Intel Thread

[Malcador]

Lot of talk of Intel being doomed off this, though.

[Keyrock]

The doom & gloom talk is just typical click bait. Intel is far too wealthy, powerful, and full of talent. Sure, they got complacent during AMD's Bulldozer Dark Age then ate a nasty left hook from Dr. Lisa Su, but they'll get back up, shake the cobwebs out, and get back in the fight. An Intel with their backs against the wall is the best Intel.

I don't think Rocket Lake is the big comeback. On the one hand, it's based off the new Willow Cove architecture, which is exciting, if for no other reason than it's not Skylake yet again. However, Rocket Lake will be hamstrung by still being on 14nm (+++++++++++). Hopefully the successor to Rocket Lake is on 7nm (Intel should just skip 10nm on the desktop at this point) and that's where Intel comes back strong.

AMD is showing no signs of slowing down, so maybe, just maybe, we can get a golden age where we have a strong Intel and a strong AMD simultaneously. That would be awesome.

Edited October 23, 2020 by Keyrock

[ComradeYellow]

1 hour ago, Keyrock said:

AMD is showing no signs of slowing down, so maybe, just maybe, we can get a golden age where we have a strong Intel and a strong AMD simultaneously.

And perhaps Nvidia as well, considering they just bought ARM for $40 Billion.  The more competition the better and that applies to everything, from businesses to nations.

Monolithic power structures are the last thing anyone should subscribe to.

[ComradeYellow]

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/10/28/nvidia-amd-shouldnt-worry-intel-discrete-gpu/

LOL we got a wayz to go before we see Blue GPU's sitting in our cases.

[Keyrock]

I don't think anyone expects Intel to compete with Nvidia and AMD in discrete GPUs at the beginning, at least not in the high, or mid, for that matter, end. I mean, I'm sure Raja Koduri will talk a big game, he's great at that, but, realistically, you can't expect a company that has never released a discrete GPU to the market to be competitive right away. A few years down the line may be a different story. Hopefully, by the time I'm building my next desktop rig, presumably 6 or 7 years from now, I have 3 viable brand options. That would be great. We'll see.

[AwesomeOcelot]

They've got to compete with them, and they will at power consumption and price, at points they decide. They might not have a full stack, AMD didn't have a top end the past generation. Intel might stick to the $100-300 segment. People tend to forget that Intel managed to capture almost the entire budget market, with inferior technology and support, even with GMA they were present, and that was awful. Enthusiast level gaming is not the entire gaming market, it's not even the majority. Being performance dominant is not the only way to do business, AMD has never taken over a market from Intel, even with periods of better chips measured in years. If the DG1 beats the MX330 and Intel sells it to OEMs for cheaper, that beats Nvidia.

[ComradeYellow]

5 minutes ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

 Enthusiast level gaming is not the entire gaming market, it's not even the majority. 

Correct.  We may not think it sometimes because we're living in a consumerist bubble, but our hobby and little corner of the market is quite small in comparison.  It's all the boring stuff people take for granted that fuels the dollars.

[AwesomeOcelot]

Intel's benchmarks put the Xe MAX closer to the MX450, with better Timespy but worse Firestrike scores, most games you'd want to play on this are DX11, so the MX450 has a good lead in most of them. Double the performance of NVENC on a 2080 Super. Apparently not for the western market, mostly for China. Dedicated LPDDR4X VRAM, 128-bit, 68Mb/s, that and cooling/power consumption is the reason why this isn't just integrated graphics, as this is being paired with the same architecture iGPU.

I don't follow the budget market closely, only when I'm buying something, I was surprised to find AMD pretty much absent from this section of the market. You'd think consumers would pick the 450MX all day long unless they have no intention of gaming whatsoever, but then the use case for having a dedicated GPU is very slim. It's going to be a lot faster at video encoding than the competition but then who is going to be editing videos on a budget laptop? My only thought is that Intel is going to be aggressive with pricing and trust their superior brand recognition, OEM partnerships, to bully Nvidia out of this market.

[Keyrock]

That's a weird market segment. I mean, you're not going to play much of anything recent and/or demanding on a Xe MAX. But if you only want a GPU for watching videos and/or playing Farmville or whatever (do people still play Farmville?) then an APU/iGPU will suffice. Who is this for?

[AwesomeOcelot]

Not sure how accurate this is but it's claimed the Chinese market don't buy iGPU laptops. Intel surely has some sort of plan and incite. The MX450 exists, and this segment has existed for a long time, so someone has to be buying these. This GPU can play Xbox One/PS4 generation games at above Xbox One/PS4 frame rates. The Nvidia shield and Nintendo Switch exists, the Switch has portable and first party as well, but still, people do play 3rd party ports on it.

[Zoraptor]

I'd expect the Intel GPU line up to be 'weird' for at least the first two generations. They will be miles behind in terms of pretty much every value/ power/ performance proposition so will target some very odd seeming segments where they think they can be competitive despite that. Assuming they have any appreciation of reality at all they must know that the first years at very least are going to be loss making for the gpu division.

Integrated graphics has a natural home, the very top end professional/ compute/ AI/ ASICs etc have (generally at least) massive margins or 'simple' demands (ASIC) and some scope for innovative novel solutions to find niches, plus the ability to try leveraging Xeon. Consumer... there is some theoretical space with the price inflation of the last few years but Intel cards will be hot, weak and unstable/ not feature complete. Their only real advantage is that they will (or should at least) not be expected to make a profit off them yet so can price aggressively.

