# Intel "Ice Lake" IPC Best-Case a Massive 40% Uplift Over "Skylake," 18% on Average



## btarunr (Jun 17, 2019)

Intel late-May made its first major disclosure of the per-core CPU performance gains achieved with its "Ice Lake" processor that packs "Sunny Cove" CPU cores. Averaged across a spectrum of benchmarks, Intel claims a best-case scenario IPC (instructions per clock) uplift of a massive 40 percent over "Skylake," and a mean uplift of 18 percent. The worst-case scenario sees its performance negligibly below that of "Skylake." Intel's IPC figures are derived entirely across synthetic benchmarks, which include SPEC 2016, SPEC 2017, SYSMark 2014 SE, WebXprt, and CineBench R15. The comparison to "Skylake" is relevant because Intel has been using essentially the same CPU core in the succeeding three generations that include "Kaby Lake" and "Coffee Lake."

A Chinese tech-forum member with access to an "Ice Lake" 6-core/12-thread sample put the chip through the CPU-Z internal benchmark (test module version 17.01). At a clock-speed of 3.60 GHz, the "Ice Lake" chip allegedly achieved a single-core score of 635 points. To put this number into perspective, a Ryzen 7 3800X "Matisse" supposedly needs to run at 4.70 GHz to match this score, and a Core i7-7700K "Kaby Lake" needs to run at 5.20 GHz. Desktop "Ice Lake" processors are unlikely to launch in 2019. The first "Ice Lake" processors are 4-core/8-thread chips designed for ultraportable notebook platforms, which come out in Q4-2019, and desktop "Ice Lake" parts are expected only in 2020.



 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 17, 2019)

Hang on a second there, didn't Intel say they only wanted to use real world benchmarks from now on?
That means this is against their own policy and clearly irrelevant, no?


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## brian111 (Jun 17, 2019)

FWIW, Where I have seen this posted elsewhere the general consensus seems to be that this is not genuine.


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## Crackong (Jun 17, 2019)

Assume this graph is true.

Ryzen 3th gen gets 13 points every 100MHz
Intel 9th gen gets 15 points every 100MHz
This "super OMG Ryzen killer" SunnyCove only gets 9 points every 100MHz ?

Numbers don't add up.


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 17, 2019)

brian111 said:


> FWIW, Where I have seen this posted elsewhere the general consensus seems to be that this is not genuine.



The Intel slide or the Chinese "benchmark"?


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## brian111 (Jun 17, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> The Intel slide or the Chinese "benchmark"?



The Chinese part.  I believe the Intel slide is from Computex.


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 17, 2019)

brian111 said:


> The Chinese part.


Well, they often aren't so...


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## ZoneDymo (Jun 17, 2019)

even if true, I still say we should let Intel sweat a little, make them work harder and make up for years of slacking.


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## Ferrum Master (Jun 17, 2019)

That CPU should not have any meltdown/spectre mitigations yet enabled in kernel, that benchmark is very sensitive to it.

Thus the performance uplift is really small.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jun 17, 2019)

18% over four years is pretty terrible, especially if you consider how much performance was lost because of security mitigations.


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Ferrum Master said:


> That CPU should not have any meltdown/spectre mitigations yet enabled in kernel, that benchmark is very sensitive to it.
> Thus the performance uplift is really small.


Yeah, Intel's testing without security mitigations is shady.

On the other hand, these new cores definitely have fixes for Meltdown/L1TF in hardware and at least hardware-assisted mitigations for other Spectre-likes. And they are comparing these against Skylake which has none of that. When this is tested without security mitigations, Skylake should get a bigger boost than Ice Lake, making the uplift from new cores even bigger when taking security mitigations into account.



FordGT90Concept said:


> 18% over four years is pretty terrible, especially if you consider how much performance was lost because of security mitigations.


I don't know about that. On the other side 13-15% over 3 years is lauded as a great achievement.


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## HwGeek (Jun 17, 2019)

*Heads Up- just posted on the News here in Israel:*
"Intel to suppliers: The establishment of the new plant[10nm] is postponed.
As revealed in Calcalist, Intel summoned one of those involved in setting up the factory in Kiryat Gat, one after the other, and announced a delay of at least half a year. 
Intel CEO Bob Swan: "We look forward to the new plant"

So whats going on?  Intel CEO Bob Swan is currently visiting here, Maybe they have change of plans? going 7nm or other plan?


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## Space Lynx (Jun 17, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> Hang on a second there, didn't Intel say they only wanted to use real world benchmarks from now on?
> That means this is against their own policy and clearly irrelevant, no?



What does a random person in China have to do with this? This isn't Intel... it's an engineering sample in the wild.



HwGeek said:


> *Heads Up- just posted on the News here in Israel:*
> "Intel to suppliers: The establishment of the new plant[10nm] is postponed.
> As revealed in Calcalist, Intel summoned one of those involved in setting up the factory in Kiryat Gat, one after the other, and announced a delay of at least half a year.
> Intel CEO Bob Swan: "We look forward to the new plant"
> ...



There have been rumors in the past that Intel will skip to 7nm for high end desktops.  I hope it is true.


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## HwGeek (Jun 17, 2019)

The English version of the article just posted:








						Intel Postpones Construction of New Israeli Factory
					

Intel announced its intention to expand its Kiryat Gat fabrication operations in late 2018 as part of a global manufacturing push




					www.calcalistech.com
				




Yea lets hope so, we need healthy competition .


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## Imsochobo (Jun 17, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> What does a random person in China have to do with this? This isn't Intel... it's an engineering sample in the wild.
> 
> 
> 
> There have been rumors in the past that Intel will skip to 7nm for high end desktops.  I hope it is true.



Not reply to above:
Remember when ryzen scored crazy in cpu-z ?... yeah, was a bug in the benchmark 
I think Ice lake should be Highly competetive in laptops but it's ipc should be marginally better than zen 2.

Reply to above:
7NM doesn't really help Intel with what they're struggling with, Performance.
It should be worse in fact...


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## Xzibit (Jun 17, 2019)

HwGeek said:


> The English version of the article just posted:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ouch.

Oregon and Israel were the only 2 fabs for 10nm


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## HwGeek (Jun 17, 2019)

How hard could it be to make icelake cpus current 14nm++ -Impossible?


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 17, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> What does a random person in China have to do with this? This isn't Intel... it's an engineering sample in the wild.



I have no idea, but your reading comprehension clearly needs to improve.
The first image is from an Intel presentation, using only synthetic benchmarks, whereas when AMD used them during their presentation at Computex, Intel went out and said that from now, we should only use real world benchmarks. Yet Intel clearly seems more than happy to use synthetic benchmarks when it suits them. As such, this is irrelevant even by Intel's "new" standards, no?


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## Bwaze (Jun 17, 2019)

"The first "Ice Lake" processors are 4-core/8-thread chips designed for ultraportable notebook platforms, which come out in Q4-2019, and desktop "Ice Lake" parts are expected only in 2020."

Did Intel ever mention 10nm desktop in last 6 months? Dell leaks of roadmaps showed 14 nm desktop well into 2020. If there really will be Rocket Lake 14 nm desktop part with Willow Cove architecture in 2020, 10 nm Ice Lake after that would be a regression...


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## HwGeek (Jun 17, 2019)

If Zen 2.0 already got ~12% IPC advantage over current Intel parts, how do you think the Zen 3.0 gonna perform? another 5% IPC + 10% performance at same TDP[Higher All core boost]? this make very big gap for 2020, so maybe Intel is reconsidering it's timeline?


