Intel, one of the biggest names in the microchip industry recently presented its “Real World” performance and usage Benchmarks. This however has been surrounded by a lot of controversies suggesting that the benchmarks are unreliable. What makes it more interesting is that these details come a month after Bob Swan, CEO Intel, told that the microchip industry should stop focusing at benchmarks. However, the details presented in the ‘Partner Connect’ program suggest that the chip giant still gives much importance to CPU benchmarks. In the new details presented by Intel, they compare Intel Core CPUs with AMD Ryzen CPUs.

The slides presented in Intel’s Partner Connect are meant for partners only in order for them to use these presentation slides in their own presentations for said products. These slides are useful in most cases providing partners with a gist of what to expect from upcoming Intel products. However, the market positioning and product benchmarks used by Intel in these slides are the main topics of the controversy.

Intel Benchmarks surrounded by Controversies:

There have already been several instances in the past where the benchmarks presented by Intel show its Core CPUs scoring big leads in comparison to AMD Ryzen CPUs. However, it was found later that these benchmarks used were tailor-made for Intel’s Core CPUs. The blue giant had to ask the media to stop relying on benchmarks like Cinebench among others as they do not reflect real-world user experiences. However, they perform in contradiction as they move ahead showing such benchmarks with discrepancies in the test conditions.

In terms of mobility, Intel compared their Comet Lake Core i7-10750H CPU based laptop against AMD’s Ryzen 9 4900HS CPU based laptops. The slides clearly show Intel laptop being consistently ahead in several games with a better performance of up to 23%. However, things seem very different when we take a closer look at the specs. In both the laptops used for comparison, feature different tier RTX 2060 GPU. The one powered by Intel is an MSI GL65 is a 90 Watt variant whereas the one used in the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is a 65W variant along with lower clocks. Intel continues to compare its 9th Gen CPUs in most gaming benchmarks against AMD Ryzen 4000 ‘Renoir’ APUs.

As we shift to the desktop side, we witness one of the most interesting slides in the presentation. The tech giant’s marketing and performance positioning suggest that their Core i7 offers the same performance as Ryzen 7. Moreover, Intel has demonstrated previously that their current generation line-up is much faster than AMD Ryzen 3000 CPU family in everything expect Cinebench. However, that is not the whole picture.

The comparison shown in the slides was made between a 16 core AMD Ryzen and 8 core Core i7 CPU. Intel claims to provide awesome gaming performance out of its CPU in just $400 than the flagship AMD part. However, they fail to take into account that if a person buying a 16 core CPU would not only do gaming. A better comparison would be AMD’s Ryzen 7 CPUs with 8 cores. It offers better multi-threaded performance than Intel CPUs with much better efficiency and lower price.

Intel also talks about the budget CPU segment. They compare the entry-level Quad-core, Core i3 performance with a Ryzen 5 3400G. They claim that even though their solution would cost higher than AMD due to an added discrete graphics card, it would deliver much better performance. They also claim that it sustains 30 FPS+ gaming at 1080p while saying that an AMD system with the same discrete GPU would cost more.

However, Intel again uses their $88 Core i3 chip against a $136 Ryzen 5 3400G which invalidates this test. AMD has the Ryzen 3 3100 in its inventory now. It offers much better performance with Zen 2 cores in a quad-core package for $99. It is a slightly higher price than the Intel CPU but with more threads and much better efficiency.

These slides remain to be questionable in terms of better performance between AMD and Intel. This endless competition between the two chip giants continues to excite fans and provide them with the best of products both companies have to offer.