Some Frustration with Intel

My Kobo Bookstore

Okay, so here’s the thing: I hate Intel with a burning passion. I don’t mean it for reasons aside from my own experiences with their processors. Sure, I’ll admit that the processors are capable, no doubt, I’ve just been brand-loyal to AMD, occasionally playing around with some of the more quirky options in 86Box (VIA, Cyrix, IDT WinChip, the NEC V20), and, looking at the evidence, I feel like I made the right decision. Don’t get me wrong, Intel processors have always had their pros (namely availability… name the last time you saw a computer without the Intel logo hiding somewhere), but I’ve noticed that, over the past few years, it feels like they’ve stopped innovating. When I had to get a new laptop a few months ago, predictably, I ended up getting myself a ThinkPad T14. I had done my research, and the Intel models generally had the fans going more often than not, whereas the AMD models didn’t have to deal with that. Yeah, the fans come on sometimes, but that’s mostly when I’m working with the thing in bed at night, or if the temperature is already sweltering. I could rant on and on about how I’ve always known Intel CPUs to run hot, but it goes a bit deeper than that. If you look into historical processors, then you’ll find that the modern 64-bit instruction set (x86_64) is actually called amd64.

Yup, they developed it. AMD Athlon 64.

Now, I’m sure I already have (and heavily-so), but I don’t want to proselytize. In a way, to me (apart from the nostalgia), it’s a similar situation to the Amiga 1000 computer: you can use it as an Amiga, you can use it as a Macintosh, and (with a sidecar), you can use it as an XT-class IBM PC. I mention the sidecar on that last one, mainly because, if you do it all in software, the PC emulation is notoriously slow- the sidecar is basically a self-contained IBM. Anyway, back to my original thought.

Intel did create the x86 platform, I won’t deny that, but AMD (as with the other manufacturers, in some way, shape, or form) has innovated it to a degree. Sure, I’ll admit that an AMD Ryzen 7 badge is probably more suited to gaming PCs (or so the stereotype goes, I don’t subscribe to it, regardless), but to me, it’s a very powerful processor. My last computer (which I’d like to get fixed… if I learn to solder, it’s a five-minute job… seriously) has an Intel Core i5 in it. I’ll admit that it was a few years old, but, in 86Box, running anything newer than about a /486-class machine with Windows 3.1 (if it made use of enhanced mode for any networking, it wasn’t happy). I mention that because I make extensive use of that software (as mentioned in last week’s post), not just for writing, but also for various software titles that, God-forbid, cannot run on a 64-bit copy of Windows. Sure, the old computer has Linux on the hard drive, but Wine and VirtualBox also exist, and I’m also aware of some of the tricks to get Windows 11 to run 16-bit titles, but that's just not something I'm willing to deal with, not to mention that most of that stuff starts to look a bit poorly-designed at resolutions bigger than 1024×768 and none of it was designed with a high-DPI screen in mind (the screen at my desk isn’t an issue, but the one on my laptop is scaled to 150% by default). Ignoring the screen issue and the issues around Windows 11, 64-bit Windows, and Wine, there’s just something that’s lost when running those ancient titles outside of their environment. On some of them, I have done tests between the Intel and AMD options (as well as other choices, occasionally), and, from most of my testing, it seems like the AMD CPUs do have somewhat better performance. Granted, all of this came from an emulator on a modern computer while being timed with a stopwatch, so I wouldn’t take that as the end-all-be-all.

Personally, I’d like for whoever is reading this to do their own research as, part of my brand loyalty here is colored by nostalgia, likely keeping me from being as objective as I’d like to be.