Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

[randomhero]

Early October, but yea its later than most of us expected.

Cheers!
Must have mixed up something.

 

[coercitiv]

Pricing will make or break Tiger Lake, the rest is fine but nothing extraordinary. Which leads us to 10SF yields, they better be excellent, otherwise Intel won't be able to flood the market with cheap i3 and i5 chips.

The biggest problem TGL faces is i7 compares much more favorable versus 4800U than i5 and i3 do versus 4700U and 4500U respectively. On TGL there's a steep drop in ST clocks in lower SKUs, meanwhile AMD SKUs have minimal drops since differentiation is done via lower thread count. The end result is the i3 with 4C/8T and 3.7GHz boost looks great on paper until you pit it against the 4500U with 6C/6T and 4Ghz boost. That makes the two CPUs comparable in ST performance, while the 4500U likely still wins in MT loads... and may actually start to win in GPU loads as well.

If yields are still mediocre then TGL will be more expensive than Renoir (price will be bound by availability), so Intel will be forced to compete based on premium exclusive features such as Thunderbolt, 90Hz HDR screens, fast charging, premium design and materials. That will be moderately fine for the i7, but problematic for the rest of the lineup.

 

[itsmydamnation]

Pricing will make or break Tiger Lake, the rest is fine but nothing extraordinary. Which leads us to 10SF yields, they better be excellent, otherwise Intel won't be able to flood the market with cheap i3 and i5 chips.

The biggest problem TGL faces is i7 compares much more favorable versus 4800U than i5 and i3 do versus 4700U and 4500U respectively. On TGL there's a steep drop in ST clocks in lower SKUs, meanwhile AMD SKUs have minimal drops since differentiation is done via lower thread count. The end result is the i3 with 4C/8T and 3.7GHz boost looks great on paper until you pit it against the 4500U with 6C/6T and 4Ghz boost. That makes the two CPUs comparable in ST performance, while the 4500U likely still wins in MT loads... and may actually start to win in GPU loads as well.

If yields are still mediocre then TGL will be more expensive than Renoir (price will be bound by availability), so Intel will be forced to compete based on premium exclusive features such as Thunderbolt, 90Hz HDR screens, fast charging, premium design and materials. That will be moderately fine for the i7, but problematic for the rest of the lineup.

if AMD really wanted to im sure they could do 4x50u SKU's and let a single core use upto max SOC draw for the different durations and then they would have ~4.7ghz single core clocks to really rub the salt in.

 

[coercitiv]

if AMD really wanted to im sure they could do 4x50u SKU's and let a single core use upto max SOC draw for the different durations and then they would have ~4.7ghz single core clocks to really rub the salt in.

That doesn't really change the equation, as they would also need significant volume for these highly binned parts. All that really matters is manufacturing speed right now. Chop chop!

 

[itsmydamnation]

That doesn't really change the equation, as they would also need significant volume for these highly binned parts. All that really matters is manufacturing speed right now. Chop chop!

I don't think they would need to bin they have that much head room currently.

 

[coercitiv]

I don't think they would need to bin they have that much head room currently.

Both 4700G and 3600XT boost to 4.4Ghz. Why not let them boost to 4.7Ghz? The 3600XT could definitely have used higher clocks over 3600X to justify the price premium and desktop CPUs don't even have a ST boost power budget, it's all about temps.

Later edit: anyway, I think we can further discuss Renoir clocks in the more appropriate thread, in here we might as well acknowledge TGL looks very good in the high end but may have a weaker value segment. A cheap i3 with 4C/8T could be very strong though.

 

[jpiniero]

If yields are still mediocre then TGL will be more expensive than Renoir (price will be bound by availability

I don't think it works that way. I doubt Intel prices chips based upon availability, you would just get shorted or might have to take lower tier products.

Intel is offering versions with the IPU disabled. I imagine those will be a few bucks cheaper.

