And you're saying you don't see AMD having much of a chance even with Zen 4, but I disagree. I think in the server space Intel has no real chance for starters. SPR is nice but pulling off a 20% lead or so vs Milan is a bad position to be in with Genoa mere months away.
On the desktop, Intel's top end Alder Lake SKU will compete against the 5900X in MT performance. Even without Zen 4 AMD have one way they're currently untouchable in (by Intel at least). As for gaming, well Tiger Lake only sees very moderate gains in gaming performance vs Comet Lake from initial testing. With no major changes to cache layout (apart from perhaps some timing improvements?) I don't expect Alder Lake to mix things up much. Rather, I have concerns about Windows scheduler and big.LITTLE, and the same IMC as Rocket Lake is also concerning.
Genoa is a year and a half away according to leaks, not months away. Sapphire Rapids is launching this year. It will not be competing with Zen 4, it will be competing with Milan.
If you honestly think Alder Lake S isn't going to compete with the 5950X, you've been living under a rock. Intel is fully capable of building a chip with more Golden Cove cores, yet they don't. Why? They don't need to. It's definitely not because of power, we all know Intel does not care about that. The 8 big cores alone will end up beating the 5900X.
That's my guess too.
They've enhanced the IPU IP on Tigerlake-H. They haven't done it on previous -H products.
I actually believe that leak where Zen 4 is 30% faster per clock. Genoa will end up being twice as fast as Milan which will keep everyone in check(ARM, Power, Intel).
As mentioned above, we keep getting rumors that AMD isn't pushing out Genoa/Zen 4 until a year and a half from now (H2 2022, likely Q4). Zen 4 won't be competing with Sapphire Rapids, Ice Lake SP, or Alder Lake. It will be competing against their successors. At that point, assuming Intel has no further delays with 7nm (lol yeah right), Intel will be just months away from launching it's first 7nm products. Basically they both will remain in lockstep from a process perspective. AMD will not have a lead on the process any longer. They will have to compete purely on the architecture.
EDIT: I think the whole rumored 20% ST perf increase is throwing people off. That doesn't count the introduction of DDR5 and the increases it will bring.
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