be detected by the ADD. Although I don't fully understand what qualifies as a 'gadget', perhaps the ADD might be accompanied by some 'gadget trojans', able to identify the presence of a real attacker.
Finally, if the above system seems plausible to those who understand the internals better than I do, make it configurable/customizable and 'embedable' (in ordinary system processes), so real attackers would have difficulty determining whether they're being watched. In many cases, I'd much rather have the ability to detect an intruder (even if detection is not 100% guaranteed), than pay the performance penalty.
Your suggestions are really what is already in the works behind the scenes. It is what is already being or has been patched into browsers, applications and OS. Unfortunately those were rushed and have to be redone. IMHO AMD has always taken a more secure approach than Intel. This isn't the first time something similar to this has happened. AMD, right now, with a little software intervention, has a near zero chance of being compromised or having much of a performance hit due to the architecture differences and security choices AMD already made in chip design.