In a little more than a week, an old adversary in the CPU market will be making a massive comeback. Not many people have heard of them in recent years, but the semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has been around for decades, battling away with Intel, the only other giant in the market, in the sparsely populated desktop processor market. Now AMD is back in the big game, bringing proper competition in the market, lowering prices and higher performance.

For 10 years, ever since Intel first released their Core series CPUs, AMD has been the underdog in the CPU market. They have fallen behind year after year in the past, as they failed to bring a CPU that topped Intel’s extremely successful “Tick-Tock” production model.

In recent years, Intel has become complacent, driving up prices of high end processors. Their most prized feat, the tactic that made them dominant in the market, was their “Tick-Tock” production model. Intel eventually retired the that product, which once made them dominant in the market.  They found continuing the advancement of the CPU production process as less profitable in the wake of a market without any high-end competition.

This has set the stage for AMD’s comeback with a brand new CPU architecture, called Ryzen. Ryzen will be AMD’s first made-from-scratch CPU architecture in five years. What the company has confidently shown is extremely promising. AMD’s flagship product, the highest performance desktop CPU they are about to release, is the R7 1800X. It will go up against Intel’s i7-6900k, the highest performing desktop CPU that Intel has to offer. AMD’s will go for $600 less, at a $499 MSRP, even though it operates at the same performance.

High performance for a fraction of the cost is what is getting computer hardware enthusiasts so excited. With the reintroduction of proper true market competition in the desktop CPU market, the whole “arms race” for the performance crown will reengage from its former five-year stall. Ideally, AMD and Intel will fiercely compete for who has the best and the fastest CPU, which will lead further innovation. Aspiring content creators and video editors considering dropping capital for high performance computers will benefit most of all, as they will find it less risky to invest into professional hardware.