Intel did have any major advances from 2nd gen all the way until the 7th. The advancements were generally small (single-digit often) IPC or clock speed improvements.
Only after AMD released Ryzen, Intel had to respond at their 8th gen by cranking up core counts. And IPC did not have any increases, until 11th gen(the backported arch you mentioned). In my opinion, the performance delta between 28nm Sandy Bridge and 14nm Kaby Lake is ridiculously small.
> In my opinion, the performance delta between 28nm Sandy Bridge and 14nm Kaby Lake is ridiculously small.
Two of my Linux workstations are Sandy Bridge and Kaby Lake, and my real world experience bears this out. I can't distinguish between the two for everyday use cases; only synthetic benchmarks show any real advantage in the newer system. I can't speak for Windows performance differences, as my only Windows system is my gaming rig with a Ryzen 5 3600, which of course trounces both of the workstations no matter the OS.
Are there still software features exclusive to Intel's chips? I remember my dabble in Android Studio was painful, since the 'simulated device' functionality was only available on Intel, while I had some FX-8??? AMD chip.
I'm not in the market for a new gaming PC quite yet, but it's also going to be a personal workstation, so I don't want to deal with anything like above if it can be helped.
Get a Ryzen. Intel is restricting many features like ECC, overclocking or virtualization (important for emulators/android development) to certain processors/chipsets. If you want to save money, get a used workstation.
Looks like it's time to update the fantasy roster on pc part picker. A shame, since it had such a nice aesthetic! The Vision D looks so clean and well-featured
By the time I get around to actually building it, there may be some similarly-styled mini-ITX AM4 motherboards, so not all hope is lost.
Only after AMD released Ryzen, Intel had to respond at their 8th gen by cranking up core counts. And IPC did not have any increases, until 11th gen(the backported arch you mentioned). In my opinion, the performance delta between 28nm Sandy Bridge and 14nm Kaby Lake is ridiculously small.