Why would I buy an AMD anything brand new when I can spend $299 and get a Core i7 based machine that only needs a decent video card to be a solid performer?
1. That Core i7 comes with a 300W, you will not be able to install a fast GPU.
What if it breaks you say? Let me help you out with that. Who gives a damn, I'll buy another and drop the video card into the new machine and sell off the working parts and STILL COME OUT AHEAD, JACKASS.
2. And you will spend more money than buying a new Core i5 Skylake.
Now, since you want to argue with me about IT, let's argue... why would any IT manager buy an AMD processor for a corporation or university? Even if you save money with the price of the CPU, guess what you don't save money on, jackass.
Power.
Intel Core i5-4570T - 35 watts. 2 cores. 4 threads. 2.9 gHz. You wanna put it up against a comparable AMD processor? I'm all for it.
You wanna compare by TDP? AMD Athlon 5350 - 25 watts. 4 cores. 4 threads. 2.05 gHz.
Core i5 4570T cost $199
Athlon 5350 cost $53
You wanna compare by performance? First off, good luck even finding an AMD processor that'll compete in the same price range... BUT EVEN IF YOU DO... GUESS WHAT HOSS... POWER. You still have to worry about... POWER.
The next AMD solution jumps up to 65 watts... minimum. Hell, An A10-7800 won't even match that processor. You're going to need to jump up to 95 watt TDP processors.
That. matters. Because when I have 600 computers to worry about, all consuming 60 more watts, that's 18000 watts, 12 hours a day, at 12 cents an hour, which is $18921.6 a year. We keep machines for 3 years. That's $56764.8 over their lifetime.
The low TDP Intel machines cost $94.60 less each over their lifetime to run.
First of all we are talking about Office PCs, those are not working at 100% 24/7.
Secondly, TDP is not energy consumption. Your 60W more power is wrong.
Have you ever done a real performance/energy benchmark ??? Let me give you one.
This is a real application using 100% the CPU for the duration of the benchmark. This is not something those Office PC will do but you get the idea of the perf/watt and real energy consumption of each system.
And here is the time to finish the benchmark, lower is better
As you can see at 55W TDP the AMD Kaveri is only consuming 20Wh more to finish the benchmark vs Core i3 4330.
The 95W Kaveri consumes 40Wh more to finish the benchmark but it is also faster than the Intel Core i3.
A8-7600 cost $90
Core i3 4330 cost $135
$45 difference
At Idle both systems hover around 22-25W
Now, if we take your 12 hours workload and assuming that all those Office PCs work at 100% non stop for those 12 hours.
20Wh x 12 hours x 365 days = 87,6 Kwh
At 12 cents per Kwh
87,6 x 0,12 =
10,5 DOLLARS per year
It will take you 4 years to close the price gap, at that time you will replace the PC anyway.
So the myth that you will spend more in electricity for the AMD CPU that will make it cost more than the Intel CPU is completely wrong.
Also,
That is only for the CPU part, if the application you run on your Office PC needs the iGPU, then the AMD APU will come on top the Intel CPU in perf/watt and perf/$ anytime.
Another workload,
Security
You have a PC working 24/7 with cameras doing Face recognition. Lets see how the AMD and Intel are doing.
That is not even funny, the 45W TDP Kaveri is close to 2x times faster than the 55W TDP more expensive Intel CPU.
Or you do Video composition, the 45W TDP AMD APU is almost 3x faster than the Intel CPU.
So you see that Intel CPUs are not always the better choice, depending on the workload the AMD APUs can be more than competitive. At some workloads the AMD APUs are far better than the Intel CPUs even at half the price and half the TDPs.