Intel Skylake / Kaby Lake

[tential]

Coffeelake is going to be the chip to get for high end general use computers.

The highest end non HEDT i7 has always been the best chip to get. Coffeelake is just one of the first big bumps we've gotten to that level of processor in awhile and it's one that pretty much removes any complaints you could have had about it.

I'm excited the 8 core will be cheaper too. That actually removes my need for Ryzen. I can just get a fast octocore from intel and virtualize with it since intel doesn't fall apart as badly with hyper threading.

 

[w3rd]

The way I see it Kabylake-X is totally redundant. It will lose to Coffeelake 6/4 as they use a more advanced 14++ process allowing to hit significantly higher frequencies.

Kabylake-X does not even have four channel memory support which is a key advantage of X299. If someone want a high end gaming PC in 2017 they should just go for Coffeelake 6C. It will kill everything in the market. It will clock higher than Skylake-X due to 14++ and today's games still prefer IPC and clocks over thread count.

Coffeelake 6C/12T will be the first CPU with 6 cores to hit 5 Ghz easily on air. I think Skylake-X 6C/12T might not 5 Ghz consistently as it has a much more power hungry die due to 4 memory channels and AVX-512.

I agree^
And would like to point out that 6C Coffee Lake is a great "starting point" for PC gaming. Some of the games in development are really going to blow our minds. Cores will matter and I would not get anything less than 6c today. But near the end of the year? And after 1800x has been out 6 months..?

So the question then becomes, when?


Because if you are waiting for the X299, Coffee Lake becomes moot anyways. And given it's HEDT nature, 8C becomes the starting point for 2018 Gaming. Their are some mad titles coming and late next year, & you are going to be wishing you has more than 6C. Specially when people have these 24C Intel monsters.


Again, there is a cost of diminishing returns on Ghz. That once a certain level of smoothness is attained, a balanced system becomes about negating the dips and dropouts and stutters, etc. In which cores usually eat up. Chip resources is a happy balance, but more cores is the future, even the new mobile snapdragon 835 (smartphone/laptop chip) has cores. Everything does now!

Software is just waiting to exploit dat sh!z..!


In my experience, after all the ln2 pours, or bios tweaks, case tweaks/cooling, and/or OS hygiene... very little Games gain anything in playability past 4.2Ghz.

So it becomes: how much are you willing to pay for more Hz..? -VS- how wide you think you should go..?

 

[mikk]

Ok, just so I understand, the 2MB extra cache a 7700k has does not provide a significant performance increase in most applications to justify it over a 7600k, yet, the speculation of 4MB extra cache that a 6C cannonlake cpu may have is enough to proclaim it the ST King with no further proof?

All while ignoring the cache changes in Skylake-X

I'm not saying there is a significant difference. I just wanted to say that CFL will have a higher ST IPC than Kabylake because of 4 MB more L3. And yes a bigger L3 helps, this effect can be seen on Broadwell-E over Skylake. I expect that SKL-X IPC will be easily above CFL (unless there are some healthy CPU improvements from Cannonlake included in Coffeelake).

 

[Sweepr]

I expect that SKL-X IPC will be easily above CFL (unless there are some healthy CPU improvements from Cannonlake included in Coffeelake).

Interesting, wasn't considering that a possibility. We need to get used to different client and server (incl. HEDT) cores from Intel now.

"Intel’s Monstrous 12 Core / 24 Thread HEDT Skylake-X Processor Confirmed – Will Debut On 30th May In Intel Keynote, Availability By End of June"

http://wccftech.com/intel-moster-12-core-hedt-skylake-x-confirmed-launch-30-may-x299/

https://benchlife.info/intel-x299-will-announce-by-navin-in-computex-2017-keynote-04212017/

I hope reviews are out at the same time as the 6C/8C/10C Skylake-X options, even if the 12C Skylake-X beast arrives in August like DigiTimes predicted.

 

[Ajay]

I hope reviews are out at the same time as the 6C/8C/10C Skylake-X options, even if the 12C Skylake-X beast arrives in August like DigiTimes predicted.

Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen Sweepr, why have one presser when you can have two . Still, it would be cool to see. I secretly wish I has a need for a 12 core processor!

 

[Bassman2003]

I am waiting to see the pricing on all of these new chips, especially the HEDT variants. Intel can make some moves or be the same as they have always been. My guess is the 12C chip will take over the $1,700 price point and the rest will fall in line. This way they can point out the value of adding two cores In the end, I do not see big discounts but will be happily surprised if we get a little discount.

