AMD's Ryzen 5000 has crushed the CPU opposition, but what can Intel do to fight back?

AMD unleashed its Zen 3 architecture on the world this week, and we've had a chance to push it through our benchmarking suite: with our reviews of the Ryzen 9 5900X and the Ryzen 7 5800X. We've also just taken delivery of the Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 5 5600X so you can expect reviews of those bad boys to drop shortly.

In the meantime, if you want to know what we think about AMD's update to its Zen architecture, then may I suggest you sit down in your most comfortable of chairs, throw another smokeless log on the fire, grab a glass of something warming, and listen to Alan and Dave from the PC Gamer hardware team discuss Zen 3's finer points.

Just click that embedded video above and get cosy.

We discuss what's so exciting with the new architecture, where it performs best, which chips we're eyeing up for our next builds, and whether this is the chip that Batman would use for his own PCs.

We then consider what this means for Intel, and whether Rocket Lake or Alder Lake has what it takes to come back swinging.

Alan has been writing about PC tech since before 3D graphics cards existed, and still vividly recalls having to fight with MS-DOS just to get games to load. He fondly remembers the killer combo of a Matrox Millenium and 3dfx Voodoo, and seeing Lara Croft in 3D for the first time. He's very glad hardware has advanced as much as it has though, and is particularly happy when putting the latest M.2 NVMe SSDs, AMD processors, and laptops through their paces. He has a long-lasting Magic: The Gathering obsession but limits this to MTG Arena these days.