For April fools I have decided to cover the biggest joke I could think of-
and that’s the site, Userbenchmark. First of all, I have nothing against this site! In fact I love
it. It’s very entertaining. If you use it like I do then there’s nothing wrong with it- just don’t
use it for anything other than entertainment- because the site isn’t what it seems!
Because whoever writes the product summaries on this site really, really hates AMD. It has become
a habit for me to regularly look up products on this site to see what they have to say on them,
because without fail, they’ll praise Intel and shun AMD. And this has only got more
entertaining as AMD’s products have got better! It wasn’t too hard to criticise AMD’s processors
a few years ago, because Intel really was a lot better than AMD. This is probably why I
didn’t know about this site until relatively recently- because their views on products were
quite similar to everybody else’s on the topic. But all this changed with Ryzen, which was when
AMD’s products were suddenly actually rather good again. With every generation of Ryzen processor,
AMD has closed the gap with Intel. They have gained market share, and with it,
this site’s biases have become increasingly apparent. And with the latest products the
summaries are, literally, ridiculous. We’ll start this story in 2016:
AMD processors sucked, and Intel processors went up to 4 cores, 8 threads, and had done for years.
If you wanted anything more than that you had to spend a LOT more money.
But all this changed in 2017, when AMD released the Ryzen 1000 series. At any given price-point,
AMD offered MORE CORES AND THREADS than Intel did. Most famously, their 1600 processor offered 12
threads for $220, which was 3 times more threads than Intel’s competing i5s had. Although a bit
behind for single core performance, it was an absolute bloodbath in anything multi-threaded.
The flagship product was the Ryzen 1800X: 8 cores, 16 threads. There wasn’t much point in getting
this since the cheaper models offered similar specs for a lot less money. But I’m showing this
so you know what userbenchmark was like back then: they loved this processor. They say it offers a
staggering level of multi-core performance. And I agree with all of that- in fact,
they’re even more generous than I am by saying that it’s only 9% behind Intel’s CPU for IPC,
when I think in practice it was often slower than this. Not that it mattered too much,
since it was still very fast, and the increased number of cores more than made up for it. But
yeah: there you have it- in 2017, Userbenchmark thought AMD’s Ryzen processors were excellent.
They called the 1600 the best value for money six core CPU they had seen to date.
And they’re even kind on the Ryzen 3 CPUs, which, of the lineup, were arguably the weakest
competition. But Userbenchmark still sings their praises and points out their strengths.
All in all, I agree completely with this site in 2017! Which… might be
why I didn’t know much about it back then. Later that year, Intel released their first
mainstream 6 core processor: the 8700K. And it was a good one! And I agree with Userbenchmark’s
summary on this product, stating that it’s a lot better. They even acknowledge how good AMD is,
saying that ‘Intel once again, has to compete’. Now onto 2018, and the Ryzen 2000 series.
And this is where the fun starts! Of all the Ryzen generations, the 2000 series was the smallest step
up, being just a refined version of the 1000 series. But it still offered more performance
for less money. But userbenchmark didn’t seem to like this one as much.
They acknowledge that it offers better value for money for workstation users,
but that streamers should look elsewhere, implying they’ll drop frames with this processor.
I don’t think I disagree with any of this, but it seems odd that they’d mention the 2700X’s page,
when it was the most capable processor for this sort of activity at the time.
They do at least point out that it beats Intel for multi-core, but is slower if you limit it to a
single or quad-core situation. Which I agree with. But this would all change with AMD’s Ryzen 3000
series, which was where AMD finally closed the gap and matched Intel for single-core performance!
Just weeks before the Ryzen 3000 series came out, however, Userbenchmark changed
how they rated processors. With more and more processors with more than 4 cores being released,
the site decided to… change the ratings to favour fewer cores. Single core was bumped up from 30%
to 40% of a processor’s result, quad core was dropped down from 60% to 57%, and multi-core,
the rating that accounted for the whole processor, was dropped from 10% down to just 2%.
They argue that multi-core performance isn’t suitable for desktop PCs because typical
workloads rarely exceed 2 cores. That’s right: Userbenchmark thinks you only need 2 cores.
This change to how processors were reviewed was great for Intel, which up until then
were typically faster than AMD’s CPUs per core. With so much emphasis on single-core,
strange situations began to arise where a flagship AMD CPU would get beaten by Intel’s cheapest-
which bore no resemblance to real life performance whatsoever. There were many crazy examples of this
happening. Really silly looking stuff. Even the uninformed viewer would look at
this and think something strange was going on. Userbenchmark basically became a meme with this
sort of stuff, and before long their site was being banned from places around the internet.