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## stimpy88 (Jun 17, 2019)

Nothing more than Intel (unofficially of course) trying to steal thunder from AMD.  Especially when you take in to account the complete butchering of Intel CPU performance over the last year.  You would need a lot more than a 40% improvement to make up for the loss of Hyperthreading, as well as the Spectre and Meltdown "fixes".

Some Intel CPU's will have lost more than 50% of their performance under some circumstances, so a poultry 18% (average) improvement on average is simply not enough.

Too little, too late Intel.


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## TheLostSwede (Jun 17, 2019)

stimpy88 said:


> so a poultry



I think you mean paltry, not 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




but I could be wrong...


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## FYFI13 (Jun 17, 2019)

Those numbers are questionable to me. Ryzen 2600X (4250MHz) - 480 points in CPU-Z test, Ryzen 3600X (4500MHz) - 609 points. That's ~28% increase. I wish it was truth though..


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## Xzibit (Jun 17, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> There have been rumors in the past that Intel will skip to 7nm for high end desktops.  I hope it is true.



Intel has other plans. At least thats what it told its investors this year.






Intel will be using Arizona and Ireland for 7nm. Expansion at those fabs is expected to be completed late 2021 for Arizona, Ireland est sometime in 2022.


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## phanbuey (Jun 17, 2019)

Xzibit said:


> Intel has other plans. At least thats what it told its investors this year.


oof if that's true...


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Imsochobo said:


> 7NM doesn't really help Intel with what they're struggling with, Performance.
> It should be worse in fact...


Intel does not need help with performance. Skylake (and all the minor modifications to it) are competitive if not faster than Zen. Sunny Cove based CPUs seem to be competitive enough with Zen2 based on early information and the architectural changes in both that seem to mirror each other.

What Intel needs help with is power efficiency that 10nm/7nm does bring to the table. Smaller dies may be helpful or harmful but we do not know that yet for sure.


stimpy88 said:


> Especially when you take in to account the complete butchering of Intel CPU performance over the last year.  You would need a lot more than a 40% improvement to make up for the loss of Hyperthreading, as well as the Spectre and Meltdown "fixes".
> Some Intel CPU's will have lost more than 50% of their performance under some circumstances, so a poultry 18% (average) improvement on average is simply not enough.


Intel CPUs with Meltdown and L1TF fixed in hardware are already shipping. No doubt things like MDS will get fixes soon given Intel has been aware of these for almost a year now. It takes about year or year and a half to get fixed CPUs into mass production and out on shelves if this is done in a hurry.


Xzibit said:


> Intel has other plans. At least thats what it told its investors this year.


This is an old roadmap slide. Newer one shows 10nm quickly replaced with 10+nm and then with 7nm less than a year after. Product roadmap at the same time only has 10nm CPUs for mobile by end of this year and for servers early next year. Desktop does not have anything at 10nm on roadmap.


FYFI13 said:


> Those numbers are questionable to me. Ryzen 2600X (4250MHz) - 480 points in CPU-Z test, Ryzen 3600X (4500MHz) - 609 points. That's ~28% increase. I wish it was truth though..


There is about 6% from faster clocks, making the increase by IPC raise 19%. That is feasible enough even if it would mean CPU-Z bench is pretty much the best case scenario for Zen2 (benefitting directly from massive L3 cache maybe).


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## phill (Jun 17, 2019)

I'll wait for the reviews and see what comes   As pretty and nice as the slides are, I'll believe it when we see the reviews


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## Xzibit (Jun 17, 2019)

londiste said:


> This is an old roadmap slide. Newer one shows 10nm quickly replaced with 10+nm and then with 7nm less than a year after. Product roadmap at the same time only has 10nm CPUs for mobile by end of this year and for servers early next year. Desktop does not have anything at 10nm on roadmap.



Intel investor day was May 8, 2019.  Your confusing Intel with the Dell Leak Roadmap.


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## medi01 (Jun 17, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> 18% over four years is pretty terrible, especially if you consider how much performance was lost because of security mitigations.


I wonder what is used as a base here.


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## Fabio (Jun 17, 2019)

my 8700k has a 565 single core score for cpu z, now at 5,2 magically rise at 635?


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## delshay (Jun 17, 2019)

I can bet by the year 2023, 3nm will be here as 5nm is more or less already here.


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## Manu_PT (Jun 17, 2019)

This is so funny!!

AMD shows the most biased and misleading benchmarks -> "yes!! Intel is done!! AMD will conquer the world!!"

Intel has leaked benchmarks where 5,2 ghz = the new 3,6ghz, wich is amazimg -> "lol intel. Lol this is fake. Lol only 18% improvement. Lol this is never coming to desktop"

Seriously you guys are annoying. If this IPC improvements are true, oh boy, they gonna rip AMD apart on mobile and they will on desktop once they cam do it. I am for sure gonna be waiting.


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## Imsochobo (Jun 17, 2019)

Manu_PT said:


> This is so funny!!
> 
> AMD shows the most biased and misleading benchmarks -> "yes!! Intel is done!! AMD will conquer the world!!"
> 
> ...



I expect Ice lake to either dominate or be highly competitive in laptops, but Intel is quite doomed on desktop(because of 10nm performance).



londiste said:


> Intel does not need help with performance. Skylake (and all the minor modifications to it) are competitive if not faster than Zen. Sunny Cove based CPUs seem to be competitive enough with Zen2 based on early information and the architectural changes in both that seem to mirror each other.
> 
> What Intel needs help with is power efficiency that 10nm/7nm does bring to the table. Smaller dies may be helpful or harmful but we do not know that yet for sure.
> Intel CPUs with Meltdown and L1TF fixed in hardware are already shipping. No doubt things like MDS will get fixes soon given Intel has been aware of these for almost a year now. It takes about year or year and a half to get fixed CPUs into mass production and out on shelves if this is done in a hurry.
> ...



Intel needs PERFORMANCE on 10NM, performance on nodes means frequency!
Skylake, CFL and sunny cove is 14NM , 10NM = low clocks hence the reason why they will be on 14NM for desktop because performance is LOWER for 10nm!.
On the bright side for Intel!
I see no issues with Intel with 10nm for laptops, quite the contrary if they can get the chips out the door and I see no way amd's design will create big wins in the 7-25W space Intel wins, 25->45W Amd wins.

I may be mistaken by amd on low power laptops.

Bottom Line, Intel will struggle till 2021 on the cpu side but carried by low power cpu's and datacenter for AVX512 implementations, but I'm optimistic about their gpu and I hope they are back in 2021 with promising new designs


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

medi01 said:


> I wonder what is used as a base here.


Skylake.



Imsochobo said:


> Intel needs PERFORMANCE on 10NM, performance on nodes means frequency!
> Skylake, CFL and sunny cove is 14NM , 10NM = low clocks hence the reason why they will be on 14NM for desktop because performance is LOWER for 10nm!.
> On the bright side for Intel!


Intel has a slide where they admitted 10nm does not clock as high as 14nm(++) does. Their approach to that problem is two-fold. This shortcoming is one of the big reasons for skipping desktop SKUs at 10nm for now. The other thing is architectural changes for increased IPC in Sunny Cove cores - larger caches, improved frontend etc. I am not even sure 10nm on desktop would have a noticeable performance problem, the problem is much more likely in the size and yield side of Intel's 10nm chips.

This is not that different from what AMD is doing by the way. AMD does not have the frequency problem as Zen - or rather, GF/TSMC 14nm/12nm process - never clocked that high. At the same time Zen2 architectural changes have a lot in common with Sunny Cove changes.


