Speculation: AMD's response to Intel's 8-core i9-9900K

[Gikaseixas]

You guys gotta stop this nonsense comparisons. 9900K is the best gaming CPU which also happens to have pretty good multithreaded performance but that's that. The 2700X has an outstanding value that packs some punch and is the main reason Intel responded. I say, the competition is on and the only winners are us, the consumers.

With that said, i do remember some posters (in the past) here saying that competition wasn't needed to push Intel because they were pretty much releasing as per their tick-tock program... well the 9900K is the first mainstream CPU in years that i'm considering to replace my old 4770K

 

[Markfw]

I was looking at the price of the 2950x and it was about $900 USD.

I have been checking my local B&M for the past week and they had stock for 9900K at my favored location(though out now), for $669 CDN, they still have stock on the 9700K for $519 CDN.

Locally at my preferred B&M:
9900K is $669 CDN
2920x is $869 CDN
2950x is $1199 CDN.

So a 9900K is $200 cheaper than a 2920x while essentially matching it, and exceeding it at my most common use cases. The 2950x is nearly $500 more.

I am talking about a 1950x @ 680. Since the 9900k is OOS, all I can gather from what I have read is about $600. And the 1920x is $420 if you were to go that route.

You just pick models and numbers to suite your case. Hence my comment about "your preferred manufacturer"..

And yes Gikaseixas, the 9900k is the best gaming CPU, if you could buy one.https://forums.anandtech.com/members/gikaseixas.137854/

 

[Vattila]

Unless Threadripper drops to the $300 mark like Ryzen 7, no chance it will be the 'gaming platform of choice' for enthusiasts

You put quotation marks around "gaming platform of choice", so I better clarify that I didn't state that. What I meant to say is that if Threadripper 3000 launches before Ryzen 3000, as I postulate, then it should take the crown as the best performing gaming platform at launch, presuming Zen 2 lives up to my expectations of beating, or at least matching, Skylake/CFL on all metrics (lower power, equivalent or better IPC, 5 GHz boost clock).

However, AMD may have a solution for Ryzen 3000 as a dedicated desktop chip ("Matisse" on leaked roadmaps) separate from their 7nm APU plans. I just don't see the pressing need to justify the R&D cost, while the MCM approach intuitively is costlier in production and puts pressure on profit margins. But perhaps they need the volume for their server CPU chiplet to bin the performance dies they want, and hence need a market for the lower-binned dies.

Lisa Su has said from the beginning of her tenure that AMD has no intention of being the "budget" option.

I agree about that. Many of my posts focus on exactly their strategy to return to high-end compute. By "cheap", I didn't mean low-end products, I meant "cheap to produce" so that they can achieve high gross margins and competitive pricing. MCM intuitively feels too expensive for mainstream. But I may be wrong. Maybe AMD has cracked this problem. Certainly, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster has put packaging technologies on his presentation slides, so it is clearly an area of focus.

 

[Vattila]

I am talking about a 1950x @ 680.[…] And the 1920x is $420

Those are great prices. The low end of the HEDT platform is indeed at a point where it is starting to overlap the high end of mainstream. As I speculated in a separate thread, I think you can increasingly make the argument that HEDT will become the platform of choice for PC performance enthusiasts.

Speculation: PC enthusiasts will migrate to HEDT

 

[StinkyPinky]

Those are great prices. The low end of the HEDT platform is indeed at a point where it is starting to overlap the high-end of mainstream. As I speculated in a separate thread, I think you can increasingly make the argument that HEDT will become the platform of choice for PC performance enthusiasts.

Speculation: PC enthusiasts will migrate to HEDT

Those are interesting results? Did they give a theory as to what the 2950x did so well, it doesn't match what we previously heard about their gaming prowess (especially at 1080p)

 

[Vattila]

Those [Assassin's Creed: Odyssey numbers] are interesting results?

I think so. Threadripper 2950X has more threads, more cache and higher boost clock than Ryzen 2700X. However, it has a topology that makes many (most?) game engines trip up. That does not mean that code cannot be written not to trip up. Parallel workloads intentionally written to scale, do indeed run very well on Threadripper. My hunch is that game code can run well too, if properly written to do so.

Did they give a theory as to what the 2950x did so well, it doesn't match what we previously heard about their gaming prowess (especially at 1080p)

No, Hardware Unboxed did not do deeper analysis of the results. I'd love to see someone do, though. Assassin's Creed: Odyssey was just released (5 October), so it likely has had testing and even optimisations on Ryzen and Threadripper systems, hence alleviating the performance pitfalls seen in older titles.

