AMD demonstrated just how capable its Ryzen 3000-series CPUs are at CES 2019, wiping the floor with Intel’s flagship Core i9 9900K during a live Cinebench benchmark. And while this chip outpaced Intel’s top mainstream chip with ease, outperforming it massively per watt, rumour has it that AMD purposefully limited the engineering sample’s performance.

AMD will soon have process node advantage over its long-standing rivals, Intel. The company is shifting over to the 7nm process node produced by TSMC, while Chipzilla has just about got its head around 10nm and will be rolling that out by the end of 2019. At least for the better half of a year or so, AMD will be well ahead of the game.

Keen to show off how this technological advancement will push AMD over the leading edge, it set an eight-core engineering sample loose on Intel’s i9 9900K live on stage at CES. While the the Ryzen’s result was nothing spectacular, it matched the i9 9900K’s score with some 47W less power consumption. But there may yet be greater performance lying dormant in the silicon.