The i7-5820K dropped the entry price for six-core, 12-thread chips to $389 in 2014—basically the same as today’s i7-8700K. The problem is that Intel’s mainstream platform, LGA115x, has stuck at fourcore, eight-thread since 2009’s first-gen Core i7s.
That’s eight years of stagnation, largely because AMD never had a superior product. Ryzen changed that, and while it doesn’t win every benchmark, the availability of competitive 8C16T chips at prices that undercut Intel’s 4C8T CPUs looks bad, and the 6C12T Ryzen 5 parts cost less than most of Intel’s 4C4T Core i5 parts. If you’re running workloads that can benefit from more cores/threads, Ryzen has been an easy recommendation since launch.
After coasting on the mainstream platform for eight years, Intel has been able to rapidly release more cores and higher performance.…
