A new Ryzen chip architecture from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) is seeking to overthrow Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) dominance among gaming enthusiasts and overclockers. This was demonstrated in a test conducted by a technology publication based in France. In the testing exercise, i7 processors from Intel were pitted against Ryzen chips from AMD.
Engineering samples
The Ryzen chips used in the test were engineering samples, which generally have less power than the version that eventually gets released to the market. In this particular case, information from AMD hinted that the Ryzen chips would achieve a boost clock of 3.6GHz though the sample used in the testing reached a 3.3Ghz boost. Despite this, the performance of the Ryzen chip was impressive. The 8-core AMD processor performed better than Intel’s 6-core i7 6800k processor and was only beaten by Intel’s 8-core i7 6900k.
“One of the reasons AMD could not compete with Intel is because of Intel’s lead in manufacturing technology. AMD has now embraced the latest 14nm FinFET technology for its Ryzen processor,” said part of a report from Mobipicker.
Gaming performance
In a gaming setup, the AMD chip did not do as well as the Intel chip. This is because a large number of game titles fail to exploit the big number of cores the AMD chip possesses. A majority of game titles make use of four cores or less and this is why the Intel’s chips did better than AMD’s in the gaming matchup. But in one particular case, AMD’s reduced performance was also linked to the fact that its chip was running at a frequency of 3.3GHz while Intel’s i7 6700k chip was running at a frequency of 4.0Ghz.
Though the test was conducted using an engineering sample, it is understood that the Zen chip architecture from AMD will show improved efficiency with time and that when it is finally released to the market, the results will likely be much better.
In Friday’s trading session, shares of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc fell by 2.16% to close the day at $11.34 a piece. Intel Corporation edged downwards by 1.06% to close the day at $36.27 a share.