Discussion Intel current and future Lakes & Rapids thread

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JoeRambo

Golden Member
Jun 13, 2013
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There is a difference between people buying for better performance, versus people buying an inferior product out of ignorance.

I doubt I am alone here tired of Your endless rants about Intel, we get it is personal etc.

But as owner of both 10900K and 3950x and soon 5950x, I realize that MOST ( as in 9X% ) of target desktop market don't really need 16 or 10 cores. 6 or 8 are plenty. Even on these forums not everyone is buying 5950X or 5900x, 5600X is fine. Just because fastest 16C exist does not mean everyone needs or can afford it.
Also just because 5600X exists, does not mean Intel is not selling a ton of 10400F, 10700 or even 10850K when pricing is right. Some of the deals for those CPUs were a steal considering inflated pricing of the market atm.

From a technical point of view, RKL is a step backwards... a step that I have not seen from any company in my entire 15+ years working in high-speed digital semiconductor design.

Wrong. C2D was "technical" step back in clock versus P4, yet it was irrelevant as C2D was faster. Bulldozer was just horrible pile of "technical" crap versus Phenom. Oracle 20nm chips were disaster.
Compared to those we expect RKL to advance in IPC while keeping clocks around the same. Power consumption will be ~Skylake bad, news at eleven?

If the chips will be priced right versus AMD (and SKL derivatives) and performance is near ZEN3 levels, the chips will fly from the shelves as long as they are available as they will provide viable alternative to 6-8C market.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
10,785
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Milan is little volume for months. Consoles, Renoir and Vermeer are the hot shit now.

This isn't exactly an AMD thread, but I think a reply is relevant in that it may show what is Intel's competition in the server room.

Milan will be (and is) AMD's top priority when it comes to 7nm wafers. Part of the reason why you are seeing so few 6000-series video cards and 5000-series Ryzen CPUs is that Milan is soaking up a lot of wafers. The other reasons are Xbox Series X and PS5. In any case, Milan is very high-margin, and all of AMD's designs outside of the consoles and mobile are geared towards server/workstation first.
 

dmens

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2005
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Wrong. C2D was "technical" step back in clock versus P4, yet it was irrelevant as C2D was faster.

LOL, literally no one said that in regards to C2D vs P4. Not one single person. RKL is a step back because it is a process backport of an architecture that got tired two years ago. It is a step back because it made no attempt to be energy efficient, instead cranking on voltages for extremely diminished performance returns.

Like I already said, pricing is the only viable play.

As for how many cores people need... guess what? The AMD 4 core solution is still far superior.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,582
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136
Like I already said, pricing is the only viable play.

Priced correctly, Intel could probably sell a fair number of desktop Rocket Lake-S, especially considering how short supplies are running on competitor's CPUs. The real question is: will people want Rocket Lake-S more than Comet Lake-S?
 

dmens

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2005
2,271
917
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Bulldozer was just horrible pile of "technical" crap versus Phenom. Oracle 20nm chips were disaster.

I would not even consider Bulldozer to be a step backwards. It was a flawed product where they tried to take a step forwards and it didn’t work. Happens all the time in engineering. As an engineer, I would much rather try to step forward and fail, than literally pulling a 180.
 

inf64

Diamond Member
Mar 11, 2011
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Rocketlake's problem will be manifold: it will have lower IPC than Zen3 (as Zen3 has higher IPC than WC), it will have much higher power draw due to vastly inferior process node and it will most likely have similar price as 5800X. The only saving grace would be a *potentially* higher clock which is unconfirmed and also we have no clue if it will make any difference in games due to inferior IPC.
It will also come at the time when AMD's Zen3 supply will get much better so why would anyone get it instead of Zen3 part is a mystery.
 

ondma

Platinum Member
Mar 18, 2018
2,718
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Priced correctly, Intel could probably sell a fair number of desktop Rocket Lake-S, especially considering how short supplies are running on competitor's CPUs. The real question is: will people want Rocket Lake-S more than Comet Lake-S?
It should be faster, so why not, assuming pricing is competitive?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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It should be faster, so why not, assuming pricing is competitive?

Intel's in a bit of a pickle. Right now, their ~$530 flagship CPU (10900k) is having an identity crisis. There's a competitor's current-gen 6c CPU with an MSRP of $299 that seriously challenges it (and sometimes beats it) in game performance while using less power and working perfectly-well on motherboards that are cheaper than the kind of Z490 board you would want for a 10900k. Then the competitor's previous-gen 12c and 16c CPUs beat it in productivity. In thread-limited productivity (some Photoshop tasks, most CAD software, some encoding software), the competitor's current-gen CPUs are now winning core-per-core against the 10900k and pretty-much anything else Intel can throw at it thanks to IPC increases, assuming the previous-gen competitor's high-core-count CPUs weren't already winning those benchmarks. As a consequence, a buyer savvy enough to know what CPUs can and can't do (and how well) is going to look at the entire lineup of Comet Lake-S and conclude that they're mostly gamer CPUs, with the 10600k being an overclock darling. That's a $270 CPU, plus the cost of the HSF and other OC infrastructure to support it.

