Neither. Both intel and AMD are both companies, it’s like asking winch is a better race car, Volkswagen or Ford? If you are asking which company makes better CPUs as of March of 2018, Then the cake goes to intel.

What makes a good gaming CPU is high single core performance combined with at least 4 cores (most modern games are optimized for 4 cores). Other creature comfort like overclocking, Maximum ram, and PCIe lanes are also taken into consideration.

Essentially, our gaming CPU checklist goes as follows:

• 4+ Cores/threads*
• High Single Core performance (most important)
• 16gb+ Ram
• At least one 16x PCIe lane (2.0 or better)

*Threads are virtual cores, they usually are beneficial in workloads such as video processing and rendering but are mostly useless for gaming (some game might even see a performance decrease)*

Currently, best mid-range/Affordable gaming CPU is the 6 cores, 6 thread, 4.3ghz, i5 8600k built on the coffee lake architecture and 14nm++ transistors. This CPU has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes enabling it to run a GPU at full speed or 2 GPUs at half speed (which isn’t bad considering 8x PCIe 3.0 = 16x PCIe 2.0) and supports up to 64 gb of ram. It also is unlocked, meaning you can overclock it.

On AMD side, the best mid-range gaming CPU is the 6 cores, 12 threads, 3.6 ghz, ryzen 5 1600x built on the 14nm transistor. This CPU has 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes enabling it to run 3 GPUs without a performance decrease. Also support 64gb of ram and overclocking. However the downside of this cpu, is the ryzen having 10% less IPC than Skylake based architecture (ie Skylake, Kabylake, Coffee lake) and having lower clock speed + usually unable to be overclocked more than 4 ghz. At stock speed this cpu is about 25% slower than the Intel equivalent.

As for the absolute best gaming cpu, the crown goes to the i9 7900x. It boasts 10 cores, 20 threads and 3.3ghz clock speed built on the skylake architecture with 14nm transistors. This cpu has 44 PCIe 3.0 lanes allowing 5 GPUs. Also supports 128gb of ram. The only downside is the lower clock speed compared to the i5 8600k, which can be reminded with some overclocking (and a lot of cooling). Consensus: Coffee lake with more cores, only *slightly* better gaming performance.

As for An AMD equivalent, there isn’t any. Thread ripper has 16 cores but considering most games are optimized for 4 cores, the lower clock speed Ryzen 7 has better single core performance but still looses out to the i5 8600k. After all, these high end chips are not meant for gaming.

As for the lowish end, The best bang for your buck gaming CPU is a tie between the Intel 3.6ghz i3 8100 and 3.5ghz ryzen 3 1300x (both 4 cores and 4 threads). Initially, the i3 8100 takes the lead by having a higher single core performance but the downside is it can’t be overclocked. Both ties for performance when the ryzen is overclocked to 4 ghz.

Personally, I’ll take the i3 simply because the box is cooler.

All of these assume that you are using a dedicated GPU. If you are not, then the best Gaming CPU is the 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.6 ghz ryzen 5 2400g with integrated Vega 11 graphics which has the equivalent power of a gt 1030.

Intel simply does not have CPU with equivalence integrated graphics, the UHD 630 used in coffee lake chips such as the i3 8100 and i5 8600k is 75% slower than Vega 11.

TL;DR Intel is better with a dedicated graphics card, but AMD is better with integrated graphics*.

*only AMD ryzen 3 2200g and ryzen 5 2400g have integrated graphics while most intel CPU has integrated graphics