AMD gunning for Intel with claim new chip outperforms market leader's

Intel hits back, questioning credibility of AMD's testing

Chip maker AMD threw down the gauntlet to its long-term rival Intel with the unveiling of its third-generation Ryzen central processing unit (CPU).

AMD CEO Lisa Su took to the stage at the Computex computer event in Taipei to launch the firm's third-generation Ryzen microprocessor.

She claimed the new chips, which are based on AMD's Zen architecture, outperformed a comparable processor from Intel by more than 16 per cent during internal testing. The new Ryzen chips will be released in July, retailing at $500 (£395) - half the price of Intel's competing product.

Not one to back down in the long-running battle between the pair, Intel told CNBC that AMD was comparing the new Ryzen against an older Intel chip.

"AMD's system was tuned, yet they made this comparison with the older product without the latest software tuned for the workload. If they had, the second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors will take the top spot," an Intel spokesperson stated.

The two vendors have locked horns for several decades, but fuel has been added to the fiery feud in the past 18 months with AMD benefiting from Intel's ongoing chip shortage woes.

AMD has previously hailed its Ryzen CPU for driving the chip maker's growing presence in the market.

In its most recent Q1 - which ended 30 March 2019 - it reported revenue of $1.27bn, representing a 23 per cent drop year on year.

However, the CEO praised the performance of its Ryzen offerings as a revenue driver for the firm.

"We delivered solid first-quarter results with significant gross margin expansion as Ryzen and EPYC processor and datacentre GPU revenue more than doubled year over year," Su said at the time.

"We look forward to the upcoming launches of our next-generation 7nm PC, gaming and datacentre products which we expect to drive further market share gains and financial growth."

Intel's ongoing chip shortage woes have been a boon to AMD, whose Ryzen products have helped boost its share of the CPU market significantly in the past 18 months.

AMD's share price rose nearly 10 per cent the morning after Su's announcement, while Intel's dropped two per cent, further fuelling analyst anticipation that AMD is set to nab more of the PC processor market from its rival.

AMD also unveiled its Radeon RX 5700-series GPU and third-generation Epyc chips for servers at the event.