15-20 years ago, Intel was caught actively hobbling AMD CPUs. In 2010, there was a settlement that gave AMD perpetual access to the x86 license.
The active hobbling has continued to be a problem all the way through the 2020's. Whether it's a problem because of legacy code and compilers or because Intel has actively dragged their feet on fixing it… well, that's anyone's guess.
I think that this flew under the radar in the gaming community, and is probably worth re-posting now to remind people that this isn't the first time.
This is a long pattern of corporate behavior.
Not all companies act like this.
Links to all these articles/blogs, in order:
https://medium.com/codex/fixing-intel-compilers-unfair-cpu-dispatcher-part-1-2-4a4a367c8919
11 Comments
Yup, adoredtv covers some of it as well.
*Adds intel to the list of fortune 500 companies that’s anti-consumer.*
I had a 1.2 Ghz Athlon as a child while Intel was still releasing 600Mhz Pentium 3s, and Intel promptly campaigned that clockspeeds dont matter.
Irony of the matter was that even with equal clockspeeds AMDs architecture at the time was superior, and it caused Intel to develop the Pentium 4 with its ill-fated 31 step pipeline (to get their IPC on par) and much higher clocks, but all they really did was create a CPU that kept stalling every time the branch prediction went wrong and the pipeline had to start from scratch. Which happened a lot. Especially in games badly optimized for it.
I love pro-AMD fans. lol
hobbling?
Intel’s past is littered with bullshit. Then people will come out of the woodwork and say BuT AmD aRe NoT YoUr FrIeNd, ThEy wOuL Do THis if TheY CouLD!!11!!
No. First, fuck AMD, but FUCK this bullshit! AMD didn’t pay competitors to not sell intel, Intel did. AMD didn’t advertise a processor attached to an illegal industry fucking chiller as the normal expected clock speeds, intel did. AMD didn’t imply that AMD are snake oil salesmen, Intel did. AMD didn’t move their launch to 12 hours just to say ‘fastest CPU’, intel did. And during this fiasco, AMD didn’t hide the fact that THEY KNEW about a processor’s issue for close to a fucking year, but said nothing and gaslit everyone. Intel did. AMD, who was in a position of power, did take responsibility when motherboards were burning with the launch of the 7000 series.
Look, AMD are not saints. It is true that their behavior will likely change once they become market leaders. But ignoring all of their history in pursuit of this hypothetical dystopia? Especially when the implication is that they will be as despicable as Intel? Fuck this bullshit and fuck those who perpetuate it. They scream that ‘brand loyalty’ is stupid, but then go and buy an inferior intel processor because ‘it is 1% faster in some few games’.
Intel as a company acts as a dispicable piece of shit, and it is about time they get financially fucked for it and forced to fucking change.
Lets not forget that dogshit Intel compiler is still in some games today and for example it took CDPR 2 YEARS to remove it from Cyberpunk since its launch. (And AMD still being faster there must have had Intel execs fuming hard.)
Shadey and anti consumer si they can sit doing little and being constantly fluffed for it. Look how fast the landscape changed once AMD got back in the game.
No deep love for either of them, I’d have been happy with anyone getting in/back in the game and showing intel up.
I sat on a 2600k (clocked within an inch of it’s life) from release till a 2700x.
# It is INSANE the PC community thinks AMD “couldn’t compete” back around 2010-20216. Intel paid EVERY major retailer to NOT BUY from AMD and did the same to OEM’s like Dell, HP, etc. WORLDWIDE! For about 10 years during the time AMD made better CPU’s.
# Before that they broke agreements to supply AMD back when AMD was a “second source” company for them, and they’ve been dragging AMD to court in cases they knew they would lose in the end since 1985. Just to drag out the decisions ands make sure it was too late for AMD to actually sell any chips.
# Zealous intel fans are mostly ignorant Sandy Bridge babies who got into PC gaming when Skyrim came out. AMD didn’t have the money to quickly move to Zen before 2016.
Most synthetic “industry standard” benchmark suites carry a legal disclaimer somewhere about intel.
CPU Userbenchmark is crying in a corner rn