 

[mattiasnyc]

I have a hard time believing it would be worth it for AMD to push out a new CPU to battle the 9900k. The Intel CPU seems to be pricey enough and so hard to find that a lot of users will have to wait. Soon enough AMD will announce what we can expect next year and at that point we're looking at what, four months or so, until the new AMD chips are out.

If I understand the speculation correctly there should be pretty significant gains moving to 7nm while tweaking the architecture. So, I'd expect the next iteration to compete with the 9900k, not anything based on the current one. A 2800x would be 'nice' if it did compete with the 9900k, but I'd have to wonder what dies those would be...(?) If AMD is basically producing one type of die that is binned for the different platforms (EPYC, TR & Ryzen 3,5,7) then wouldn't a better performing Ryzen 7 essentially be a quality of die that would otherwise end up in the higher end platforms? So, would that make sense?

Am I missing something obvious?

 

[Vattila]

Am I missing something obvious?

No, I think the poll is pretty settled. The questions now are: How will AMD respond in the meantime, until 7nm products are launched. What will the launch schedule of those 7nm products be? What will those products look like, and what implications does that have for AMD's competitiveness against i9-9900K?

Hopefully, we will have answers at the "Next Horizon" event on Tuesday.

 

[mattiasnyc]

I'm sort of thinking that one question is how much credit we want to give AMD. If they know relatively well how Intel is doing and if Intel isn't doing that well moving to 10nm etc then (also) if the production of Zen dies is as efficient and high-yield as we (I) have been led to believe then waiting it out and just lowering prices might make the most sense.

After all, if the profit margins on Zen+ is still high and there's room for lowering prices to compete then why bother rolling anything new out until the next version comes out. And I think that would be especially true if Intel in a sense is "stuck" right now. Surely they'll eventually come out with 10nm chips, but that may be far enough into the future that AMD could even take the lead in some categories and hold that for some time (a year maybe?)…..

Page 27.... let me know if I'm late to the party...

 

[PeterScott]

I am talking about a 1950x @ 680. Since the 9900k is OOS, all I can gather from what I have read is about $600. And the 1920x is $420 if you were to go that route.

You just pick models and numbers to suite your case. Hence my comment about "your preferred manufacturer"..

And yes Gikaseixas, the 9900k is the best gaming CPU, if you could buy one.

Model numbers to suit my case? I chose the newest product from each. The same chips being compared in reviews.

You are choosing a tilted worse case scenario for the 9900K that is temporary, comparing the pricing of the new chip with limited stock from retailers who are price gouging, to the price of clearance product.

It looks a lot more like you are the one making biased comparisons.

Also if anyone is actually interested in buying a 9900K (instead of making biased price comparisons), they should check their local B&M, they might find they can buy/order one without the price gouging, as that is what I am seeing here.

But sure, if you want to hunt for retailers with ridiculous price gouging to make your case, go nuts.

 

[Markfw]

Model numbers to suit my case? I chose the newest product from each. The same chips being compared in reviews.

You are choosing a tilted worse case scenario for the 9900K that is temporary, comparing the pricing of the new chip with limited stock from retailers who are price gouging, to the price of clearance product.

It looks a lot more like you are the one making biased comparisons.

Also if anyone is actually interested in buying a 9900K (instead of making biased price comparisons), they should check their local B&M, they might find they can buy/order one without the price gouging, as that is what I am seeing here.

But sure, if you want to hunt for retailers with ridiculous price gouging to make your case, go nuts.

I am not trying to make a case or use price gauging. I am saying, if you want a cpu now for gaming, and it has to be the fastest, wait till you can buy a 9900k at whatever price you can. Otherwise for many multi-threaded apps you have choices based on cost. And right now, the 1950x@$650 is a ridiculous value. And for gaming at good speeds, AMD or Intel both offer good chips at all price points.

You were just saying the 9900k is the best of everything and price makes no difference, that how I read what you said.

 

[mattiasnyc]

Model numbers to suit my case? I chose the newest product from each. The same chips being compared in reviews.

You are choosing a tilted worse case scenario for the 9900K that is temporary, comparing the pricing of the new chip with limited stock from retailers who are price gouging, to the price of clearance product.

It looks a lot more like you are the one making biased comparisons.

But you have to be at least somewhat pragmatic. Ask yourself this;

would you recommend to a content creator to not buy the 1950x today because in the future it won't be available?

