What also seems completely irrelevant to me is the comparison with Linux.

Phoronix praised AMD’s new 9000-series CPUs, while the same processors received a lukewarm reception at best in Windows gaming-focused outlets.

Especially since there are now good performance improvements for Windows, it will be interesting which platform can offer the best experience purely from a performance perspective and whether there are still gains to be made on Linux, or whether there has already been a long-term trend for better scheduling. The fact that there is so much hype around gaming on Windows shouldn’t of course mean that other applications are affected.

Especially now that Proton has made it easy to run a large portion of the games on the market on Linux, such a comparison would be of added value.

It’s always been very easy for the consumer and little has changed: Intel has nothing to do with it now. The 9000 series is much better than the 7000 series, but it’s not worth the 10% extra cost for gamers, aside from the fact that gamers are better off with the X3D chip anyway.