Choosing a processor for a gaming PC in 2026 still basically comes down to AMD vs. Intel — but within each brand there are real differences in price, core count, and, crucially, whether the chip includes integrated graphics.

With or without integrated graphics

If you're pairing this with a dedicated graphics card, integrated graphics won't do anything for you. But if you're building a PC in stages and want a picture on screen before buying the GPU (or want to skip a discrete card altogether for now), the Ryzen 5 8600G is the only option in this comparison with decent integrated Radeon graphics — every other chip here assumes you already have, or plan to buy, a separate graphics card.

A note on the photos

Six of these nine processors carry the real official photo from the manufacturer (AMD and Intel). For three Intel models we couldn't find an official photo we could verify with certainty as the exact model, so for now they're shown with the site's placeholder image. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D photo is the one AMD's own product page displays for it — the filename references the sibling 9900X3D (same family, same box design), but it's the image the manufacturer itself associates with this model.