That would be absurd. It's just as bad as

- "Hey, you should buy the 2990wx now instead of the 9900K because it performs better for your content creation, and it's not more expensive."

- "But it's way more expensive!"

- "Yeah, but in the future it won't be, so you should buy it now."

Surely we recommend products based on what's available now to those looking to buy now. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.

Pick a parameter and then compare objectively, consistently. Is it price or is it performance? Or is it the platform of choice?

 

[PeterScott]

But you have to be at least somewhat pragmatic. Ask yourself this;

would you recommend to a content creator to not buy the 1950x today because in the future it won't be available?

I already said threadripper was the best choice if you do a lot of rendering or similar tasks.

 

[mattiasnyc]

I already said threadripper was the best choice if you do a lot of rendering or similar tasks.

Yes, you did, but you also made other statements.

I went back through the conversation and in this post you went further than that. I now took the time to click on your link to Anandtech's review (as well as to your poll) and it doesn't seem to be only what you say it is.

Yes, 9900k is a better gaming choice I'm sure, but the page of the review on "encoding" shows that the 1920x is essentially on par. The difference is close to negligible. And so Mark's point seems pretty good in my opinion. And so if we look at the very limited sample size in this forum then gaming is 25% and the question then is how important that is to the other 75% as well as what advantage this CPU then has over the other tasks (75%) if at all....

We're basically just back to price/performance and market segments. The 9900k doesn't seem to "crush" the competition even before we start taking availability and price into account.

Remember that there used to be a VERY limited overlap between "HEDT" and top-of-the-line consumer/mainstream CPUs. As far as I recall it the top mainstream CPU was roughly the same price as the lowest HEDT CPU, and then of course the motherboards were more expensive for the latter. So, what we see now seems to me to be a far greater overlap. You get into that "HEDT" bracket at about $400 today for a 12-core CPU, and where the 9900k shows up right now assuming you can find one you'll indeed find a 16-core CPU, if the price reports are correct.

So, the point of all of this is that it's now an actually viable question for the "premium home enthusiast" as you call them: Do you buy into an HEDT platform or 9900K when you're ending up spending about the same amount of actual money? It is in other words a question for that group as well as for content creators. And it doesn't "help" that content creators on some levels already have bought both HEDT and top mainstream CPUs. The 9900K thus is a tougher sell for more people.

 

[PeterScott]

Yes, you did, but you also made other statements.

I went back through the conversation and in this post you went further than that. I now took the time to click on your link to Anandtech's review (as well as to your poll) and it doesn't seem to be only what you say it is.

Yes, 9900k is a better gaming choice I'm sure, but the page of the review on "encoding" shows that the 1920x is essentially on par. The difference is close to negligible. And so Mark's point seems pretty good in my opinion. And so if we look at the very limited sample size in this forum then gaming is 25% and the question then is how important that is to the other 75% as well as what advantage this CPU then has over the other tasks (75%) if at all....

So 9900K is ahead on gaming (25%), and equal on video encoding(29%), so it isn't really the "other 75%".

Really what are we talking about? The 8% on rendering? or 15% on scientific computing. These are more the niches. If these are important to you, you can chase 16 cores, but that isn't most desktop users.

For people looking for an all round CPU that includes, but isn't limited to gaming, 9900k is great.

The 9900K isn't JUST a gaming CPU. It's a fantastic all rounder, that includes gaming.

 

[mattiasnyc]

So 9900K is ahead on gaming (25%), and equal on video encoding(29%), so it isn't really the "other 75%".

I don't think you understand my point. The other 75% won't care as much about gaming (apparently) and so the question is do they care about price. Do they?

And I note that you've moved from saying that the 9900K is crushing the competition in encoding to now saying it's equal. Curious.

Really what are we talking about? The 8% on rendering? or 15% on scientific computing. These are more the niches.

Those "niches" aren't any more a "niche" than "premium home enthusiast", or the gamer that's willing to blow $600 on a CPU...are they? We're talking about a fraction of the market here, in either case (assuming for a second that the AnandTech forum is somehow indicative of the market as a whole, which I doubt).

If these are important to you, you can chase 16 cores, but that isn't most desktop users.

"most desktop users"? I thought you were talking about the "premium home enthusiast"...?

For people looking for an all round CPU that includes, but isn't limited to gaming, 9900k is great.

The 9900K isn't JUST a gaming CPU. It's a fantastic all rounder, that includes gaming.