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## Xaled (Jun 17, 2019)

Manu_PT said:


> This is so funny!!
> 
> AMD shows the most biased and misleading benchmarks -> "yes!! Intel is done!! AMD will conquer the world!!"
> 
> ...


Yes there is a huge difference between "Showing" official slide and "leaking". İf these leaks are true it'd be amazing indeed. But if not would Intel be punished? No the Chinese leaker would be blamed


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Xzibit said:


> Intel investor day was May 8, 2019.  Your confusing Intel with the Dell Leak Roadmap.


This slide was also in investor meeting (via Anandtech):




as well as this one:





10nm++ will exist but effectively will be overcome by 7nm in 2021. The second slide's "10nm Client Systems on Shelf for 2019 Holiday Season" matches Dell leak's mobile 10nm - and there was a passing mention of mobile in Intel's meeting - as well as servers in 1H'20 matches what I said above (and Dell's leak).

Whether Intel will be able to make their roadmap a reality is a separate discussion but they are quite clear about their plans.


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## Vya Domus (Jun 17, 2019)

Xzibit said:


> Intel has other plans. At least thats what it told its investors this year.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I too love a graph with no numbers marked on the y axis. This is hilariously bad.


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## HwGeek (Jun 17, 2019)

Indeed, since we know that new 10nm for mobile at 15W can only clock upto 3.9~4.1Ghz while current 8th gen Wiskey 15W U models boosts upto 4.8Ghz, even with IPC uplift it's doesn't look so great.


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## medi01 (Jun 17, 2019)

londiste said:


> Skylake.


With or without security patches.


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

medi01 said:


> With or without security patches.


Without.
Keep in mind though that both compared CPUs are Intel's and security patches' performance hit is definitely bigger on Skylake with mitigations enabled.


londiste said:


> Yeah, Intel's testing without security mitigations is shady.
> 
> On the other hand, these new cores definitely have fixes for Meltdown/L1TF in hardware and at least hardware-assisted mitigations for other Spectre-likes. And they are comparing these against Skylake which has none of that. When this is tested without security mitigations, Skylake should get a bigger boost than Ice Lake, making the uplift from new cores even bigger when taking security mitigations into account.


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## InVasMani (Jun 17, 2019)

stimpy88 said:


> Nothing more than Intel (unofficially of course) trying to steal thunder from AMD.  Especially when you take in to account the complete butchering of Intel CPU performance over the last *DECADE*.  You would need a lot more than a 40% improvement to make up for the loss of Hyperthreading, as well as the Spectre and Meltdown "fixes".
> 
> Some Intel CPU's will have lost more than 50% of their performance under some circumstances, so a poultry 18% (average) improvement on average is simply not enough.
> 
> Too little, too late Intel.


 Fixed for clarity.


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## Octopuss (Jun 17, 2019)

*Ice Lake (microarchitecture)* 
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
*Ice Lake* is Intel's codename for the 10th generation Intel Core processors based on the new Sunny Cove microarchitecture. 

WTF????

someone explain this shit to me, because I am completely perplexed.


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## ZoneDymo (Jun 17, 2019)

Manu_PT said:


> This is so funny!!
> 
> AMD shows the most biased and misleading benchmarks -> "yes!! Intel is done!! AMD will conquer the world!!"
> 
> ...



yes it is amazing.... hence fake.... and what misleading/biased benchmarks has AMD shown (also biased...can anything be biased when its representing itself...what?)
Salty Intel fanboy is salty seemingly.

also if nothing else, I would think you would be pissed off knowing Intel was comfortably sitting on that "5.2 - 3.6 ghz" improvement but the bosses saying "no dont push that out now, spread if over many years of full price products, more money for us".
Its would be only now that Intel is being pushed by some competition that they get off their lazy greedy selfish behinds.


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## Manu_PT (Jun 17, 2019)

ZoneDymo said:


> yes it is amazing.... hence fake.... and what misleading/biased benchmarks has AMD shown (also biased...can anything be biased when its representing itself...what?)
> Salty Intel fanboy is salty seemingly.
> 
> also if nothing else, I would think you would be pissed off knowing Intel was comfortably sitting on that "5.2 - 3.6 ghz" improvement but the bosses saying "no dont push that out now, spread if over many years of full price products, more money for us".
> Its would be only now that Intel is being pushed by some competition that they get off their lazy greedy selfish behinds.



Sure, only AMD leaks are accurate. Ive seen the picture now 

As for the question about AMd misleading benchmarks, ask Steve Burke from GamersNexus.


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Octopuss said:


> *Ice Lake (microarchitecture)*
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> *Ice Lake* is Intel's codename for the 10th generation Intel Core processors based on the new Sunny Cove microarchitecture.
> WTF????
> someone explain this shit to me, because I am completely perplexed.


Ice Lake is CPU, Sunny Cove is the core.


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## Bwaze (Jun 17, 2019)

Octopuss said:


> *Ice Lake (microarchitecture)*
> From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> *Ice Lake* is Intel's codename for the 10th generation Intel Core processors based on the new Sunny Cove microarchitecture.
> 
> ...



You can look at it this way. Sunny Cove is the core architecture. Ice Lake denotes architecture (Sunny Cove) + process (10 nm).


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## Enterprise24 (Jun 17, 2019)

Fabio said:


> my 8700k has a 565 single core score for cpu z, now at 5,2 magically rise at 635?


635 for 5.2 seem legit. Here is mine at 5.4


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## ArchStupid (Jun 17, 2019)

Imsochobo said:


> 7NM doesn't really help Intel with what they're struggling with, Performance.
> It should be worse in fact...



Intel is struggling with performance..?


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## ZoneDymo (Jun 17, 2019)

Manu_PT said:


> Sure, only AMD leaks are accurate. Ive seen the picture now
> 
> As for the question about AMd misleading benchmarks, ask Steve Burke from GamersNexus.



No Im asking you, you brought it up, you made the claim so the burden of proof lies with you Im afraid.

And no, AMD leaks are pretty much never accurate, thats the reason why this is probably fake as well... 
In fact Im kinda convinced AMD leaks are done by anti AMD people to get people hyped up about improbable products so they are disappointed when the final products dont live up to that hype, hence attempting to damage the image.

For example the 5ghz claim, or that Ryzen 3000 would all be one tier difference, like this nonsense: https://eteknix-eteknixltd.netdna-s...ads/2019/03/AMD-Ryzen-3000-Singapore-Leak.jpg


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## Frick (Jun 17, 2019)

Manu_PT said:


> This is so funny!!
> 
> AMD shows the most biased and misleading benchmarks -> "yes!! Intel is done!! AMD will conquer the world!!"
> 
> ...



The rhethoric is the same from both, ugh, "sides". Entertaining in some ways, but sad when you realize it's just how the world works now.


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## Aquinus (Jun 17, 2019)

I need to see it to believe it. Let me guess; This is before all of the security vulnerability mitigations compared to a CPU with them enabled?


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## TheGuruStud (Jun 17, 2019)

So fake that CNN and Fox should be reporting it.


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## Nkd (Jun 17, 2019)

Imsochobo said:


> Not reply to above:
> Remember when ryzen scored crazy in cpu-z ?... yeah, was a bug in the benchmark
> I think Ice lake should be Highly competetive in laptops but it's ipc should be marginally better than zen 2.
> 
> ...



This. It’s laughable when tech news sites forget that. Actually some people have already called this unrealistic. Otherwise intel would have been bragging left and right about it lol. Like they have been about everything.


