I’m on my first all-AMD system in years (7600x) and could not be happier. Performance is fantastic. Good enough that I mostly leave it in Eco mode, since I’m also using an air cooler for it.
Not that it is directly CPU-relataed, but my gaming rig runs Linux, which is something I never thought would be a thing, and to that end: if you are running Linux, extra points for AMD on the GPU front, since the drivers are in the kernel.
For a while Intel’s QuickSync was I think one of the better for transcoding (e.g., for Jellyfin). Didn’t see mention of this in the article, I wonder if AMD is on par now?
On Linux VA-API works really well for AMD video encoding. I have a small home server with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G and my experience has been excellent.
The only downside is that some companies decided hardware decoding violated some patent and disabled hardware encoding in the default va-api package. You just need to switch to the freeworld version of va-api and everything works well.
AMD wins on gaming and only is a little slower on productivity benchmarks for which the Intel CPUs require a nuclear reactor and they conclude that intel wins?!
back from the article: looks like Toms HW gives a winner per section and it goes back and forth. Matching/winning gaming with less power, I personally agree with OP title that it’s AMD. But article goes into a whole bunch of sections.
I am trying to shop around for a new gaming laptop, but I’m having a hard time finding something that is Linux friendly and has AMD CPU and GPU, and is of the highest end possible so I don’t have to upgrade it in a year (and if it’s expandable, even better). I’ve looked at the Framework, and before you spout off about how great it is: have you actually owned one? I’m finding more and more that they are flimsy and just aren’t quite “there” yet, but I hope that changes soon because the concept is what we need in laptops. Anyway, I can’t seem to find anything on the higher end that has both CPU and GPU from AMD. If anyone has a link, feel free to drop it.
Despite what people say, Nvidia is certanly the one with most complete support for Linux… if support for a OS is defined by how Windows is supported.
The way GPU are supported on Windows is this: Microsoft pick your whole experience, then you install the setup.exe with a bunch of bloat and some advertisement from the OEM (Nvidia or the Nvidia’s GPU resellers like EVGA, ASUS…)
If you stick with the most popular distro which have the exact Linux kernel Nvidia support… yeah, nothing can beat Nvidia. You have amazing support for nearly every feature your GPU offer (cuda, ray tracing etc), but if you want to try some kind more exotic flavour of Linux, expect problem.
AMD, being much more OpenSource friendly, it mean you can have the top notch 3D acceleration on basically anything, even Puppy Linux ( a ~200MiB Linux live distro), but if you’re looking for more advanced features (like OpenCL of LLM support)… well, good luck with that: eventually, someday, they also will work (if meanwhile AMD don’t drop support your card if too old).
There’s no perfect answer. Despite the flaws, people in the Linux community love AMD because they give drive support in the “Linux’s way”. Nvidia support is better, but it’s the “Window’s way”, and you need to stick to the rules on what Nvidia consider “Linux” (which, for short, is “Canonical’s Ubuntu”)
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