At what cost if you can even find it?

 

[coercitiv]

Surely we recommend products based on what's available now to those looking to buy now. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.

We can also discuss what the landscape will look like when 9900K price goes down towards MSRP in the following months, but that doesn't mean only the 9900K will see a price drop. If we were talking weeks it would greatly favor the case for 9900K, but if we're talking months... things change.

As months pass by TR2 goes through it's commercial cycle as well, since 7nm based product arrival grows near. Prices are bound to drop on the other side of the isle as well.

 

[Zucker2k]

It's the age old performance per price argument delivered in many forms and disguises over and over and over again! Meanwhile, Intel is posting record profits while the "value" manufacturer is failing to meet financial targets. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather see the 9900k at $399, and I'm as big an Intel fanboy as they come. Intel marketing, in their infinite wisdom, think it's worth $488, and they may have just called it right based on the overwhelming positive response from those who would actually consider this chip for their gaming and other needs. The 9900k, with 5GHz (dualcore) turbo clocks, and 4.7Ghz all core turbo clocks is right there in the mix of HEDT conversations and has effectively blurred the lines between desktop and HEDT. This is its main appeal. I've read many posts online of users lamenting their desire to go HEDT but lamenting the relatively lowly clock speeds of the parts in that segment, save for the more expensive apex Intel chips like the 7980XE. That conversation may still be ongoing for some but for many others, their desires have already been met with the release of the 9900k. It dominates everything on desktop at few threads or many threads and also brings 16 threads into the HEDT fight. Is it for HEDT? NO. Is it for everyone? NO. Is it the fastest desktop chip? YES. Will it fit well in the HEDT segment as well? YES.

The number one sin of the 9900k is that it may be too fast for its own good; it's actually faster than ALL HEDT chips in certain HEDT benchmarks, according to the AnandTech review. But that is not to confuse this chip with an HEDT chip. Intel already has an octalcore chip for the HEDT segment in the 7820x, which debuted over 18 months ago. It's priced at $599 and offers up to 128GB RAM support, 28 PCIE lanes and QUAD channel memory support. This chip has been available, along with many other HEDT chips from both AMD and Intel as upgrade options for enthusiasts. If your workload is largely HEDT you've always had choices. Same for the desktop. What this chip brings to the table is that it completely dominates one segment and does comparatively very well in the other; all for $488-$500, and for that it has no equal. The $500 Ryzen 1800x tried to fit this niche 18 months ago but lacked the clocks or the grunt to be successful at it. The 9900k will fill this spot for the foreseeable future.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

As I speculated in a separate thread, I think you can increasingly make the argument that HEDT will become the platform of choice for PC performance enthusiasts.

For my own part, if I can in any way scrape enough cash together, my next system will be HEDT. It's not really a question of performance (I could get by on a 1900X), but the mainstream platforms (LGA115x, AM4) just feel limited in their expansion potential. With particular emphasis on PCIe storage.

Of course YMMV.

 

[mattiasnyc]

It's the age old performance per price argument delivered in many forms and disguises over and over and over again!

Just because we can talk about technical performance in a vacuum - which is an interesting discussion btw - doesn't mean that the conclusions in that discussion actually have 'the same' impact in real life where money actually matters.

Sometimes price/performance goes Intel's way, sometimes AMD's. As long as we're consistent there is no problem with using this "age old argument". It actually makes sense to use it.

Meanwhile, Intel is posting record profits while the "value" manufacturer is failing to meet financial targets.

Interesting. When you talk about Intel you talk about absolute profit numbers, when you talk about AMD you suddenly switch to "targets".

- What were Intel's targets?
- What were AMD's profits relative to prior years?

Actually.... who cares? What does this have to do with this discussion?....

 

[rainy]

Actually.... who cares? What does this have to do with this discussion?....

I think, that you've missed this part:

and I'm as big an Intel fanboy as they come.

 

[coercitiv]

I think, that you've missed this part

Can we keep this civil, please?

 

[rbk123]

Can we keep this civil, please?

Seemed pretty civil to me. Question was asked, legitimate answer was proposed.

 

[PeterScott]

Seemed pretty civil to me. Question was asked, legitimate answer was proposed.

Since when is calling people fanboys a legitimate answer to anything? It's just smearing people who have different opinions than your own.

 

[rainy]

Since when is calling people fanboys a legitimate answer to anything?

I recommend you to check my reply once again - looks like you have overlooked important detail.