About larger core counts and ST performance, I think Intel would be wise to continue development down the single core overclocking route to keep the larger core count chips in line with the smaller core count chips. The latest gen. HEDT chips allow this and any improvements help people justify the more expensive chips. Who wants to pay $1,000+ to have slower ST performance than the $350 chips?

 

[jpiniero]

I don't know if they would be able to justify $1700 when the dual die Ryzen will probably be $999 and presumably have serious ECC support included.

 

[Ajay]

I don't know if they would be able to justify $1700 when the dual die Ryzen will probably be $999 and presumably have serious ECC support included.

Right now, it'a all about infrastructure with Ryzen. BIOSes and microcode at still being updated to improve stability and performance. There's also a shortage of good motherboards, qualified RAM, etc.

 

[D007]

Looking forward to this but I'm not too optimistic about the performance increase in real time in things like gaming. Seeing as most games still aren't utilizing all cores.. I'm waiting for intel to take it's head out of it's ass and give us some real improvements. The whole i7 line has been lacking since it's initial release imo. I overclock my 4770k to 4.6.. What's the point in upgrading? lol..

 

[Bassman2003]

I don't know if they would be able to justify $1700 when the dual die Ryzen will probably be $999 and presumably have serious ECC support included.

A sane argument which I agree with but I thought Intel went off it's rocker when the 10c Broadwell chip came out at this price. I see this release as their last chance to keep the prices up before AMD gets their own act together and starts beating Intel. I think the upcoming Ryzen chips will be close but like the first round of 8c chips, will not do enough to convince solid Intel users like myself. I do video and need both great ST and MT in the same chip. That is why I am focused on the per core overclocking from Intel as it separates them from the Ryzan chips. This is also important for gamers which is a much larger market than video. Definitely happy that AMD has upped their game and are pushing Intel.

 

[krumme]

A sane argument which I agree with but I thought Intel went off it's rocker when the 10c Broadwell chip came out at this price. I see this release as their last chance to keep the prices up before AMD gets their own act together and starts beating Intel. I think the upcoming Ryzen chips will be close but like the first round of 8c chips, will not do enough to convince solid Intel users like myself. I do video and need both great ST and MT in the same chip. That is why I am focused on the per core overclocking from Intel as it separates them from the Ryzan chips. This is also important for gamers which is a much larger market than video. Definitely happy that AMD has upped their game and are pushing Intel.

10c cpu is not gamer cpu
And certainly not for the obscure minority that oc such workstation class cpu
As it is a 1800x st perf is actually more or less like a 6900 sans avx2 loads. Faster in mt.
Its not numbers that convince solid Intel users. Perhaps its time to ajust mentally.
The goalpost is changing like crazy recently. Now a 10c cpu is a gaming cpu. 1 month ago it was 4c. Where did that come from. Wcftech bs?
But i guess now 6c is soon the "sweetspot". Seems to me its the same as oled is ready for high end the day apple use it in their phones.

 

[Crumpet]

edit - I don't even know how I ended up in this thread O-o

 

[Bassman2003]

10c cpu is not gamer cpu
And certainly not for the obscure minority that oc such workstation class cpu
As it is a 1800x st perf is actually more or less like a 6900 sans avx2 loads. Faster in mt.
Its not numbers that convince solid Intel users. Perhaps its time to ajust mentally.
The goalpost is changing like crazy recently. Now a 10c cpu is a gaming cpu. 1 month ago it was 4c. Where did that come from. Wcftech bs?
But i guess now 6c is soon the "sweetspot". Seems to me its the same as oled is ready for high end the day apple use it in their phones.

I never said 10c HEDT chips are gamer chips, you are adding that title. I just mentioned the fact that being able to improve the ST performance will bring more people on board who would normally not be buying. Lets face it, the most affordable performance is often the best gaming chip. The 1800x fell a little short for me as you stated, the ST performance is around the 6900, which is nothing to write home about. I was ready to buy one but it just did not offer that much more than my current 4790k chip to justify the complete system expense. I will respectfully disagree that it is only the numbers that make my decision to spend $2,000 on a system overhaul. I can only assume others approach it the same way.

