Intel Called AMD’s Ryzen 7000 Series “Snake Oil” For Including Zen2-Based Models

Intel Called AMD’s Ryzen 7000 Series “Snake Oil” For Including Zen2-Based Models

What we’re about the describe next most likely fits the definition of name-calling: Intel recently released a slide deck titled “Core Truths”, which was aimed to explain the nuance behind the latest CPU models to its customers. However, the company pretty much blatantly called out AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series for being a ‘snake oil’ product, for its inclusion of Zen2 architecture in some models.

Here’s some background – AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series is the first revamp of the company’s mobile lineup by including multiple generations of core architectures into a single model family. To that end, it also changed its naming system by labeling core architectures in the third digit (i.e. 7840U uses Zen4, 7735HS uses Zen3+, etc.) Despite that, Intel argues that AMD is using old architecture “hidden in plain sight”.

The example used in the slides is the Ryzen 5 7520U, which is part of the refreshed Zen2 lineup codenamed “Mendocino” (the original Zen2 is named “Renoir”, for reference.) Context: compared to the original Renoir architecture, the refreshed Mendocino-based chips feature updated LPDDR5 memory support, as well as RDNA2-based onboard graphics. Renoir only supports (LP)DDR4 and Vega graphics, by comparison.

The company makes the point that one should be using the latest technology, as its 13th Gen processors depict; and compares the performance differences of both chips, which proved the Core i5-1335U to be vastly superior.

Calling this ‘snake oil’ is at the very least disingenuous on Intel’s part. The last time Team Blue mocked Team Red, it was due to the fact that AMD was using chiplets for its processors – which Intel has infamously called it a “glued-together” chip. Since then, AMD has long dominated the datacenter market thanks to its vastly superior performance and metrics, and is still chipping away Intel’s market share as we speak.

However, it looks like the slides (which is likely aimed towards educational institutions) have since been taken down from Intel’s website – though you can view the slides in its entirety courtesy of Videocardz.

Pokdepinion: That’s not so nice from Team Blue.