Then along comes Rocket Lake-S.

Without going into too much detail, I can already tell you that a lot of people would rather just OC a 10600k than buy a $530 11900k. In fact, the entire Rocket Lake-S lineup has "gamer CPU" written all over it, meaning it will inevitably be compared against the OCed 10600k. If Intel launches at prices lower than $530 for the 11900k, $360 for the 11700k, and $270 for the 11600k, then prices on Comet Lake-S will inevitably crash as well, especially since supplies on everything except maybe the 10900k seem to be pretty healthy. Can you say $200 10600k?

If I can get a 10600k and just overclock it to play games, why am I buying anything Rocket Lake-S?

Sure, that's DiY and not OEM (per se), but the OEMs are going to be looking at different metrics than just raw performance. In the end they just want to sell units.
 

JoeRambo

Golden Member
Jun 13, 2013
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If I can get a 10600k and just overclock it to play games, why am I buying anything Rocket Lake-S?

If 10900K and 5950X or 64C TR exist, it does not invalidate peoples decision to buy 6C or 8C or 12C or whatever is required for person's workload.

Just like Comet Lake is not only 10C sales, same buyers who are buying 10400F or 10600K or 10850K or 3600X on deals will have a additional option in Rocket Lake-S. Same DDR4, upgrade to PCIE4, performance will fall between SKL and ZEN3? What's not to like here if the price is right?
So in the end it will all depend on pricing. On technical side we can only hope Intel will stop shooting itself in the foot and finally unlocks memory OC on all chipsets. DDR4 3200 is okayish, but Intel chips need 3600+ to really fly.
 
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exquisitechar

Senior member
Apr 18, 2017
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On technical side we can only hope Intel will stop shooting itself in the foot and finally unlocks memory OC on all chipsets. DDR4 3200 is okayish, but Intel chips need 3600+ to really fly.
Yes, they will.

Rocket Lake seems like it will be pretty good, but I would personally rather wait for Alder Lake-S if I were buying in 2021. I dare say, AMD needs to offer cheaper alternatives to the 5800X/5600X or slash prices, or they just won't be competitive from a price/performance standpoint if Intel is sane with pricing. The only major disadvantage Rocket Lake will have at equal core counts has is that the power consumption will be high, but it will be nothing extreme in desktop PCs outside of heavy MT workloads (particularly when overclocked). For gaming performance especially, Rocket Lake will probably be a no-brainer since AMD CPUs still have a weakness there and most likely won't be cheaper anymore like they were before. Something like a 11400 could be a value king there.

My biggest concern is availability. The launch was rumored to be in March, but appears to have been pulled in to January.
 

Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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While Rocket Lake obviously is far from ideal (and ideally should have been released instead of Comet Lake) IMO it's still a healthy improvement for and a viable competitor to zen 3 on desktop for all but those that can really utilize all the threads.

It finally replaces the ancient stuff in the Skylake CPU (memory-controller, GPU, quicksync encode/decode blocks, etc), brings parity with PCIe 4. and should have comparable gaming performance to Zen 3 (at least the top models). For ultra-niche AVX-512 workloads it should be better per core.

The i5-11600K for instance, with it's rumored 4.9 Ghz 1C Turbo and 4.6Ghz All core Turbo could very well challenge 5600X for the best value gaming CPU, provided you're going to buy a decent cooler anyway.

Yes It's late, power consumption is a serious concern, but unlike Comet Lake it actually is looks to be a viable alternative to Zen 3 in some price-brackets. And if the price is right it will also put some pricing pressure on AMD, for the very least to release a 5600 and 5700X.

In the end everybody wins.

Alder lake will certainly be the more interesting launch this year (if Intel is capable of launching it in volume).
 

Borealis7

Platinum Member
Oct 19, 2006
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the top end model is going back to 8C/16T from 10C/20T according to the rumor, has Intel hit a power wall with their node?
maybe it is time to heat up those Samsung ovens...
 

Shivansps

Diamond Member
Sep 11, 2013
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Two ifs here:

1) Memory Support, its sad what Intel has been doing limiting memory support both on CPU and chipsets, Intel needs to wise up and get rid of these blocks. The 9100F was limited to 2400mhz and the 10100 is limited to 2666, thats just bad. They need to unlock memory support on all chipsets and cpus just like AMD.

2) Prices on the middle area, just like the 3600 was the star of the Zen2 and the 5600X is getting most of the attention now, this is were they should focus with sane prices, if they try to do something stupid and to place the 8C to compite with AMD 12C is just not going to work, no matter how much you try to focus tests on AVX-512.

Do both and Rocket Lake-S will be a fine product.
 