You can understand it getting banned from AMD’s subreddit… but Userbenchmark had become
such a meme that it even got banned from Intel’s subreddit, because their site no
longer made any sense whatsoever, and its results no longer conformed with reality.
But like I said, just a few weeks after this change, the Ryzen 3000 series came
out. And finally, AMD achieved parity with Intel in all but fringe cases! They offered
similar single-core performance, and better multi-core performance to Intel processors.
And this is where Userbenchmark’s summaries began to get really interesting. Now AMD wasn’t behind
in any meaningful way, you’d think Userbenchmark would begin praising AMD’s processors-
but the summary slagged it off for being bundled with a free cooler, went off on a
lengthy tangent about overclocking with a custom cooler, then spent the second half of the review
slagging AMD off for offering worse EFPS. What’s EFPS? Userbenchmark argues that FPS
doesn’t represent the fps you get, so created an alternative measurement that only they seem able
to measure called EFPS. How does it work? I’m not really sure. It seems like they manually record
benchmarks using all kinds of CPUs and GPUs, though recent CPUs have only been tested with a
Geforce 2060 Super, which limits EFPS’s potential somewhat. Surprise, surprise, AMD performs badly
in these tests. For instance, the 10700K is 12% faster than the new Ryzen 5600X in Fortnite. The
9600K is 11% faster… and even the Ryzen 3600 is 9% faster. Either Userbenchmark’s wrong here, or the
entire rest of the world is. Who am I to say. In one of the videos explaining EFPS,
they showcase AMD hardware stuttering terribly in games. I believe they claim these stutters
are something to do with AMD’s inferior memory controllers and latency compared with Intel,
which comes as a result of AMD using multiple chips connected together instead of one big one.
There’s some truth to the memory latency here. But strangely, Userbenchmark is the only site
to show it impacting results so noticeably and catastrophically.
So there you go: AMD CPUs are worse than Intel’s. And this is where my fascination with the site
comes from- because with each generation of CPUs, I excitedly read all of the reviews for them, look
at all of the benchmarks, then jump on over to userbenchmark to see how they’ve managed to twist
the results to make AMD look bad, and Intel, good. And I have a treat for you:
because the story doesn’t end here! Because the new generation of AMD and
Intel CPUs have been released. And AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series is better in every
measurable metric. It’s fast for multicore. It’s the FASTEST for singlecore. And the memory latency
is less than anything else out there. So let’s see what userbenchmark has to say about the 5800X-
the fastest 8 core, 16 thread CPU out there. They say it’s better value… than another AMD CPU…
I even disagree with this statement. But then they go on to say that it doesn’t stand a chance
against Intel, claiming that Intel’s much cheaper 9600K is just as good as the 5800X, and that
gamers that do not wish to pay ‘marketing fees’ can invest those savings in a better GPU’.
So SUDDENLY, when AMD is faster than Intel in every conceivable measurement, Userbenchmark
argues that none of this matters because you can save money by getting a cheaper CPU.
Incredible. To be honest, I do agree. I don’t get their fixation on gaming and ONLY gaming,
but it is much more about GPU than it is about CPU. So let’s take a look at a cheap,
fast 4 core AMD CPU like the 3300X. …and suddenly they’ve flipped back to
‘AMD isn’t fast enough’, while finding space to praise Intel for its encoding performance.
Which is nothing to do with gaming. Like I said, I am endlessly entertained
by Muserbenchark’s imagination and creativity. It’s written to confirm the
biases of people who already think Intel’s the best, or to convince people who don’t
understand hardware enough to know any better. But I DO know my hardware, and I can see EXACTLY
what they’re doing here; they know they’re being dishonest because they’re happy to use
half-truths whenever it benefits their purpose to do so. But ONLY when it benefits them. These half
truths may be half true, but it’s the half that isn’t that’s being used to mislead people here.
