The bonus from +8 E cores will be blunted by power limits,
They'll be blunted by Amdahl's Law.
Meanwhile, Zen 4 will have a very hefty process advantage in addition to a step forward in uarch. I think it'll be a pretty clean sweep in AMD's favor.
Agreed, Raptor Lake will struggle against Raphael.
Sapphire Rapids will lose significantly to Genoa but AMD can not rest either.
Ehh sadly that may not be true. Intel has no clear followup after Sapphire Rapids. We're talking about a completely unknown design (Granite Rapids) on a new node with no track record. The only things we know about Intel 4/7nm are:
1). Ponte Vecchio was pulled from this node. Note that the Intel 4 chiplets that were meant to go into Ponte Vecchio were supposed to be ready by now. Intel has delayed a major supercomputer contract over this debacle.
2). Loihi 2 is the pipecleaner.
3). Wafer capacity may be less than 1/3rd of the capacity for Intel 7/10ESF.
Not really inspiring a lot of confidence yet, is it? If Intel had this many delays with Sapphire Rapids on 10ESF, what makes anyone think Granite Rapids will ship in a timely fashion? It will not hit the market at the same time as Raptor Lake. Probably 6-12 months later.
The difference is merely a year. I suspect they'll have about a quarter advantage before Genoa.
On paper? Maybe. See the Milan launch. Genoa will be in many hands long before we see it released to the public. Intel will be pushing Sapphire Rapids out the door ASAP unless they finally bury it like IceLake-SP.