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Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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the top end model is going back to 8C/16T from 10C/20T according to the rumor, has Intel hit a power wall with their node?
maybe it is time to heat up those Samsung ovens...
Die area is the primary concern AFAIK. Power obviously too, given PL2 is still 250W but if area wasn't an issue they could just lower the all-core clocks for a hypothetial 10C and still win slightly in MT benches.
 

Asterox

Golden Member
May 15, 2012
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Die area is the primary concern AFAIK. Power obviously too, given PL2 is still 250W but if area wasn't an issue they could just lower the all-core clocks for a hypothetial 10C and still win slightly in MT benches.

Interesting facts, stock 8/16 Rocket Lake will pull more power vs stock 16/32 R9 5950X.

All that it reminds me of.......................................................:mask:

 

Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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Interesting facts, stock 8/16 Rocket Lake will pull more power vs stock 16/32 R9 5950X.

All that it reminds me of.......................................................:mask:

Since we're already memeing it's actually much worse than that. Unfortunately Anandtech doesn't have Package Power info listed for 3990X in 2020 bench. However they do have it in 2019 version and it's in the same ballpark for other CPUs, so:

Ryzen 3950X vs Threadripper 3990X Full Package power-draw in Anandtech 2019 CPU Bench
1607955316300.png

Ryzen 3950X vs Core i9 10900K Peak Power in 2020 CPU Bench:
1607955377300.png

The 64 Core 3990X with it's 4 memory-channels and boatload of I/O draws only 30W more than a 10-core Intel chip, and that's package power, mind you!

When comparing core power only, Threadripper should actually win by a fair margin. It's cores-only powerdraw is reportedly 189.64W, meaning the rest of the package takes almost 100W.

Gonna be fun comparing the power draw of an 8-core 11900K vs a 64 core 5990X in MT AVX benches :D
 

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shady28

Platinum Member
Apr 11, 2004
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"Quick math shows that the Core i9-11900K with 63 fps is around 10.5% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X that gets 57 fps.

With this leak alone, it is impossible to say for sure if Intel will best AMD when it comes to gaming. And while AoTS is certainly one of the most CPU-scalable gaming benchmarks out there, different games behave differently based on their optimizations and their builds, so results could widely vary across games."


 

exquisitechar

Senior member
Apr 18, 2017
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"Quick math shows that the Core i9-11900K with 63 fps is around 10.5% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X that gets 57 fps.

With this leak alone, it is impossible to say for sure if Intel will best AMD when it comes to gaming. And while AoTS is certainly one of the most CPU-scalable gaming benchmarks out there, different games behave differently based on their optimizations and their builds, so results could widely vary across games."


AoTS benchmark is worthless. Completely depends on the memory kit used, which we don't know. We went through this just before Zen3 came out, when people first thought that the leaked Zen3 sample was faster than the 10900k, but then 10900k owners started providing scores with tuned memory that were massively faster.
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
5,177
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"Quick math shows that the Core i9-11900K with 63 fps is around 10.5% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X that gets 57 fps.

With this leak alone, it is impossible to say for sure if Intel will best AMD when it comes to gaming. And while AoTS is certainly one of the most CPU-scalable gaming benchmarks out there, different games behave differently based on their optimizations and their builds, so results could widely vary across games."



Talk about click bait. Here's a 3900x with an RTX 2080 scoring 70 fps under the "same configuration". Without any actual details it's impossible to make an actual comparison. Scores can vary massively just by driver version or memory tuning in this benchmark.

 

uzzi38

Platinum Member
Oct 16, 2019
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I still remember people here seriously asking why witeken get's so much flack. Here is why:

To be fair he's not entirely wrong. SPR is a huge improvement over everything before from Intel. He's just doing his best to put SPR in it's best light by not talking about power consumption, overestimating the IPC increase slightly, not mentioning anything about timeframes aside "2021" (but in reality SPR is to 2021 as Milan is to 2020) nor that realistically SPR has to deal with Genoa and most of all, comparing improvements over two generations of products (CL-SP -> SPR is two gens, not one, as much as we all want to forget ICL-SP) to one (Rome -> Milan).
 

Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
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To be fair he's not entirely wrong. SPR is a huge improvement over everything before from Intel. He's just doing his best to put SPR in it's best light by not talking about power consumption, overestimating the IPC increase slightly, not mentioning anything about timeframes aside "2021" (but in reality SPR is to 2021 as Milan is to 2020) nor that realistically SPR has to deal with Genoa and most of all, comparing improvements over two generations of products (CL-SP -> SPR is two gens, not one, as much as we all want to forget ICL-SP) to one (Rome -> Milan).
And the fact that SPR will not replace ICL-SP entirely AFAIK but will be more of the premium product.
 
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yuri69

Senior member
Jul 16, 2013
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So is SPR using Golden or Willow Cove?

Leveraging native AMX and a massive IPC increase (compared to Sunny Cove) would point to Golden.