Intel Haswell vs AMD Richland head-to-head

It's a busy time of year in the world of processors, with heavyweights Intel and AMD squaring up to each other with their flagship silicon. Intel's Haswell chips raise the bar in performance, but is Richland the cheaper and smarter alternative? IT Pro investigates.

Before we delve into the results, here's a bit of background. Haswell processors replace last year's Ivy Bridge chips, and they're appearing in a huge range of devices, from high-end PCs and workstations to Ultrabooks and Windows 8 tablets.

AMD's Richland range counters this. The new range of Accelerated Processing Units, or APUs designs puts the processor and full-fat graphics core onto one chip. Richland can't match Haswell's high-end performance, but they're efficient, affordable chips that'll find their way into a host of desktop machines, laptops and tablets.

To make it easier to navigate, this head-to-head is broken down into the following sections. Simply click through the pages or jump to the relevant sections using the links below:

• Intel Haswell architecture and range
• AMD Richland architecture and range
• Haswell vs Richland benchmarks
• Do you need to upgrade?