Intel’s cheaper CPUs now challenge AMD’s high end pricing logic

I’ve already written about Intel quietly taking control of the low end of the desktop CPU market, where chips priced around $200 now offer performance that used to sit far higher up the stack.

However, making things even more uncomfortable for AMD is the fact that a similar pattern is creeping into the high end, where Team Red’s pricing no longer stretches as far as it once did.

A comparison between AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X and Intel’s Core Ultra 7 265KF shows why. On paper, the Ryzen part looks comfortably dominant with 16 cores and 32 threads, while Intel’s chip tops out at 20 threads using a mix of performance and efficiency cores. Benchmark results, however, tell a less dramatic - and far more interesting - story.