 

[moonbogg]

I am seriously hoping for something magical to happen regarding prices. Intel is seriously reacting in a big way to Ryzen. If they are forced to up their core count to counter the 16c Ryzen, they will simply have to lower prices, and substantially so. Seriously, anyone in the market for more than 6 to 8 cores is likely to have real uses for those cores. Gaming performance and single threaded performance will be much less relevant here. The gaming argument for sticking with Intel won't hold up with these big chips, and with the competition bringing 16 cores and what will likely be a massively lower price, it will be nearly impossible to justify spending twice the money on a 12c skylake that may end up performing worse than 16 zen cores. This is getting serious.
I am hoping the 8 cores are considered mid range or close to entry level and get a price under $500. They can't be $1000 again, there's just no way that price will be viable. I bet a 16core Ryzen doesn't even top $1000 by much if at all. Who in their right mind would spend the same money for HALF the number of Intel cores? Intel prices need to come way down, bigly.

 

[krumme]

I never said 10c HEDT chips are gamer chips, you are adding that title. I just mentioned the fact that being able to improve the ST performance will bring more people on board who would normally not be buying. Lets face it, the most affordable performance is often the best gaming chip. The 1800x fell a little short for me as you stated, the ST performance is around the 6900, which is nothing to write home about. I was ready to buy one but it just did not offer that much more than my current 4790k chip to justify the complete system expense. I will respectfully disagree that it is only the numbers that make my decision to spend $2,000 on a system overhaul. I can only assume others approach it the same way.

I would like to question some of the basic here.
Do any 6800 6900 or 6c/8c ryzen users actually miss st perf?

Yes they can look at synthetic bm and be dissatisfied or miss 10 fps in some old dx9 game on their 120hz monitor - but is it actually a real world practical problem detectable in a blind test?

As i can tell we are software, ssd io and throughput limited like 99.99% of the time. And that certainly goes for video editing that you have a need for. You are cpu throughput limited if anything.

An 1800x or 6900 offered far more than your 4790k where it matters and can actually be felt. How it fares in gaming is more or less down to if the engines uses more cores and if there is a need for the perf in the first place. Its not about the cpu or who made it, but age of game engine.

We have a 1700 that on a 90 usd mb can be oc to near 6900 levels for a meager 310 usd or so. Perfect for video editing and what not.
What are people looking for?
Yes you are probably right. It got the wrong name. But imo enthusiasts can - unlike when we act as normal consumers - make informed choices.

In my ears its sometimes excuses and nonsense we hear after Ryzen launched. Like eg the need for number of pci lanes or mem chanels. So the inforned enthusiasts use their knowledge to make it more complicated.
Now when amd 16c is bringing all that to the table at hedt segment it kind of loses its importance and is out of the discussion.
Then we are back to the +/÷ 10% st perf argument.
For 10c cpu.
It makes no sense.

For me. Intel simply needs to change their pricing radically from now. Its that simple. Not that i would do it if i was Intel but as consumer its pretty much straightforward. Except for under ryzen r5 their product stack is simply irrelevant. Even for avx2 loads ryzen is faster/$. Doesnt work for me. New pentium is only option at the low end and is far superior to amd products here imo but thats it.
I hope they cut their prices for the new lineup. 6c 12t for usd 320 then the 1800x will come under pressure.
We want price war !

 

[2blzd]

I noticed the thread title changed..been looking for the info but I'm tired and cant seem to find it.

can anyone quote or repost coffee lake info or slides? thanks

 

[krumme]

I am seriously hoping for something magical to happen regarding prices. Intel is seriously reacting in a big way to Ryzen. If they are forced to up their core count to counter the 16c Ryzen, they will simply have to lower prices, and substantially so. Seriously, anyone in the market for more than 6 to 8 cores is likely to have real uses for those cores. Gaming performance and single threaded performance will be much less relevant here. The gaming argument for sticking with Intel won't hold up with these big chips, and with the competition bringing 16 cores and what will likely be a massively lower price, it will be nearly impossible to justify spending twice the money on a 12c skylake that may end up performing worse than 16 zen cores. This is getting serious.
I am hoping the 8 cores are considered mid range or close to entry level and get a price under $500. They can't be $1000 again, there's just no way that price will be viable. I bet a 16core Ryzen doesn't even top $1000 by much if at all. Who in their right mind would spend the same money for HALF the number of Intel cores? Intel prices need to come way down, bigly.

Damn. I write for half an hour on my note 5 with fat old fingers - an entire novel - and then Moonbogg beats me to it for one single minute. Bang.

