A history of Intel vs. AMD desktop performance, with CPU charts galore

Article note: Wow. There are some choices in that chart people will argue with, but it's a great presentation. I've been comparing the current situation to that era in the 2000s when Netburst was failing and AMD hired the old Alpha folks resulting in the early Athlon 64 parts, but AMD actually pulled harder this time.

Enlarge / Spoiler: When it comes to performance over the years, Intel is the slow and steady tortoise to AMD's speedy-but-intermittent hare. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

The comment wars between Intel and AMD fans have been hot for the last few release cycles, with a lot of digital ink spilled about which company has—or has not—improved significantly over the years. There's been no shortage of opinions about the current raw performance of each company's fastest processors, either. We thought it would be interesting to dive into archived performance benchmarks of the fastest desktop/enthusiast CPUs for each company to get a good overview of how each has really done over the years—and perhaps to even see if there are patterns to be gleaned or to make some bets about the future.

Before we dive into charts, let's start out with some tables—that way, you can see which CPUs we're using as milestones for each year. While we're at it, there are a couple of irregularities in the data; we'll discuss those also and talk about the things that a simple chart won't show you.

Twenty years of enthusiast computing

Year	Intel Model	AMD Model	Notes
2001	Pentium 4 2.0GHz (1c/1t)	Athlon XP 1900+ (1c/1t)
2002	Pentium 4 2.8GHz (1c/2t)	Athlon XP 2800+ (1c/1t)	Intel introduces hyperthreading
2003	Pentium 4 Extreme 3.2GHz (1c/2t)	Athlon XP 3200+ (1c/1t)
2004	Pentium 4 3.4GHz (1c/2t)	Athlon 64 FX-55 (1c/1t)
2005	Pentium 4 3.8GHz (1c/2t)	Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2c/2t)
2006	Pentium Extreme 965 (2c/4t)	Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2c/2t)	Intel takes the undisputed performance lead here—and keeps it for a decade straight.
2007	Core 2 Extreme QX6800 (4c/4t)	Phenom X4 9600 (4c/4t)	Intel and AMD both launch the first true quad-core desktop CPUs
2008	Core 2 Extreme X9650 (4c/4t)	Phenom X4 9950 (4c/4t)
2009	Core i7-960 (4c/8t)	Phenom II X4 965 (4c/4t)
2010	Core i7-980X (6c/12t)	Phenom II X6 1100T (6c/6t)	Intel and AMD both introduce hex-core desktop CPUs
2011	Core i7-990X (6c/12t)	FX-8150 (8c/8t)
2012	Core i7-3770K (4c/8t)	FX-8350 (8c/8t)	Intel abandons hex-core desktop CPUs—but few miss them, due to large single-threaded gains
2013	Core i7-4770K (4c/8t)	FX-9590 (8c/8t)	AMD's underwhelming FX-9590 launches—and it's Team Red's last enthusiast CPU for four long years
2014	Core i7-4790K (4c/8t)	FX-9590 (8c/8t)	Intel's 5th generation Core dies stillborn. AMD releases low-power APUs, but no successor to FX-9590
2015	Core i7-6700K (4c/8t)	FX-9590 (8c/8t)
2016	Core i7-7700K (4c/8t)	FX-9590 (8c/8t)	Strictly speaking, 2016 was an Intel whiff—Kaby Lake didn't actually launch until January 2017
2017	Core i7-8700K (6c/12t)	Ryzen 7 1800X (8c/16t)	Launch of AMD's Zen architecture, return of the Intel hex-core desktop CPU
2018	Core i9-9900K (8c/16t)	Ryzen 7 2700X (8c/16t)
2019	Core i9-9900KS (8c/16t)	Ryzen 9 3950X (16c/32t)	AMD's Zen 2 architecture launches, Intel whiffs hard in the performance segment
2020	Core i9-10900K (10c/20t)	Ryzen 9 5950X (16c/32t)	AMD's Zen 3 finally crushes Intel's long-held single-threaded performance record

Although both Intel and AMD obviously launch a wide array of processors for different price points and target markets each year, we're limiting ourselves to the fastest desktop or "enthusiast" processor from each year. That means no server processors and no High-End Desktop (HEDT) processors either—so we won't be looking at either Threadrippers or the late model XE series Intel parts.