Like, anybody who knows their stuff will be rightfully pissed off with this bit, where they
claim there’s no upgrade path for gamers beyond the 3300X so they’ll be forced to buy a new Intel
system. What a kick in the teeth, given how this Ryzen platform will allow you to slip a far more
powerful processor into the system than the Intel platform will. What a manipulative way of wording
‘if you DEMAND a single digit performance increase in GAMING, you must buy a new PC’. And then
to shoot down AMD’s powerful CPUs as being too expensive whenever they outperform Intel. It’s
manipulative, deceptive, and they 100% know it. And then to play the victim, and to accuse
everybody else of being paid shills. Stroke of manipulative genius.
I could spend hours and hours trying to untangle their web of half-truths,
but there’s a simpler explanation: For any Intel CPU they praise it on what it is,
while for any AMD CPU it’s criticised for what it isn’t. So the next thing I’m looking forward to
is how they rate the upcoming 4 core AMD APUs, which seem to have everything they want. Like,
I can’t personally see how they could possibly criticise them- but I know they’ll find a way.
The problem with this site is that it’s big, and influential among people who know nothing
about computer hardware other than whatever comes top of google search- which more often than not,
is Busermenchark’s site. But to see such brazen favouritism from such a large
site, is staggering. It’s ‘alternative facts’ levels of deception. It’s trying to re-write
reality- and I’m, not sure why! They claim there’s some kind of global conspiracy against them,
but their disdain for the rest of the community simply comes across as hostile and unprofessional.
This site isn’t just disagreeing with other sites- they are contradicting the very things
that userbenchmark used to say! Since their glowing review of Ryzen in 2017, AMD’s processors
have only become better and more competitive, yet their reviews on this site have only become
more negative and increasingly full of… hatred. Unnecessary, unwarranted hatred. SOMETHING is
going on behind the scenes here. There has to be. Because I accept that, no matter how good AMD’s
processors are, userbenchmark will NEVER acknowledge that they’re better than
Intel’s. But here’s a thought: what if, instead of AMD’s processors being good,
what if Intel’s processors were bad? Like, so bad, surely nobody could write a good review of them?
Intel’s newest flagship product, the 11900K, is not a good processor. Every review of it has
said the same thing: it’s hot and power hungry, and its cores aren’t even the fastest any more.
Plus, it’s priced terribly, being way too expensive for what it is, putting its 8 cores
in direct comparison with AMD’s vastly superior 12 core processor, and even Intel’s superior
previous-gen 10 core product. It’s a joke. Oh, userbenchmark. All your shifting goalposts,
all your odd skews of perception, they’ve backed you into a corner- and it’s all come pouring out
gloriously in your review of Intel’s 11900K. I can be as scathing as I like about userbenchmark.
But nothing makes them look worse than their very own words.
Ladies and gentlemen, for April Fools I proudly present to you Userbenchmark’s fully serious,
supposedly ‘professional’ review of Intel’s latest flagship processor.
The i9-11900K is the fastest CPU in Intel’s 11th Gen Rocket Lake-S lineup. Rocket Lake
brings higher IPC (early samples indicate +19%) and 50% stronger integrated graphics. There are
several 500 series chipset improvements including: 20 PCIe4 CPU lanes (up from 16) and USB 3.2 Gen
2x2 (20 Gbps up from 10 Gbps). Rocket Lake’s IPC uplift translates to around a 10% faster Effective
Speed than both Intel's 10th Gen and AMD’s 5000 series. Despite Intel’s performance lead, AMD
continues to outsell Intel. Given Intel's colossal R&D operation, it's bewildering that their
marketing remains so neglected. Little effort is made to counter widespread disinformation such as:
“it uses too much electricity”, or the classic: “it needs more cores”.
Intel’s samples are often distributed to reviewers that appear better incentivized to
bury Intel's products rather than review them realistically. Not enabling XMP or only testing
with BIOS power limits enabled is akin to leaving the handbrake on during a timed lap, sackable. A
mind-numbing list of irrelevant “scientific” and rendering benchmarks are presented as gospel.
When it's convenient, unrepresentative canned game benchmarks are chosen e.g. ulletical’s
CSGO which runs at nearly double the in-game fps. Different games, mostly unplayed by real users,
are cherry picked for each “review”. At every release, AMD’s marketers circle overhead
coordinating narratives to ensure another feast of blue blubber ensues. Credible benchmark data,
which necessarily includes replicable video footage from popular games, is the exception
rather than the rule. Nonetheless, towards the end of 2021, Intel’s Golden Cove is due to offer
an additional 20-30% performance increase. At that time, with a net 30-40% performance lead,
Intel will probably regain significant market share despite AMD's class-leading marketing.