 

[formulav8]

Intel Corporation (INTC) Reportedly Rushing New Chips Because of AMD’s Ryzen

 

[Bassman2003]

I would like to question some of the basic here.
Do any 6800 6900 or 6c/8c ryzen users actually miss st perf?

Yes they can look at synthetic bm and be dissatisfied or miss 10 fps in some old dx9 game on their 120hz monitor - but is it actually a real world practical problem detectable in a blind test?

As i can tell we are software, ssd io and throughput limited like 99.99% of the time. And that certainly goes for video editing that you have a need for. You are cpu throughput limited if anything.

An 1800x or 6900 offered far more than your 4790k where it matters and can actually be felt. How it fares in gaming is more or less down to if the engines uses more cores and if there is a need for the perf in the first place. Its not about the cpu or who made it, but age of game engine.

We have a 1700 that on a 90 usd mb can be oc to near 6900 levels for a meager 310 usd or so. Perfect for video editing and what not.
What are people looking for?
Yes you are probably right. It got the wrong name. But imo enthusiasts can - unlike when we act as normal consumers - make informed choices.

In my ears its sometimes excuses and nonsense we hear after Ryzen launched. Like eg the need for number of pci lanes or mem chanels. So the inforned enthusiasts use their knowledge to make it more complicated.
Now when amd 16c is bringing all that to the table at hedt segment it kind of loses its importance and is out of the discussion.
Then we are back to the +/÷ 10% st perf argument.
For 10c cpu.
It makes no sense.

For me. Intel simply needs to change their pricing radically from now. Its that simple. Not that i would do it if i was Intel but as consumer its pretty much straightforward. Except for under ryzen r5 their product stack is simply irrelevant. Even for avx2 loads ryzen is faster/$. Doesnt work for me. New pentium is only option at the low end and is far superior to amd products here imo but thats it.
I hope they cut their prices for the new lineup. 6c 12t for usd 320 then the 1800x will come under pressure.
We want price war !

I totally agree on the pricing and have been saying this for many years, but Intel is a dominant company and they like charging on the top end of what the market will bear. They remind me of Canon in a way. Set in their ways no matter what the market is doing.

With regards to my situation or ST performance, it is really software dependent. Video is broken into two areas, editing and encoding. Editing is often single threaded oriented. ( I know my software is - Grass Valley Edius) So the GHz number on the chip is what you are going to get no matter how many cores you have. Decoding for playback is what bogs the CPU down because recorded video these days is way more compressed than it used to be. Hard drive speed/throughput is not as important anymore.

Encoding is easy, as many cores as you can throw at it the better. So with this software there is a real dilemma, both ST & MT are important. Getting a 16c chip with a clock speed of 3.6 GHz is actually a step down from my 4 GHz 4790k when it comes to editing. Yes with encoding it would not be a contest.

I am stating all of this not to draw attention to my setup but to show the situation is not just gamers vs workers... Big core chips are not enough if they are slow in GHz and ST performance.

 

[moonbogg]

Big core chips have existed for a long time. They are called xeons. People don't buy them for gaming or single thread stuff do they? They buy the big core chips and sometimes have two on a single board for that heavy threaded stuff. Ryzen is going to absolutely WRECK the market here. Totally just burn the whole thing to the ground, and when it all starts to grow back we will see fresh new Intel CPU's at much lower prices springing up all over the place. The value proposition of an 8 core Ryzen at $330 was already pretty shocking, but it was slightly tarnished due to the single threaded performance being somewhat behind the competition, considering these were mainstream CPUs. Ryzen HEDT will be judged much differently and not nearly as harshly in that light. If Ryzen was an 80% win, then Ryzen HEDT will be a 110% win because people who REALLY want lots of threads for those specialized workloads will certainly mess their shorts when they see the prices of those 12 and 16 core Ryzen parts. Intel can compete, but they will lose pride, money and mindshare in the process.

Why pride? Because in a single generation, a CPU that was priced at $1700 won't be worth more than $6-700 (my guess) when faced with 16 Ryzen cores. Its ridiculous.
Why money? Because Intel has already spent over $100 million just trying to rush out a panic response to the looming Ryzen asteroid heading straight at them. This is nothing compared to the massively lowered prices they will be forced to sell their chips at, or face not selling many of them at all.
Why mindshare? Because people will praise AMD for actually giving us innovation and value again. Real value, not perceived value or relative value or marketed value, but big performance for reasonable cost.

