Intel responds to AMD’s trolling over Core i7-8086K sweepstakes

AMD attempted to troll Intel yesterday by offering 40 winners of the company's Core i7-8086K sweepstakes the opportunity to trade their prize for a Threadripper 1950X, noting that it has more cores, cache, and PCIe lanes. The accompanying commentary made it sound as though Intel's time had passed, like an aging superstar (Kobe Bryant's final season, if anyone needs a point of reference), and that AMD was ready to take the reigns. Have a look:

Intel could have ignored AMD's backhanded compliment, but where's the fun in that? Instead, it offered up a humorous response, telling AMD it could have just asked if it wanted a Core i7-8086K so badly.

Twitter spats can turn ugly in a hurry, as we've all seen, but this exchange between AMD and Intel is proof that it doesn't have to go down that way. It also underscores AMD's rise to relevance with Zen.

The last time AMD had a truly competitive solution in the high-end consumer desktop space was the Athlon 64. It was a different era back, before social media grew into what it is today. In that regard, you really can't blame AMD for taking a shot at Intel.

It's a fine line these two companies are walking. They're competitors, obviously, but they also recently collaborated on a module pairing an Intel Core processor with custom Radeon Vega graphics. It's a different dynamic between AMD and Intel than, say, Apple and Samsung.

How it all plays out going forward remains to be seen. That said, there will be more opportunities for AMD and Intel to trade barbs on Twitter, with Intel eventually releasing Cannon Lake and AMD launching Zen 2. Intel is also planning to release its first modern discrete GPU in 2020.