- Intel flagship undercuts AMD and offers similar overall desktop performance
- AMD charges a lot more for modest top-end profits
- Power efficiency and pricing now define flagship CPU value
I already wrote about Intel offering buyers better value at the lower end of the desktop CPU market, asking whether the iconic chipmaker is becoming the new AMD. That question seems even more relevant given that the same pattern is also noticeable when looking at top-tier processors.
Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K is Team Blue’s fastest desktop chip and currently sells for $519 on Amazon (discounted from $599). AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D, positioned as a premium processor for gaming and content creation, costs about $676 there.
Despite that price difference, benchmark results show that the performance gap between the two CPUs remains relatively narrow.
Single-threaded performance favors Intel
Before continuing, I should note that the following comparison focuses solely on mainstream desktop CPUs. It does not include high-end desktop or server platforms, such as Threadripper Pro or Xeon and EPYC processors, which target very different workloads and price ranges.
As for the aggregate CPU benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D leads with a CPU Mark score of around 70,155.
The Core Ultra 9 285K is close behind with around 67,427, leaving AMD ahead by a single-digit percentage.
Hardware configurations explain some of the difference, but certainly not all.
The AMD chip offers 16 cores and 32 threads with a power of 170 W, while the Intel processor uses 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores for 24 threads at 125 W.
Single-threaded performance favors Intel. The Core Ultra 9 285K scores about 5092 compared to about 4739 for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which is important for everyday games and applications that don’t scale cleanly across many cores.
Energy use also separates them. Estimated annual power costs put the Intel chip at around $22.81, while the AMD processor is closer to $31.03 under similar assumptions.
That combination of price and efficiency explains much of the cost difference. Intel trades a small amount of peak multi-threaded performance for lower power consumption and a much lower retail price.
AMD’s advantage shows up most clearly in highly threaded workloads and cache-sensitive tasks, where the X3D design can still come out ahead.
While those gains exist, they don’t double performance as the price difference between the two chips might suggest.
For buyers focused on creative tasks, gaming, general productivity, or mixed workloads, Intel’s top chip delivers near-flagship results without a flagship price.
AMD still leads in absolute performance, but the premium it’s charging for this certainly seems harder to justify than before.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
