State of the CPU

Earlier this year I wrote about AMD’s comeback, as their processors were being included in more than half of the workstations we sold. It has been a few months now, marked by a lot of hardware shortages in this industry, so I wanted to revisit the situation and look at some additional metrics regarding CPU sales here at Puget Systems.

AMD – Return of the King?

Back in 2015, we quietly dropped AMD processor options from our workstations. At the time, I wrote a post explaining what had happened, and ended it with a hope that AMD would come back someday with a more competitive CPU. That did, in fact, happen – and over the last couple of years we have seen them surge back into our product line with a vengeance!

New CPU Announcement: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X

AMD has launched the top-end model in their 3rd gen Ryzen processor family, a 16-core processor named Ryzen 9 3950X! We’ve tested it across a wide range of real-world applications, and are very excited about being able to offer this CPU in our workstations after AMD releasesĀ itĀ for sale November 25th, 2019.

Stop Directly Comparing CPU Specs

Every time a new generation of CPUs is announced, I see a number of people writing about how they think it will be faster (or slower) than current technology because of the advertised specifications. CPU specs alone don’t tell the whole story, though, and comparing core count and clock speed across different brands or generations of processors is extremely misleading. Stop doing it!

Intel & AMD: The 2017 CPU Wars

AMD is releasing a whole spectrum of new CPUs this year, from the consumer oriented Ryzen to the server-class Epyc. In response, Intel has accelerated their normal processor release cadence and is putting out new products across the board as well. We are here to explain a bit about what is going on, what to look forward to, and whether it is worth waiting for.

Windows 7: The End is Nigh

Windows 7 updates are being limited by Microsoft on the latest processor platforms, and in combination with the other issues we’ve seen lately when installing Windows 7 we are now only listing it as an option on well-supported configurations… until we run out of licenses, then it’s over.