 

[mikk]

The biggest problem TGL faces is i7 compares much more favorable versus 4800U than i5 and i3 do versus 4700U and 4500U respectively.

i7 compares to 4700U.

i7-1185G7-->4800U
i7-1165G7--> 4700U

4800U is basically unavailable, we will see how the availability looks like for the i7-1185G7. However the comparison for the i7-1165G7 is a better one, unlike AMD there is no CPU threads/GPU core downgrade, it's just a slightly lower clocked version of i7-1185G7.

 

[Gideon]

4800U is basically unavailable, we will see how the availability looks like for the i7-1185G7. However the comparison for the i7-1165G7 is a better one, unlike AMD there is no CPU threads/GPU core downgrade, it's just a slightly lower clocked version of i7-1185G7.

4800U is quite hard to find, but it's PRO analog, 4750U, is more freely attainable (though only on Lenovo devices thus-far)

 

[coercitiv]

i7 compares to 4700U.

That's what marketing tells us, market reality is different.

When shopping laptops with 4500U I had comparable prices from ICL i3 laptops of the same kind & specs, when shopping for 4700U I found comparable prices from ICL i5 laptops. The 4500U is priced so aggressively that it makes the 4300U irrelevant, sometimes the units are almost the same price. (same Ideapad 5, same RAM and SSD capacity).

We'll see how it all shapes up in a month or so.

4800U is basically unavailable, we will see how the availability looks like for the i7-1185G7. However the comparison for the i7-1165G7 is a better one, unlike AMD there is no CPU threads/GPU core downgrade, it's just a slightly lower clocked version of i7-1185G7.

4800U is becoming available, I can buy the Lenovo Slim 7 and Ideapad 5 with 4800U from several stores in my country (eastern EU).

 

[mikk]

That's what marketing tells us, market reality is different.

It's not only about marketing, I mean these two are the top SKUs. I'm not counting 4800U at the moment because this SKU is basically unavailable and it seems similar for i7-1185G7. And don't forget apart from Cinebench i7-1165G7 will be a better mobile product than Ryzen 7 4700U, a higher price is justified to some extent.

4800U is becoming available, I can buy the Lenovo Slim 7 and Ideapad 5 with 4800U from several stores in my country (eastern EU).

9 months after Renoir launch 2 devices, sorry this is a joke.

 

[inf64]

There are some Lenovo models available right now: https://geizhals.eu/?fs=4800U&hloc=at&hloc=de&cat=nb

 

[coercitiv]

It's not only about marketing, I mean these two are the top SKUs.

As long as shop prices tell me a different story, I don't care what AMD and/or Intel marketing are telling me: the 4700U is directly competing with i5 Ice Lake chips in pricing. If Tiger Lake comes with more aggressive price tags then great, that's what my previous posts were about: pricing will be paramount for TGL i5 and i3.

9 months after Renoir launch 2 devices, sorry this is a joke.

Yeah, I'm sure Intel is laughing their ass off.

 

[Kenmitch]

It would be nice if Intel does bring some competition as I wouldn't mind getting a better deal on my Zen 3 upgrade. I won't hold my breath, but there's always a possibility.

 

[eek2121]

Even Rocket Lake-S? That would be a fiasco.

It depends on when it will land. If they can push it out soon I can see it still launching. Otherwise...

Pricing will make or break Tiger Lake, the rest is fine but nothing extraordinary. Which leads us to 10SF yields, they better be excellent, otherwise Intel won't be able to flood the market with cheap i3 and i5 chips.

The biggest problem TGL faces is i7 compares much more favorable versus 4800U than i5 and i3 do versus 4700U and 4500U respectively. On TGL there's a steep drop in ST clocks in lower SKUs, meanwhile AMD SKUs have minimal drops since differentiation is done via lower thread count. The end result is the i3 with 4C/8T and 3.7GHz boost looks great on paper until you pit it against the 4500U with 6C/6T and 4Ghz boost. That makes the two CPUs comparable in ST performance, while the 4500U likely still wins in MT loads... and may actually start to win in GPU loads as well.

