AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GPUs are fast becoming the best-selling ones on Amazing right now, and they've earned a lot of praise from PC gamers for their dedication to native power over AI enhancements. They also wear super-reasonable price tags in comparison to most 16GB, 4K GPUs, and that's not exactly anything new for this brand. AMD has been the scrappy, undercutting underdog of the PC gaming market for a while now, but it feels like this tactic is finally starting to pay off in 2025.
The GPU market may seem like a pretty clear-cut race between Nvidia and AMD, but in truth, there are loads of horses to bet on. There's also Intel's products, there's the board partners like MSI, Asus, PNY, and Zotac, who make their own versions of each GPU and retail them for their own prices. If you're looking for a real two-horse race, you only need to look as far as the best CPUs for gaming.
Looking at Steam's hardware survey each month, you'll see a clear divide between Intel and AMD, and Intel is still way out in front. For years it's been the go-to brand that everyone knows best and aspires to get for their gaming PCs. AMD has always looked to entice budget builders, but its recent strides to engineer for content creators, gamers, and enthusiasts are starting to land them in good stead - the X3D processors it creates are swiftly becoming the most popular choices for all of those categories.
All the while, Intel hasn't had the best time of it of late. Its 13th and 14th generations of desktop processors had a major PR crisis last year as the Raptor Lake products faced widespread reports of instability. Its much-anticipated Arrow Lake, Intel Core Ultra desktop CPUs also launched late in 2024, but their gaming results have really underperformed for gamers in reviews. They're also more expensive than AMD's offerings, and thanks to a new naming scheme, they're terrifically confusing.
Topping all of that off, Intel has now moved onto a new motherboard socket, and given the company's track record, that means no more support for anyone who bought a 12th, 13th, or 14th generation processor and wants to be able to upgrade without rebuilding from scratch on a brand new motherboard. This can prove costly, and for the sorts of performance improvements Intel is demonstrating with Arrow Lake, it doesn't exactly seem worth it, does it?
There are conversations to be had about the lifespan of a gaming PC these days, and I'm not sure a system with an Alder Lake chip from 2021 has any right to be dubbed as "old".
The difference in that respect is night and day between Intel and AMD. I bought my first gaming PC in 2020 and it used a Ryzen 3000 CPU. That generation plugs into an AM4 CPU socket which first launched in 2016, and AMD is still supporting it with new, compatible processors through its extended Ryzen 5000 Series products. That's nearly a decade of support for people who don't want to upgrade to a new system, and while I'd argue that's maybe a little long in the tooth for any PC that's used for gaming on a regular basis, it's unmatched good-faith for AMD's consumers.
The Ryzen 9000 Series plugs into the AM5 socket that's been used by the Ryzen 7000 and 8000G families. This was AMD's first DDR5-compatible motherboard socket, and thanks to now three full generations of processors, there's already an amazing upgrade path for anyone who adopts this motherboard. What's more, AMD has already committed to supporting the AM5 platform through 2027 at least, so anyone who has built a PC in the last five years won't need to think about a new system again until well into the future.
This has been a particularly difficult generation to get consumers to buy into, from the perspective of AMD and Intel. The arrival of DDR5 RAM has called for new motherboards for all, but the prices of that memory combined with a new motherboard and CPU is a tidy sum for most gamers who already poured a lot of money into their DDR4 systems, let alone the best graphics cards. So for Intel to switch motherboard sockets in 2024, demanding yet another new motherboard is doing nothing but fueling AMD's momentum.
Admittedly, I haven't gone hands-on with any of the new Intel Core Ultra processors yet, but it's hard to recommend the idea of a new motherboard and CPU solely for Intel's benefit. If I were building a PC today, be it a budget, entry-level machine, or an enthusiast-grade powerhouse, I'd be building with AMD.
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