[Malcador]

3 hours ago, Keyrock said:

That's a weird market segment. I mean, you're not going to play much of anything recent and/or demanding on a Xe MAX. But if you only want a GPU for watching videos and/or playing Farmville or whatever (do people still play Farmville?) then an APU/iGPU will suffice. Who is this for?

Content creators, if I recall correctly.

[Humanoid]

Given that FarmVille is shutting down at the end of the year, Intel better hustle.

[ComradeYellow]

Clock speeds/architecture > Cores when it comes to gaming.  8 Cores is more than enough for gaming in its current state.

My actual biggest gripe with Intel is its total insecurity at present, you got:

Comet Lake: current, requires LGA 1200

Rocket Lake: 2021, again LGA 1200

Alder Lake: 2022, Socket 1700

Meteor Lake: 2022 or 2023, finally hits 7nm process.

I mean just how many new motherboards are you going to have to buy during these short spans????

[AwesomeOcelot]

That's my point. Core for core, I don't think Rocket Lake outright beats Zen 3. It's not a given that the fastest Rocket Lake with 8 cores beats the 5800x. Even if it does, does it beat the 5800x with SMT SAM? Less likely. Does it beat the 5800x on price with a $50 price drop? No. Does it beat the 5800xt? I doubt it. The problem here is 4 months gap.

The reason Intel doesn't get hurt from the socket changes is that drop in CPU upgrades are not a thing. People don't upgrade their CPU every 1 or 2 years. They stretch it out to 4-6 years, and it doesn't hurt anyone, especially in gaming. There's enough reason for an entire platform change in 4 years. People don't actually use the features on the top end motherboards, there are much better options in the $150-300 range, so it's a non-issue. Even on AMD, you do not see 300 chipset Zen 2 builds, because the 400/500 chipsets are much better. The only people who care are people who pay $500-800 on a MoBo. Those people should either be rich so it doesn't matter, or should have changed their behaviour as the market changed, drop down a tier in pricing.

Edited November 6, 2020 by AwesomeOcelot

[ComradeYellow]

Ryzen 7 5800x is hardly worth replacing a 9700k with after looking at benchmarks so after many internal contradictions and second guessing I guess I'll still wait for Rocket Lake.

The IceGiant Prosiphon Elite should arrive shortly and I think it's a perfect cooler for the last of the 14nm process and this 1050 Watt power supply is just sitting here in my room collecting dust so may as well put on a spectacular grand finale.

I would be an absolute Chad if I can make the i9 Rocket Lake last 6+ plus years.

[ComradeYellow]

Rocket Lake reportedly double digits IPC uplift over Comet Lake and actually having lower clock speeds than their normal 5.x+ghz setup because of their new Cypress Cove architecture allows for it.  So we get 8c/16t with the i9 and a significantly higher single core ranking than the Ryzen 5950x.  Perfect for a gamer.

After that, Alder Lake will be their first and let's say prototype version of the x86 + M1 chip hybrid that they're really pushing for and will use 10nm which is pretty exciting.

Then we get Meteor Lake, which should be a much more refined and breakthrough hybrid model that will finally get to the 7nm process.

The future is looking pretty bright for Intel consumers and we have AMD to thank for that.  Keep competing and making these corporate clowns earn their pay!

[Keyrock]

Hopefully Rocket Lake lives up to the rumored performance. I probably won't be buying a CPU again for a good while, but I hope to see serious advancement in the coming years. 

In an ideal world, next time I build a rig in 6 years or so, it's powered by a RISC V chip, but that's probably unrealistic. Right now RISC V's main selling point is unprecedented power efficiency, so the first area RISC V chips are likely to invade, if they do so at all, is low power embedded devices, then later phones; traditional ARM territory, mainly. It will probably be a long time, if ever, until RISC V is adapted to higher power and performance applications. Given the open nature of the instruction set, there's nothing stopping anyone from adapting it to whatever application, but most likely I'll still be looking at a x86 chip from AMD or Intel in half a decade. By all rights, said x86 chip should be putting my R7 5800X to shame.

[Malcador]

https://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSKBN29H0EZ

Good times for TMSC.  Not sure why I'm reading some seeing this as a threat to AMD's supply though.

[Zoraptor]

Wouldn't have thought they'd be any threat to supply at all. Not enough volume, and quite possibly not even on a node AMD is using. The threats to AMD's volume would be something like Huawei being allowed back on, or something completely speculative like Intel shutting down its foundry business wholesale.

[Malcador]

Swan's leaving, going to be replaced by Gelsinger from VMWare - https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/intel-ceo-bob-swan-to-step-down-in-february.html

Is a technical guy, although to be honest I'm not totally convinced you need an engineer at that level as most arguments for tend be STEM-Lord types (which is funny as Swan's predecessor was a technical guy that left him a mess of sorts).

[Zoraptor]

Nothing much Swan could have done more, and he was always meant to be an interim CEO. It certainly wasn't his MBA style background that gave Intel its recent troubles.

Having said that, iirc while Krzanich had a technical/ engineering degree he went straight from that into management and never did 'proper' engineering.

[Sarex]

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/premium-z590-motherboards-to-become-brutally-expensiveone-mobo-even-passes-1500-eur.html

[Jozape]

Anandtech posted an early review of the Rocket Lake 8-core 11700k:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16535/intel-core-i7-11700k-review-blasting-off-with-rocket-lake

Improvements in most applications, but less than Intel claimed and gaming performance is disappointing. Both the 10700k and 9900k are a little faster in that aspect. And obviously, the 5800X is faster. Hopefully the final reviews are better.

[Malcador]

Wonder how widely AVX-512 is used.