If yields are still mediocre then TGL will be more expensive than Renoir (price will be bound by availability), so Intel will be forced to compete based on premium exclusive features such as Thunderbolt, 90Hz HDR screens, fast charging, premium design and materials. That will be moderately fine for the i7, but problematic for the rest of the lineup.

My gut tells me that Intel has their 10nm stuff figured out, and now they are beginning to migrate over. I speculate that the only reason we aren’t getting 8-core TGL is fab capacity.

 

[eek2121]

Both 4700G and 3600XT boost to 4.4Ghz. Why not let them boost to 4.7Ghz? The 3600XT could definitely have used higher clocks over 3600X to justify the price premium and desktop CPUs don't even have a ST boost power budget, it's all about temps.

Later edit: anyway, I think we can further discuss Renoir clocks in the more appropriate thread, in here we might as well acknowledge TGL looks very good in the high end but may have a weaker value segment. A cheap i3 with 4C/8T could be very strong though.

Renoir will be replaced soon, so I doubt AMD cares all that much. Zen 3 chips should bring a similar uplift to Ryzen compared to what TGL did over Skylake based parts, so AMD will soon find themselves beating Intel again.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It depends on when it will land. If they can push it out soon I can see it still launching. Otherwise...

According to everything I've seen publicly, Rocket Lake-S is a Q1 2021 CPU. Remember than Comet wound up being Q2 2020.

 

[ondma]

It depends on when it will land. If they can push it out soon I can see it still launching. Otherwise...



My gut tells me that Intel has their 10nm stuff figured out, and now they are beginning to migrate over. I speculate that the only reason we aren’t getting 8-core TGL is fab capacity.

Fab capacity or 10 nm yields are still poor?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Fab capacity or 10 nm yields are still poor?

Could be both. Two things we don't know: how many of Intel's fabs are still cranking out 10nm+ for IceLake-SP, and how many are moving/have moved to 10SF for TigerLake/Alder Lake/Sapphire Rapids. We also don't know what retooling (or how much) has to be done to produce TigerLake etc. versus anything on 10nm+.

 

[Thala]

EDIT: I thought you were referring to Tiger Lake.

Nope - was referring to Tremont and in particular its Lakefield implementation. Nothing much wrong with Tiger Lake though - except the cores being huge - presumably in a perf/area metric they will not compare favorably against latest Zen incarnation - and one of the reason Intel is going to match its xxxCoves with xxxMonts to get the average perf/area up in Alder Lake.

 

[Edrick]

Could be both. Two things we don't know: how many of Intel's fabs are still cranking out 10nm+ for IceLake-SP, and how many are moving/have moved to 10SF for TigerLake/Alder Lake/Sapphire Rapids. We also don't know what retooling (or how much) has to be done to produce TigerLake etc. versus anything on 10nm+.

One would think we would be hearing more about IceLake-SP if it was still launching this year.

 

[DrMrLordX]

One would think we would be hearing more about IceLake-SP if it was still launching this year.

You would think so. We've seen some samples in the wild via Geekbench 5 but not much else. If it doesn't launch this year, it may as well not launch at all.

 

[jur]

My gut tells me that Intel has their 10nm stuff figured out, and now they are beginning to migrate over. I speculate that the only reason we aren’t getting 8-core TGL is fab capacity.

I thought we are getting 8 core TGL in Q1 2021. At least there are rumors about it.

 

[jpiniero]

I thought we are getting 8 core TGL in Q1 2021. At least there are rumors about it.

In theory yes but that would be H, not S. The H also has a quad core die as well.

 

[Edrick]

You would think so. We've seen some samples in the wild via Geekbench 5 but not much else. If it doesn't launch this year, it may as well not launch at all.

Agreed. No point in launching it in 2021 if in fact Sapphire Rapids is launching the same year. Then again, everything could be delayed. Intel doesn't have the nest track record lately.