- Intel’s flagship undercuts AMD while delivering similar overall desktop performance
- AMD charges much more for only modest gains at the very 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, asking whether 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 roughly $676 there.
Despite that price difference, benchmark results show the performance gap between the two CPUs remains relatively narrow.
Single-thread performance favors Intel
Before we go on, I should note the following comparison looks only at mainstream desktop CPUs. It doesn’t include high-end desktop or server platforms such as Threadripper Pro or Xeon and EPYC processors, which target very different workloads and price ranges.
Looking at aggregate CPU benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D leads with a CPU Mark score of around 70,155.
The Core Ultra 9 285K follows closely at about 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 about 5,092 compared with roughly 4,739 for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, which matters for games and everyday applications that don’t scale cleanly across many cores.
Power use also separates the two. Estimated yearly energy costs put the Intel chip at around $22.81, while AMD’s processor sits closer to $31.03 under similar assumptions.
That combination of pricing and efficiency explains much of the cost difference. Intel trades a small amount of peak multithreaded performance for lower power draw and a much lower retail price.
AMD’s advantage shows up most clearly in heavily threaded workloads and cache-sensitive tasks, where the X3D design can still pull ahead.
While those gains exist, they don’t double performance in the way 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 pricing.
AMD still leads on absolute performance, but the premium it’s charging for this certainly looks harder to justify than it once did.
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waynewilliams@onmail.com (Wayne Williams)
