Up For Debate – Have you switched your PC gaming CPU brand recently?

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Put together a new PC build and you’ve got yourself a binary decision when it comes to CPU brand, if not the specific CPU itself – Intel or AMD. It’s not the easiest decision to make, particularly in today’s market, but at some point, you’ve got to fall down on the side of one or the other. Both brands have plenty to offer at whatever price point you’re after, whether that’s top-end Intel Core i9 performance or the latest AMD Ryzen integrated chips.

Unfortunately, Intel as a brand has always been difficult to love. It is the epitome of bland. While Nvidia and AMD battle it out with Super RTX, Radeon Instinct, and Ryzen, Intel branding looks as if it was designed by your mate’s dad who thought Windows Vista was the best OS of all time.

In the end, though, performance has always won through. Intel has been Captain Consistent for the past two decades. While AMD rise and fall like a wave pool, Intel soldiers on. Not sure which CPU to get in your new desktop or laptop? Get an Intel just to be safe.

Yet AMD’s wave is cresting once more. Generation after generation, AMD Ryzen is a growing force. If Ryzen didn’t get you, and you managed to resist Ryzen 2000, then the 7nm Ryzen 3000 series looks impossible to resist. While we’re still eagerly awaiting the definitive benchmarks, it looks likely as if AMD is going to blow Intel away in terms of price to performance.

With such a dramatic shift in the CPU market over the last two to three years, we’d expect the walls to come crashing down in terms of brand loyalty. There will always be those who are die-hard Intel or AMD fans, sticking to their favourite like a limpet. Yet there’s a contingent of floaters who can see through the fluff to find the best option for themselves and who have surely jumped ship for one reason or another in recent times.

However, despite AMD’s Ryzen power plays in recent years, AMD’s market share amongst Steam users is barely budging an inch. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, some 82% of PC gamers are using Intel CPUs, compared to just 18% for AMD. Considering the progress AMD has made with Ryzen, why aren’t more gamers opting for Team Red?

So we thought it would be interesting to find out just how much moving and shaking there is going on in the CPU market right now. Select whichever option applies for you in the poll and let us know why you chose Intel or AMD in the comments section below!

Our Favorite Comments

“I wanted a threadripper simply for the fact that with 3D editing suiting it works a lot better. Regarding the 1920X, I really wanted to go for it but sadly in my country PC Parts are really expensive and it was more than double the price at the time of building my PC”

bz2496 –

“Always been on the blue team. From p4 to c2d, i7-2600, 4790K and now 8086K. But if i was to build a pc now i would go with AMD.”

boiler88 –

“Apart from when Windows downloaded a spectre update that crashed my pc, I have no regrets about switching to AMD. better performance per cost at the £200 level”

risiblewilbury –

“I switched about a year and a half ago after living almost my entire life (the past 20 or so years) exclusively on Intel CPUs, while I mainly game, the fact that you get 90% of the performance at close to half the price of equivalent (or stronger) Intel cpu’s sold it for me.”

wrathfulwraith –