AMD vs Intel

[DWilson1997]

Hi all,

 

Currently going through a round of procurement for some new staff devices. We had started to roll out Snapdragon devices (which I have to say were perfect for us) however those devices are now end of sale and I can not obtain any more of the device type we wanted.

 

The new device has a choice between the Intel or AMD, we have always previously brought Intel, but the cost difference between the two is about £160 per device (Intel U7 being more vs AMD Ryzen 7) and I'm not sure I can justify this given the quantity we will be buying - these devices would be for teaching staff.

 

So, is anyone running AMD for the majority of staff and if so do you have any compatibility/performance issues?

 

TIA 

 

Dave

[synaesthesia]

Depends on the use case. Our staff laptops are entirely Ryzen 5 and we're extremely happy with them. Nearing 3 years old now and not dropped a beat (on their own accord, anyway!)

Regardless, if you're Windowsing then RAM is probably more of a priority than CPU.

[Norphy]

For the vast majority of use cases in the workplace, I find it extremely unlikely that anyone will notice any difference. Get whatever seems to be best value.

[3s-gtech]

We have a lot of AMD kit (laptops and desktops, 5 to 2 years old), only tiny thing we've encountered is some driver issues when using a large central dump of drivers in our MDT. Imaged with no additional drivers, fine. Intune, fine.

 

Performance and reliability wise, grand. My office PC is a 5th gen Ryzen Pro and I like it a lot.

Edited September 3 by 3s-gtech

[DalekSec]

Mix of both here, mostly interchangeable nowadays unless you run really old software.

 

Only issues we came across was certain software that doesnt make use of 4+ cores was better on Intel due to high clocks vs AMDs more threads. 

[Dos_Box]

I use a Ryzen 5 laptop as a work device, and I've been very happy with it over the past 4 (almost 5) years now, and I don't see the need to replace it anytime soon tbh.

[TwistedHelixis]

I have started to get AMD laptops, although I have had issues updating the AMD chip Drivers from our Action1 deployment software, which is a bit of a pain.

[TechMonkey]

Only issue I had was TPM entries being wrong and taking an age to update for AMD chips.  I guess they must have fixed that by now.

[psydii]

This thread is eight years behind the curve.  Back in '18/19/20-ish zen was mopping the floor with intel in price/performance and the features that schools needed. These days often the way that zen based devices out-perform on price is by actually being previous generations, and not (quite) directly comparable to either the latest zen or Intel kit.

Recently Intel seems to have better power/performance/price in types of devices we are buying. But sometimes we still go amd because last years model is "good enough" and we "don't have any money".

If the price/performance/capabilities are good enough, then there's really nothing between them, and we've had them alongside intel for eight years now.  They've been fine.

(actually our laptops with 3700G and 16gb of ram  have been astonishing, but they are ancient now)

Edited September 4 by psydii

[Fazza]

We try and buy AMD simply due to Driver support. In our experience, once an Intel device goes end of life they change the driver from their normal one to a more basic WHQL one that automatically gets installed when Windows Updates is installed and causes issues connecting to projectors/screens.  AMD on the other hand has never done that so we've been fine with them for a number of years now.

[DWilson1997]

Thanks for the helpful comments - good to sanity check. I will certainly will be choosing Ryzen instead of intel and doubling RAM 🙂

 

D