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Nkd said:


> This. It’s laughable when tech news sites forget that. Actually some people have already called this unrealistic. Otherwise intel would have been bragging left and right about it lol. Like they have been about everything.


So, what you are saying is that SPEC 2016, SPEC 2017, SYSmark 2014 SE, WebXPRT and Cinebench R15 are all bugged?
A big slide in their Computex presentation does not count as bragging?

For comparison, AMD had 2 numbers for Zen2 IPC increase for Computex - Cinebench (R20) 1T result was +13% and SPECint result that they eventually decided to use in the slide was +15%.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1134098430614093827


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## Vya Domus (Jun 17, 2019)

londiste said:


> So, what you are saying is that SPEC 2016, SPEC 2017, SYSmark 2014 SE, WebXPRT and Cinebench R15 are all bugged?
> A big slide in their Computex presentation does not count as bragging?
> 
> For comparison, AMD had 2 numbers for Zen2 IPC increase for Computex - Cinebench (R20) 1T result was +13% and SPECint result that they eventually decided to use in the slide was +15%.
> ...



But the benchmark used here isn't SPEC 2016, or 2017 or any of those. It's CPU-Z and it does not seem right to say the least, as I have said in another thread you can look at the changes in Sunny Cove, nothing there suggests 40% is possible, let alone achievable in real world scenarios. On the other had for Zen 2 13-15% seems at the very least possible and in accordance with what is known to have changed from Zen 1.


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> But the benchmark used here isn't SPEC 2016, or 2017 or any of those. It's CPU-Z and it does not seem right to say the least, as I have said in another thread you can look at the changes in Sunny Cove, nothing there suggests 40% is possible, let alone achievable in real world scenarios. On the other had for Zen 2 13-15% seems at the very least possible and in accordance with what is known to have changed from Zen 1.


The chinese list is probably bullshit.

40% does come from Intel's slide. Apparently there is one (part of) benchmark that indeed does get 40%. Benchmarks run are listed underneath and there is a bunch of results averaged (well, geomeaned) to get that 18%. 

Why exactly does Zen2 13-15% (based on 2 benchmarks) sound more possible than whatever Intel is claiming? Both are first party benchmarks more likely than not designed to show their own CPU in best possible light, both results come from benchmarks. AMD's results seem to be from a subset of the same benchmarks that Intel also ran.


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## Vya Domus (Jun 17, 2019)

londiste said:


> The chinese list is probably bullshit.



Then what's the point of even discussing this. He is right, if 40% IPC uplift was achievable in most scenarios it would have been plastered all over Intel's marketing material.


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## londiste (Jun 17, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> Then what's the point of even discussing this.


Because someone made a TPU news post out of this. Plus, the first half of the news post and first slide are based on information from Intel themselves.


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## PuiuS (Jun 17, 2019)

londiste said:


> Yeah, Intel's testing without security mitigations is shady.
> 
> On the other hand, these new cores definitely have fixes for Meltdown/L1TF in hardware and at least hardware-assisted mitigations for other Spectre-likes. And they are comparing these against Skylake which has none of that. When this is tested without security mitigations, Skylake should get a bigger boost than Ice Lake, making the uplift from new cores even bigger when taking security mitigations into account.
> 
> I don't know about that. On the other side 13-15% over 3 years is lauded as a great achievement.


Zen launched in 2017 so that makes it 2 years since then and AMD is comparing Zen2 to Zen+, not 1st gen Zen. The problem with Intel is that they are claiming 18% IPC improvement (which may be true), but they lost 1GHz in clock speed.

In an interview, people from AMD said that they were expecting a regression in clock speeds when moving to 7nm (because of high leakage and other problems associated with new node so small), but they managed to avoid this and actually gain a few 100MHz. From what we've seen so far, Intel has yet to fix their 10nm node and are having trouble scaling the clock speeds and core counts.

The 40% number is most likely from a workload that makes heavy use of AVX512.


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## dirtyferret (Jun 17, 2019)

stimpy88 said:


> Some Intel CPU's will have lost more than 50% of their performance under some circumstances, so a poultry 18% (average) improvement on average is simply not enough.








TheLostSwede said:


> I think you mean paltry, not
> but I could be wrong...





Improving the size of poultry by 18% is no laughing matter, what has AMD ever done with domesticated fowl?  Clearly AMD is trailing Intel in this department!


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## badtaylorx (Jun 17, 2019)

Why call it "per core performance" and not IPC???

That can NOT be a mistake!


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## efikkan (Jun 17, 2019)

I was fearing that this piece of "news" was going to be covered.

Now let's first check if it passes the smell test;
- The person making this have access to unreleased products from both AMD and Intel, including an early engineering sample of a 6 core Ice Lake, very unlikely.
- There is no CPU named "Sunny Cove", Sunny Cove is the core design, the first implementation is Ice Lake, so this is obviously wrong.
- Some of these clocks are fairly optimistic.
So most likely a fake.

And even if the benchmarks were accurate, >40% gain in a benchmark does not mean 40% higher "IPC". IPC should never be estimated based on a single workload, but a good selection of representative workloads. Even if Ice Lake truly yields 18% higher IPC, that doesn't mean every score will increase by 18% per clock, some may be only 5% while others are >40%, it all depends on which part of the CPU the benchmark stresses.



FordGT90Concept said:


> 18% over four years is pretty terrible, especially if you consider how much performance was lost because of security mitigations.


~18% would be comparable to Sandy Bridge -> Skylake, which is no small achievement.
Performance loss from security mitigations are negligible for Skylake with later patches. 



lynx29 said:


> There have been rumors in the past that Intel will skip to 7nm for high end desktops. I hope it is true.


7nm in large volumes will probably not ship until late 2021 or 2022.
Xeons based on Ice Lake-SP(10nm+) will ship in Q2 2020. HEDT have traditionally been based on the server platforms, and considering HEDT is low volume compared to mainstream, Intel could choose to release HEDT based on 10nm+, but nothing is confirmed so far.



londiste said:


> Intel does not need help with performance. Skylake (and all the minor modifications to it) are competitive if not faster than Zen.<snip>
> 
> What Intel needs help with is power efficiency that 10nm/7nm does bring to the table. Smaller dies may be helpful or harmful but we do not know that yet for sure.


Skylake have no problem with core speed vs. Zen 2. Zen 2's advantage will be energy efficiency and density allowing for more cores, which is where Intel will be limited by their 14nm node. Intel's 6- and 8-cores will consume more energy than their Zen 2 counterparts, but will have no issues competing in other regards. It's when you go past 8-10 cores that Intel will face problems, which means they will have no direct competitor to 12-/16-core "mainstream" parts.

Even if 10nm was less troubled, they would probably still struggle to achieve higher clock speeds. The long-term expectations is actually lower clock speeds for upcoming nodes, so future progress will depend on IPC gains.

My biggest complaint about Intel's situation is the lack of a proper backup plan. If they had only backported Synny Cove to 14nm, they would have had a good performance gain and lead for the next two years in the mainstream segment.


----------



## stimpy88 (Jun 17, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> I think you mean paltry, not
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It's fine the way it is...  Spade a spade, chicken a chicken and all that...


----------



## kings (Jun 17, 2019)

Of course the 40% will be in a very specific workload, just like the 29% more IPC that AMD reported for Zen 2 in a presentation a few months ago.


----------



## EarthDog (Jun 17, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> I have no idea, but your reading comprehension clearly needs to improve.
> The first image is from an Intel presentation, using only synthetic benchmarks, whereas when AMD used them during their presentation at Computex, Intel went out and said that from now, we should only use real world benchmarks. Yet Intel clearly seems more than happy to use synthetic benchmarks when it suits them. As such, this is irrelevant even by Intel's "new" standards, no?


