- Intel’s flagship undercuts AMD while delivering similar overall desktop performance
- AMD charges a lot more for only modest gains at the top end
- Power efficiency and pricing now define flagship CPU value
I’ve already written about Intel offering buyers better value at the low end of the desktop CPU market, and asked if the iconic chip maker is becoming the new AMD. That question feels 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 competing Ryzen 9 9950X3D, positioned as a premium gaming and content creation processor, costs about $676 there.
Despite this price difference, benchmark results show that the performance gap between the two CPUs remains relatively narrow.
Single-thread performance favors Intel
Before we go any further, I should note that the following comparison only looks at mainstream desktop CPUs. It does not include high-end desktop or server platforms such as Threadripper Pro or Xeon and EPYC processors, which are targeted at very different workloads and price points.
Looking at the overall CPU benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D leads with a CPU Mark score of around 70,155.
The Core Ultra 9 285K follows close behind with around 67,427, leaving AMD ahead by a single digit percentage.
The hardware configurations explain some of the difference, but certainly not all of it.
AMD’s chip offers 16 cores and 32 threads with a 170W rating, while Intel’s processor uses 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores for 24 threads at 125W.
Single-thread performance favors Intel. The Core Ultra 9 285K scores around 5,092 compared to around 4,739 for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which means something for games and everyday applications that don’t scale cleanly across many cores.
Power consumption also differentiates the two. Estimated annual energy costs put the Intel chip at around $22.81, while AMD’s processor sits closer to $31.03 under similar assumptions.
This combination of pricing and efficiency explains much of the cost difference. Intel trades a small amount of peak multithreaded performance for lower power consumption and a much lower retail price.
AMD’s advantage is most evident in heavily threaded workloads and cache-sensitive tasks, where the X3D design can still pull ahead.
While these gains exist, they don’t double the performance in the way that 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 flagship prices.
AMD still leads in absolute performance, but the premium it charges for this certainly looks harder to justify than it once did.
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