You want the best gaming performance? Yeah, Intel will still hang on there, but there are other value metrics coming into focus that will start to pull people in other directions. The gaming FPS blinders are coming off and people are starting to see their computers as computers again, rather than simply glorified Xboxes, thanks to Ryzen offering revolutionary computing performance at a cost that wasn't expected for many years to come. Its here now.

 

[jpiniero]

Why pride? Because in a single generation, a CPU that was priced at $1700 won't be worth more than $6-700 (my guess) when faced with 16 Ryzen cores. Its ridiculous.

You have to remember about the die-die communication hit the Ryzen is going to take. The 12C is definitely going to be faster... not $1700 faster but faster.

 

[krumme]

You have to remember about the die-die communication hit the Ryzen is going to take. The 12C is definitely going to be faster... not $1700 faster but faster.

I was under the impression the latency hit Ryzen gets is less than the ringbus drawback xeon faces for those 8c plus cpu?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Big core chips have existed for a long time. They are called xeons. People don't buy them for gaming or single thread stuff do they? They buy the big core chips and sometimes have two on a single board for that heavy threaded stuff. Ryzen is going to absolutely WRECK the market here. Totally just burn the whole thing to the ground, and when it all starts to grow back we will see fresh new Intel CPU's at much lower prices springing up all over the place. The value proposition of an 8 core Ryzen at $330 was already pretty shocking, but it was slightly tarnished due to the single threaded performance being somewhat behind the competition, considering these were mainstream CPUs. Ryzen HEDT will be judged much differently and not nearly as harshly in that light. If Ryzen was an 80% win, then Ryzen HEDT will be a 110% win because people who REALLY want lots of threads for those specialized workloads will certainly mess their shorts when they see the prices of those 12 and 16 core Ryzen parts. Intel can compete, but they will lose pride, money and mindshare in the process.

Why pride? Because in a single generation, a CPU that was priced at $1700 won't be worth more than $6-700 (my guess) when faced with 16 Ryzen cores. Its ridiculous.
Why money? Because Intel has already spent over $100 million just trying to rush out a panic response to the looming Ryzen asteroid heading straight at them. This is nothing compared to the massively lowered prices they will be forced to sell their chips at, or face not selling many of them at all.
Why mindshare? Because people will praise AMD for actually giving us innovation and value again. Real value, not perceived value or relative value or marketed value, but big performance for reasonable cost.

You want the best gaming performance? Yeah, Intel will still hang on there, but there are other value metrics coming into focus that will start to pull people in other directions. The gaming FPS blinders are coming off and people are starting to see their computers as computers again, rather than simply glorified Xboxes, thanks to Ryzen offering revolutionary computing performance at a cost that wasn't expected for many years to come. Its here now.

Actually, your post refers to maybe 10 to 15 percent of the market at most (not counting servers). For the vast majority of consumer, enterprise, educational and other general use, anything over 4 cores is more than enough. Plus having an igpu is essential. So while Ryzen is undoubtedly a great value, I think the frenzy over more cores has seriously gotten out of hand. I have probably 15 or so close family members that have computers, and none of them do encoding or video editing, or any other cpu heavy tasks. Most are content with dual core laptops. The heaviest users are myself and my grandson, because we do some moderate gaming. Otherwise, it is just surfing the web, online banking, facebook, and Pogo type games.

 

[jpiniero]

I was under the impression the latency hit Ryzen gets is less than the ringbus drawback xeon faces for those 8c plus cpu?

I actually haven't seen any numbers but just from a physics perspective the ringbus would have to be pretty bad for that to be true.

 

[krumme]

I totally agree on the pricing and have been saying this for many years, but Intel is a dominant company and they like charging on the top end of what the market will bear. They remind me of Canon in a way. Set in their ways no matter what the market is doing.
.

I think Canon is a strong example. Sony undoubtedly makes by far the best sensors as shown by dxo marks numbers. Now there is far more to a camera than just the sensor and ergonomics, old glass, whatnot. That can be perfectly rational argument for buying a new Canon body. Yet i think most consumers still buy out of old habit and canon sales is therefore nr one. Customers is by nature conservative and reactionary.
They were buying p4 even if athlon was far superior. And when core 2 was faster some had just got the memo and was starting to use athlon.
Now i dont think Intel is Canon. Canon is like a rich walking dead man. Intel got potential and innovative power. Lets see.