Didnt Intel simply challenge amd in real world benchmarks? Like a 'hey those are great but...how about real world benchmarks'? I didnt know they specifically mentioned to only use real world benchmarks and this was the (only) way forward.


.....actually... that was "real world gaming". Intel was responding to AMD's 'gaming CPUs' and challenged them on that front. 








						Intel Challenges AMD to Beat it in "Real World Gaming"
					

AMD is on the verge of launching its 3rd generation Ryzen "Matisse" processors that are widely expected to take the performance crown from Intel. At its Computex 2019 reveal, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su claimed that these processors beat the competition in all areas, including gaming. Motherboard...




					www.techpowerup.com


----------



## OSdevr (Jun 17, 2019)

This may well be genuine. I've suspected for a while that Intel has known all along how to drastically increase their IPC but hasn't done so because once they weren't able to go smaller they'd need some way to improve new CPUs.


----------



## Vayra86 (Jun 17, 2019)

I'm sure there is an IPC boost in Ice Lake. Too bad it won't clock that well ey  But 40%? Not in your baddest dreams, Intel.


----------



## Vya Domus (Jun 17, 2019)

OSdevr said:


> This may well be genuine. I've suspected for a while that Intel has known all along how to drastically increase their IPC but hasn't done so because once they weren't able to go smaller they'd need some way to improve new CPUs.



I am not sure that's the case , new revamped architectures usually have to coincide with new nodes. I doubt Sunny Cove was in the pipeline for a lot of time.


----------



## Metroid (Jun 17, 2019)

Typical Intel, "Do not buy Ryzen, we have something better in few months".


----------



## EarthDog (Jun 17, 2019)

Metroid said:


> Typical Intel, "Do not buy Ryzen, we have something better in few months".


Lol, what from 13 years ago when this last was the case? Intel didnt do this with zen or zen+ as there wasn't a need. Now that IPC is there AMD clockspeeds are up... they do.


----------



## dirtyferret (Jun 17, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> ... that was "real world gaming". Intel was responding to AMD's 'gaming CPUs' and challenged them on that front.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Intel threw down the gauntlet and we are going to have an old fashion Sims 4 showdown!  Two CPUs enter, one CPU leaves!  Hopefully none of the CPUs bottleneck the GTX1050 used for the test....


----------



## Mistral (Jun 17, 2019)

Can we agree the "benchmark" is clearly fudged?


----------



## TheLostSwede (Jun 17, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> Didnt Intel simply challenge amd in real world benchmarks? Like a 'hey those are great but...how about real world benchmarks'? I didnt know they specifically mentioned to only use real world benchmarks and this was the (only) way forward.
> 
> 
> .....actually... that was "real world gaming". Intel was responding to AMD's 'gaming CPUs' and challenged them on that front.
> ...



That was one thing, but before that, Intel did this








						Intel Discusses Real World Performance Focus, Teases Gen11 Graphics & i9-9900KS - PC Perspective
					

Intel Discusses Real World Performance Focus, Teases Gen11 Graphics & i9-9900KS Finally, while the company is waiting until its official Computex keynote to




					pcper.com


----------



## Eric3988 (Jun 17, 2019)

I'll believe it when I see it. I refuse to count chickens before they hatch...


----------



## EarthDog (Jun 17, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> That was one thing, but before that, Intel did this
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Intel is so 'woke'.


----------



## OSdevr (Jun 17, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> I am not sure that's the case , new revamped architectures usually have to coincide with new nodes.


No they don't. Intel's tick-tock scheme alternated between new architecture and new process.


----------



## Vayra86 (Jun 17, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> That was one thing, but before that, Intel did this
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Seriously if you analyze what they say and dissect it...

- We will give you "filter bubble" performance. If you use lots of Chrome, you get superb Chrome performance. In other words, the less common tasks are the ones they won't optimize much for? Or at least at the expense of the higher percentages? That is a painful departure from having the optimal CPU for _every_ use case... wait... that is probably why I've bought Intel CPUs for performance rigs the past decade. Righto!

- What have they been doing stuffing IGPs in CPUs and taking up valuable real estate on the die for a piece that especially power users will NEVER look at? Hmmmmm. As far as I can tell, all we got was the same slab of silicon in twenty flavours every odd year. And it just so happened to do all the things better than the competition.

- Is the new Intel optimization process a trial and error run now? Some hardware mitigation here, some Chrome optimization there, oh people do streaming let's use the solid hardware we already had for years... what else? Higher clocks so they can surpass their own TDP rating within two seconds of load? Ooh shit this node doesn't work right, let's skip it after all. Oh no, wait, we'll do some 10nm anyway. Maybe. Someday.

Utterly

pathetic.
Get back in your corner, we don't want to play with you anymore. Oh and another thing, I use Firefox.


----------



## Vya Domus (Jun 17, 2019)

OSdevr said:


> No they don't. Intel's tick-tock scheme alternated between new architecture and new process.



A monolithic 16 core from AMD would fall in the 250 mm^2 region on 7nm. An Intel equivalent would need 400+ on 14nm, they needed 10nm to make competitive products. Tick-tock worked up until now because they always had the leading node, now they don't.

Developing an architecture without a new node isn't ideal.


----------



## OSdevr (Jun 17, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> A monolithic 16 core from AMD would fall in the 250 mm^2 region on 7nm. An Intel equivalent would need 400+ on 14nm, they needed 10nm to make competitive products. Tick-tock worked up until now because they always had the leading node, now they don't.
> 
> Developing an architecture without a new node isn't ideal.



You're talking about frequency and number of cores not the IPC of each. IPC increases don't usually require huge increases in die size (though cache increases can), hyper-threading only increased the Pentium 4's die by 5%.

Obviously it'd be nice if each new architecture had a new node to go with it, but it's hardly necessary.


----------



## Space Lynx (Jun 17, 2019)

Xzibit said:


> Intel has other plans. At least thats what it told its investors this year.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



looks like I am rolling 12 core 3900x until 2022/2023 then.



TheLostSwede said:


> I have no idea, but your reading comprehension clearly needs to improve.
> The first image is from an Intel presentation, using only synthetic benchmarks, whereas when AMD used them during their presentation at Computex, Intel went out and said that from now, we should only use real world benchmarks. Yet Intel clearly seems more than happy to use synthetic benchmarks when it suits them. As such, this is irrelevant even by Intel's "new" standards, no?



AMD uses synthetic too, this is just part of the industry... don't forget Navi unviel, they only showed Strange Brigade and nothing else... sad... this is just part of business marketing... get over it?


----------



## RichF (Jun 18, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> I need to see it to believe it. Let me guess; This is before all of the security vulnerability mitigations compared to a CPU with them enabled?


Apparently we're supposed to believe that all of the vulnerabilities and regressions from mitigations will be fixed. I'll believe it when I see it.

The reasoning goes that Intel has plenty of time to fix the plethora of vulnerabilities and rectify the regressions. At the pace new Intel-only vulnerabilities have been popping up I don't think it's that outlandish to expect new ones in relatively short order either.

One might quip that Intel's best hope is to find devastating vulnerabilities in AMD's CPUs, along the lines of having to completely disable hyperthreading. 

It's a bit mind-boggling that so many seem to so blithely accept such massive defects in Intel's CPUs. The mentality is "just go and buy another one", as if there is unlimited money. Planned obsolescence at its most inglorious?


