So after a day of watching reviews and such, I think my overall feelings with Alder Lake is this.
At the top end, it's kinda meh. When AMD was able to beat Intel in workstation and gaming with their 5000 series, it felt like a David vs Goliath situation. It was impressive because AMD who went nearly bankrupt was able to not only beat Intel's current line up (10th gen) but next gen line up (11th gen). That to me was quite the "wow" factor. Intel reclaiming it's throne with Alder Lake, especially with such a low margin feels a lot more meh because they have all this tech and even then, it's only 12%sh faster in average and not in every task. If it was more like 20% on average, I'd be much more impressed but it feels like a pretty meh rendition.
At the budget end, it's epic. The fact that an i5 12600k is able to compete against 5800X in production workloads while being faster than a 5950x in gaming is nuts. And if the leaks of the much cheaper 12400 is true, than that would be insane value.
Overall, it will be interesting to see what Zen 3D does. Hopefully it's not just at the top end but rather, AMD can finally give something to the budget users as well. For now, Alder Lake S is the go to platform thanks to its new technologies and such. If Intel can keep Alder Lake S priced right, least in the budget segment, AMD may not continue to have an answer.
PC Specs: CPU: 7800X3D || GPU: Strix 4090 || RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000 || Main SSD: WD 2TB SN850
