5 is the magic number. Up until March 2017 it used to be easy to decide on which CPU you wanted for that premium PC build. Hobson's choice meant that, for the vast majority, a particular Intel processor was the way to go. AMD's Ryzen, progenitor to subsequent generations, changed the landscape irrevocably.

Intel, however, has not stood absolutely still, upping its game by releasing a Core i9 raft of chips designed for top-tier performance. At the mainstream level, where Core does battle with Ryzen, the current champion is the 9900K from October 2018, and though it falls short on core-and-thread muscle compared to AMD's finest, brought into sharper relief with the availability of the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X, Intel still holds a lead in gaming throughput and, absolutely subjectively, general system responsiveness.