----------



## TheLostSwede (Jun 18, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> AMD uses synthetic too, this is just part of the industry... don't forget Navi unviel, they only showed Strange Brigade and nothing else... sad... this is just part of business marketing... get over it?



I never said they didn't, my point was that Intel now says we should only use real world benchmarks. How do you benchmark steam or VLC?


----------



## ratirt (Jun 18, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> I never said they didn't, my point was that Intel now says we should only use real world benchmarks. How do you benchmark steam or VLC?


I'd bet Intel would come up with an idea of how to do it and of course Intel's CPUs would be the fastest.


----------



## londiste (Jun 18, 2019)

Vya Domus said:


> A monolithic 16 core from AMD would fall in the 250 mm^2 region on 7nm. An Intel equivalent would need 400+ on 14nm, they needed 10nm to make competitive products.


Considering 8-core die in 9900K is 175mm^2 with iGPU, Intel could do a 16-core at around 350mm^2 and probably less than that.
I am willing to bet AMD can do a monolithic 16 core at around 200mm^2 on 7nm. 8-core chiplets are 75-80mm^2 and 12/14nm IO Die is 120mm^2. There are a lot of extra things in IO Die that are not strictly required. 

We will probably get a good idea about what AMD can do with 7nm in terms of cores and die size when APUs come out. Intel is still betting on 4-core mobile CPUs (which is probably not a bad idea) and AMDs current response is 12nm Zen+ APUs but 7nm APUs should replace these within a years time.


----------



## Vya Domus (Jun 18, 2019)

londiste said:


> Intel could do a 16-core at around 350mm^2 and probably less than that.



Not with Sunny Cove and whatever next generation integrated graphics they made.


----------



## londiste (Jun 18, 2019)

Integrated graphics wouldn't play much of a part in 16-core CPU. 64 EU or even 48 EU iGPUs would not make much sense. A minimal 8 EU or lack of iGPU would be OK.
You are right about Sunny Cove though, doubled caches will increase the size notably.


----------



## InVasMani (Jun 18, 2019)

londiste said:


> Considering 8-core die in 9900K is 175mm^2 with iGPU, Intel could do a 16-core at around 350mm^2 and probably less than that.
> I am willing to bet AMD can do a monolithic 16 core at around 200mm^2 on 7nm. 8-core chiplets are 75-80mm^2 and 12/14nm IO Die is 120mm^2. There are a lot of extra things in IO Die that are not strictly required.
> 
> We will probably get a good idea about what AMD can do with 7nm in terms of cores and die size when APUs come out. Intel is still betting on 4-core mobile CPUs (which is probably not a bad idea) and AMDs current response is 12nm Zen+ APUs but 7nm APUs should replace these within a years time.


 I have to wonder if AMD might integrate a dual/quad core CPU/APU into the I/O Die with a node shrink and split in half some of the I/O die logic that it can serve and use more than one I/O die. That could be a good way of getting around some of the issues surrounding system interrupts under heavy stress loads. If one I/O die is heavily loaded it wouldn't bog down the the other. So if one I/O die with some storage devices/USB devices is heavily strained the I/O die could be functioning at top speed and load balance the overall system more effectively. I'm just speculating on a possibility of a direction it might move toward with a bit more revision.

I tend to think at 5nm we'll see a pair CPU core/thread die's and pair of I/O die's with about half the logic split between the two which will bring down the temperatures of them a bit. The chipset could be a multi chip solution as well might as well if made sense for the CPU probably does for the chipset as well.


----------



## quadibloc (Jun 18, 2019)

AMD doubled the vector floating-point muscle of the upcoming generation of Ryzen chips. To me, that's the biggest news about them, and likely the main reason they can be considered to have caught up with Intel.
But Intel was about to double theirs as well, putting AMD back where it was. Although they have some 10nm parts in volume production, the desktop chips that were going to bring AVX-512 support to the mainstream aren't here yet.
So, while Intel and AMD have made comparable IPC improvements, it seems to me that AMD has not done everything it should have done to obtain a solid lead over Intel, and their current lead is simply a result of Intel having some unexpected further delays with its 10nm lineup. So, while I still feel pretty excited over the new Ryzens, I take a somewhat cautious view.


----------



## TheMadDutchDude (Jun 18, 2019)

I’m calling it now, if it hasn’t been called already: they used XTU to show performance gain.


----------



## BorgOvermind (Jun 18, 2019)

TheLostSwede said:


> Hang on a second there, didn't Intel say they only wanted to use real world benchmarks from now on?
> That means this is against their own policy and clearly irrelevant, no?


Only when it favors them, of course.


----------



## Litzner (Jun 18, 2019)

This feels like Intel releasing some BS numbers about a product on a process Intel can't do right before Ryzen comes out just to try to get people not to switch teams.


----------



## InVasMani (Jun 18, 2019)

Real world I don't always single task, I tend to care about safety and security, windows updates when it chooses, steam downloads in the background, people download in the background, people install stuff in the background, and in the only time I play games in 1080p is never or when the game runs as badly as RTX and I want to prematurely ||||||||||||| over how much better old graphics could have looked with better hardware or with wooden screws added.


----------



## GoldenX (Jun 18, 2019)

If this is true, why didn't Intel do it sooner? 10nm is not an IPC changer, their design is.
We were recieving 5% IPC increases or even less for 10 years and suddenly, boom, 18%, just when AMD seems to get the lead.


----------



## efikkan (Jun 18, 2019)

GoldenX said:


> If this is true, why didn't Intel do it sooner? 10nm is not an IPC changer, their design is.
> 
> We were recieving 5% IPC increases or even less for 10 years and suddenly, boom, 18%, just when AMD seems to get the lead.


We know why; Ice Lake has been ready for nearly two years, just waiting for a suitable node.
AMD has nothing to do with it.


----------



## HwGeek (Jun 18, 2019)

Intel will put big effort in the HPC GPU area since for each Xeon they can sell more then 4 HPC GPUs that cost upto $20K each, it's a big money.


----------



## trparky (Jun 18, 2019)

quadibloc said:


> AVX-512


The question of course is... Are there any applications in play that use AVX-512 extensions outside of custom scientific applications?

I've done some research into this and it seems that most programs in use by regular people (programs like Firefox, Google Chrome, 7-ZIP, Photoshop, etc.) are using AVX2 (that's AVX-256) which is what is now supported by Zen 2 or Ryzen 3000. AVX-512 may be the newest kind of AVX instructions but it seems that it's still only used in limited and very custom workloads, not in general use.

And besides, for most Intel chips in use today whenever they start executing AVX-256 bit instructions they tend to clock down via the AVX-offset generally because to execute AVX instructions it requires more power thus more heat and thus they can't run at their regular clock speed. AMD's new Zen 2 architecture appears (or at least what AMD has said) doesn't require some kind of AVX-offset while executing AVX-256 bit instructions which the way I see it is that the new Ryzen 3000 series of chips won't downclock while executing AVX-256 bit instructions as their Intel counterparts do thus we'll see better performance from AMD chips than Intel chips while performing AVX-256 bit workloads.


----------



## efikkan (Jun 18, 2019)

trparky said:


> AVX-512 may be the newest kind of AVX instructions but it seems that it's still only used in limited and very custom workloads, not in general use.


Yes, so far.
But you got to start somewhere, hardware support usually have to come first.


----------



## Vya Domus (Jun 18, 2019)

trparky said:


> The question of course is... Are there any applications in play that use AVX-512 extensions outside of custom scientific applications?



