Both AMD and Intel have released some truly impressive CPUs lately, and this month both of them are releasing their next-gen products (ryzen 7000 and raptor lake respectively, I believe). The new ryzen chips are looking very impressive, and if Intel’s announced numbers are to be believed, raptor lake is going to be pretty great.

Where they fall down is on perf/watt, not raw performance. However there’s a lot of things that go into that difference, not just ISA, so I’m not sure if anyone has really decided if x86 is fundamentally less efficient, or just currently less efficient due to current design choices and constraints.