2017/8 State of the Hardware Art.
 

Asking as a former hardware guy who has had his head in the sand for about 5/6 years and totally lost track, (Crazy degree, followed by illness) May I ask a few very simple questions which someone here can probably throw quick answers to?

1. What's the current state of AMD vs Intel in FAB size and cpu power? (I see reports about amd using Samsung's 14nm facility and Intel going for 7nm, which I presume isn't online yet. I think that's about as fast as can be done. I don't see them getting under 5nm).
2. What's a)fastest and b)respectable bus speeds these days?
3. Are we still with APUs, or has heat driven them apart yet?
4. I presume Nvidia still leads ATI/AMD, with Intel still lagging behind. As someone who is unlikely to fork out for a 4k screen, what is the current state of play?

1. At this very second, they're the same. Both using 14nm. Intel is ready to roll out 10nm, AMD is skipping 10nm and moving directly to 7nm when it's ready.
2. CPU's no longer use a FSB
3. APU's still around. AMD just getting ready to release their desktop based Ryzen APU's in a couple months, they have 2 mobile APU's currently. Also Intel will soon be shipping with Integrated AMD while they work on improving the performance of their IGP and prepare to start releasing discrete GPU's.
4. Pretty much as you presumed.

Thank you Timothy. That allows me to get my head out of my <expletive deleted>, without the pain of reading up on all the comparative B.S., partial reviews, and sales hype. I now only have to benchmark what I'm actually considering throwing money at.

I have been told that reasons of physics make going below 5nm in wafer fab extremely difficult, and I'd believe it. Moore's law is dead because it relied on ever shrinking wafer fab, which has come down in my memory from 2 micrometers to now 14nm, and is set to reach the limit in the next few years.

EDIT: I wonder am I the only one to remember that '<expletive deleted>' from the early '70s and the Nixon tape transcripts? It seems that running an American Government involves a hell of a lot of expletives. He gave one of his last public speeches in a hall where a large banner the width of the place was held up which read: "Impeach the <expletive deleted>"

Having looked around, I can see that if I put about €100 to what I spent last time, I'll get a significant increase in power/ram/storage/graphics - which I would hardly need anyhow. OTOH, If I wait to see amd GPUs in Intel APUs, I would get a better deal if AMD parts were fitted in my kind of cheapskate machine. My last buy was in 2013, is not well specced, and is good enough most of the time still. Surprisingly, after nearly 5 years, there's no problems yet. Mind you, I'm a dab hand at optimizing trailing edge crap.

Yeah, with Bulldozer-based AMD chips having been NOWHERE near competitive with Intel, the last many years have been years of super baby steps in terms of performance. Intel would release a 3-5% increase with every generation after Sandy Bridge, not bothering to strive for any more since they had a virtual monopoly with AMD's chips performing so badly. It's not until this year that AMD finally is competitive again (with the Ryzen chips), and Intel finally released a generational increase that's more than low single digit improvement from the prior. My 7 year old AMD build that has a semi-modern AMD chip (still pre-ryzen) is still quite sufficient, but will get BADLY stomped by a modern lowish end Ryzen or Intel system.