Nope. Whats worse is that AVX 512 workloads don't scale as well as AVX1/2 which in turn scaled worse than SSE. Increasing AVX2 throughput is more useful as far as I am concerned.


----------



## yeeeeman (Jun 18, 2019)

What about this benchmark? https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel...s-new-Picasso-Ryzen-7-3750H-APU.424636.0.html
This is Passmark. Single thread score at ~4.8 Ghz (short test, might actually run at 4.8Ghz) of 8665U is 2400 points. 1065G7 gets 2625 points, at 3.9 Ghz. If we get the 1065G7 to 4.8 Ghz, we get 3200 points. That would translate into 34% higher IPC. Any thoughts? I was also skeptical about the 40% mentioned in this stupid forum picture, but passmark looks a bit more legit to me.


----------



## londiste (Jun 18, 2019)

yeeeeman said:


> What about this benchmark? https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel...s-new-Picasso-Ryzen-7-3750H-APU.424636.0.html
> This is Passmark. Single thread score at ~4.8 Ghz (short test, might actually run at 4.8Ghz) of 8665U is 2400 points. 1065G7 gets 2625 points, at 3.9 Ghz. If we get the 1065G7 to 4.8 Ghz, we get 3200 points. That would translate into 34% higher IPC. Any thoughts? I was also skeptical about the 40% mentioned in this stupid forum picture, but passmark looks a bit more legit to me.


Early hardware and incorrectly reported clock speeds? Intel implementing something new in terms of frequency boost that goes beyond specced boost clock?
That is a 35% difference, sounds very unrealistic.


----------



## efikkan (Jun 18, 2019)

londiste said:


> Early hardware and incorrectly reported clock speeds? Intel implementing something new in terms of frequency boost that goes beyond specced boost clock?
> 
> That is a 35% difference, sounds very unrealistic.


It's very common that clockspeeds for new and future products are inaccurate.
While Intel have become more aggressive in boosting over the years, AMD took it to a new level with XFR's extra ~200 MHz for burst speed. This sort of stuff can't be accurately measured. This super aggressive boosting is more about manipulating benchmark scores than offering actual improvements, but (unfortunately) I expect Intel to push it further too.


----------



## trparky (Jun 19, 2019)

Boost speeds are nice and all but only if the boost speeds last longer than a second or two. What many of us need is sustained and consistent performance and not a couple of short boosts in speed when the time is right and the chip is sufficiently cool enough to be able to do it.

And then we have the benchmarks that yeah, they show amazing numbers but how do those numbers translate into real-world performance? It's great if you're the benchmark king but at the end of the day what really matters is how much work you can get done in a certain time frame. We've even seen it with SSDs, sure the sustained throughput numbers look great but do they necessarily translate to faster loading software? Nope, 4K random reads are still semi the same over the last few years.


----------



## Steevo (Jun 19, 2019)

yeeeeman said:


> What about this benchmark? https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel...s-new-Picasso-Ryzen-7-3750H-APU.424636.0.html
> This is Passmark. Single thread score at ~4.8 Ghz (short test, might actually run at 4.8Ghz) of 8665U is 2400 points. 1065G7 gets 2625 points, at 3.9 Ghz. If we get the 1065G7 to 4.8 Ghz, we get 3200 points. That would translate into 34% higher IPC. Any thoughts? I was also skeptical about the 40% mentioned in this stupid forum picture, but passmark looks a bit more legit to me.




Hardware acceleration is nothing more than knowing the answer to a question, for example building in the logic to "cascade" a predetermined answer for a specific question. Perhaps Intel is investing in more real world accelerated math on board with its own clock domain. If they are advancing as fast with GPU design and parallel acceleration as they claim it might start bleeding over into their own version of a APU.


----------



## Reeves81x (Jun 19, 2019)

FordGT90Concept said:


> 18% over four years is pretty terrible, especially if you consider how much performance was lost because of security mitigations.


Exactly, in fact i suspect that these are benched against chips with full mitigation, so really who knows what the ipc improvement is over non mitigated "original" chip. Probably just the result of them FINALLY implementing hardware based mitigation. Intel up to its old tricks again.


----------



## efikkan (Jun 19, 2019)

Steevo said:


> Hardware acceleration is nothing more than knowing the answer to a question, for example building in the logic to "cascade" a predetermined answer for a specific question. Perhaps Intel is investing in more real world accelerated math on board with its own clock domain. If they are advancing as fast with GPU design and parallel acceleration as they claim it might start bleeding over into their own version of a APU.


You have to remember that IPC metrics are averaged across a wide selection of workloads. Even if one show a 5% gain and another shows a 40% gain, the scores can be completely legit, as different benchmarks stresses different parts of the CPU. The point of a benchmark is (hopefully) to create a realistic and representative workload, not to saturate the CPU.

Sunny Cove will increase many of its resources by 50-100%, including >100% in integer multiplication and division, so we should expect substantial gains in some benchmarks.

Hardware acceleration have nothing to do with knowing the answer beforehand. Hardware acceleration is about implementing pars or whole algorithms in hardware, which is much faster than software running on generic computational hardware. Examples of this includes compression, encryption and video codecs, which CPUs have special instructions for. Another type of "acceleration" is SIMD operations like SSE and AVX. In general, software have to be rewritten and recompiled to use new instructions. Exceptions exist, as the CPU's front-end have a very limited ability to optimize when converting x86 to microoperations, but this is only the case for instructions coming in specific patterns. Like e.g., the CPU can unroll small loops and eliminate instructions, if the loops are tight enough.


----------



## John Naylor (Jun 19, 2019)

Tech media needs something to write about in order to generate income.    Reading these articles is like reading about fuel efficiency in a world w/o friction for a vehicle that has a prototype engine but the chassis / body exists only on drawing boards.   Results in a lot of fanboy chest beating but nothing useful to apply to  real world usage.


----------



## ratirt (Jun 20, 2019)

efikkan said:


> Sunny Cove will increase many of its resources by 50-100%, including >100% in integer multiplication and division, so we should expect substantial gains in some benchmarks.


Will increase by 50--100% its resources? Where did you get that information from?


----------



## londiste (Jun 20, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Will increase by 50--100% its resources? Where did you get that information from?











						Intel Sunny Cove Core To Deliver A Major Improvement In Single-Thread Performance, Bigger Improvements To Follow
					

Intel disclosed additional details about their upcoming Sunny Cove core, claiming a large improvement in single-thread performance.




					fuse.wikichip.org
				











						Sunny Cove - Microarchitectures - Intel - WikiChip
					

Sunny Cove (SNC), the successor to Palm Cove, is a high-performance 10 nm x86-64 core microarchitecture designed by Intel for an array of server and client products, including Ice Lake (Client), Ice Lake (Server), Lakefield, and the Nervana NNP-I. The microarchitecture was developed by Intel's...




					en.wikichip.org
				



Most caches, buffers and queues get sizable increases, additional store pipe(s) and some additional capabilities in main execution pipes (not only AVX-512).


----------



## ratirt (Jun 20, 2019)

londiste said:


> Intel Sunny Cove Core To Deliver A Major Improvement In Single-Thread Performance, Bigger Improvements To Follow
> 
> 
> Intel disclosed additional details about their upcoming Sunny Cove core, claiming a large improvement in single-thread performance.
> ...


Thanks for this but can we already tell that this will guarantee better performance for about 18% IPC improvement as it says? I mean don't get me guys wrong, I want intel to buckle up and go balls out with the tech but still this is just on a paper as a theory. I'm sure they have (maybe) tested this somehow but as we know Intel's 10nm still isn't ready. I hope Intel can pull this one off and if it does, that would be one of the greatest improvements for Intel in a decade  Improvement of the architecture yeah but there's still this damn node process they are working on now.


----------



## londiste (Jun 20, 2019)

If you look at the original post, first part of it as well as the first image is results from Intel's first-party testing of Sunny Cove core vs Skylake core which is what their 18% claim is based on. The actual results across several benchmarks (or rather parts of benchmarks) vary from what looks like a 1% loss in worst case to 40% improvement in best case with the rest falling inbetween. Geomean is 18%.


Spoiler












10nm is not ready does not mean Intel themselves are unable to get some working CPUs produced. They can and are known to have working 10nm CPUs for 2 years or maybe even more. 10nm is just not ready for mass production, meaning actual products on shelves.

Edit:
Intel says laptops with 10nm mobile CPUs will be on shelves by the end of year so they must have gotten something working. This is supposedly happening on the improved 10+nm process.
There is no guarantee that IPC increase in % will be there for all use cases. In fact, it definitely will not be, as illustrated by Intel's slide.


----------



## ratirt (Jun 20, 2019)

londiste said:


> If you look at the original post, first part of it as well as the first image is results from Intel's first-party testing of Sunny Cove core vs Skylake core which is what their 18% claim is based on. The actual results across several benchmarks (or rather parts of benchmarks) vary from what looks like a 1% loss in worst case to 40% improvement in best case with the rest falling inbetween. Geomean is 18%.
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...


I'm not saying they can't make 10nm but how efficient it will be (and what yields? and of course the price since we all know Intel likes to bump it). I don't have time to read the entire article to tell if the improvement is also based on the die shrink or just architecture. We know this is the first try of the 10nm for Intel and since they are struggling with this for some time, it is not certain it will be much better than Intel's current 14nm. It will be better for sure but for how much. Besides, Intel has reduced the pipeline(I think that's what you guys mean with the pipeline improvement) That would mean less frequency (or since it is a shrink it will compensate the shorter pipeline). I remember Pentium E or D that had the pipeline increased giving a chance for higher clocks but eventually it went down the drain since Intel didn't put into account the temperature constraints. I hope this product is what it says it will be. 18% is massive for intel and that will also give AMD something to think about


----------



## londiste (Jun 20, 2019)

ratirt said:


> I'm not saying they can't make 10nm but how efficient it will be (and what yields? and of course the price since we all know Intel likes to bump it).


Do we really care about manufacturing efficiency or yields? If they can put a product out with acceptable price, it is their problem how they manufacture it 


ratirt said:


> I don't have time to read the entire article to tell if the improvement is also based on the die shrink or just architecture. We know this is the first try of the 10nm for Intel and since they are struggling with this for some time, it is not certain it will be much better than Intel's current 14nm. It will be better for sure but for how much.


Improvement is based on architecture. Intel has been said for a couple years now that die shrink from their 14nm++ to 10nm will result in lower frequencies.


ratirt said:


> Besides, Intel has reduced the pipeline(I think that's what you guys mean with the pipeline improvement) That would mean less frequency (or since it is a shrink it will compensate the shorter pipeline).


Pipeline length does not change. They added/improved pipes, meaning more (parallel) units in execution stage, making CPU "wider".
These are commonly called pipes, I suppose technically they are parallel execution units in a superscalar CPU.


ratirt said:


> I hope this product is what it says it will be. 18% is massive for intel and that will also give AMD something to think about


Architecture is not the problem, manufacturing it is. Despite them announcing laptops on shelves by the end of year Intel is assumed to be still struggling with 10nm. There is a lot unknown about what they are capable of and when but it is pretty clear Ice Lake/Sunny Cove (and subsequent architectures) will not be a player in the desktop space before end of 2020 or 2021 at earliest.

Intel will go for mobile first because 10nm should boost power efficiency and lacking high end of frequencies will not matter there anyway. Then they will go for Xeons for similar reasons. After they get these in order we can hope for something new on desktop.


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## ratirt (Jun 20, 2019)

londiste said:


> Do we really care about manufacturing efficiency or yields? If they can put a product out with acceptable price, it is their problem how they manufacture it


Well if you are talking about the price then you should care. Less yields correspond to higher processor cost meaning you (us customers) will have to pay for it. Knowing Intel's greediness and cost of motherboards it may be pretty costly which I'd rather not see. Although chances for something in a reasonable price (for each person it can vary widely) are slim in my understanding.  


londiste said:


> Architecture is not the problem, manufacturing it is. Despite them announcing laptops on shelves by the end of year Intel is assumed to be still struggling with 10nm. There is a lot unknown about what they are capable of and when but it is pretty clear Ice Lake/Sunny Cove (and subsequent architectures) will not be a player in the desktop space before end of 2020 or 2021 at earliest.
> 
> Intel will go for mobile first because 10nm should boost power efficiency and lacking high end of frequencies will not matter there anyway. Then they will go for Xeons for similar reasons. After they get these in order we can hope for something new on desktop.


So I guess we will not see desktop Sunny Cove this year. Hopefully next year but that's still a big unknown. 



londiste said:


> Improvement is based on architecture. Intel has been said for a couple years now that die shrink from their 14nm++ to 10nm will result in lower frequencies.


Sure Intel said that. On the other hand AMD shrunk it's Ryzen 2 die and get better frequencies so maybe the changes in the Intel's Sunny Cove pipeline does have an impact on clocks anyway. Or simply the node 10nm is average but intel wants to keep up with AMD in the node department as well.


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## londiste (Jun 20, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Sure Intel said that. On the other hand AMD shrunk it's Ryzen 2 die and get better frequencies so maybe the changes in the Intel's Sunny Cove pipeline does have an impact on clocks anyway. Or simply the node 10nm is average but intel wants to keep up with AMD in the node department as well.


Do not expect Intel to always lie. They don't.
Besides, Intel showing that 10nm will net lower frequencies is admitting a negative aspect of their newer process isn't it?

When it comes to frequencies Zen/Zen+ is a rather low bar in comparison. Intel did/does close to 5GHz boost clocks on their 14++nm while TSMC/GF 14/12nm rarely gets over 4.3GHz. I would say this is much more a foundry question than architecture one. While architecture plays a part the manufacturing process seems to be a much bigger factor in maximum clocks. TSMC and their 7nm seems to also be a bit better than Intel's 10nm in frequencies among other things.

The other side of this is that we really do not know much about the frequency behaviour of Zen2 yet. Not that we do know much about Intel and Ice Lake either. 1065 G7 seems to be the fastest rumored 10nm CPU and rumors say it has a boost clock of 3.9GHz. Whiskey Lake on 14nm++ has 4.6 or 4.8GHz.


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## ratirt (Jun 20, 2019)

londiste said:


> Do not expect Intel to always lie. They don't.
> Besides, Intel showing that 10nm will net lower frequencies is admitting a negative aspect of their newer process isn't it?
> 
> When it comes to frequencies Zen/Zen+ is a rather low bar in comparison. Intel did/does close to 5GHz boost clocks on their 14++nm while TSMC/GF 14/12nm rarely gets over 4.3GHz. I would say this is much more a foundry question than architecture one. While architecture plays a part the manufacturing process seems to be a much bigger factor in maximum clocks. TSMC and their 7nm seems to also be a bit better than Intel's 10nm in frequencies among other things.
> ...


Never said Intel lies all the time. Not telling the truth is not lying deliberately. 
We don't know what the frequencies will be but assuming Zen shrink to 7nm and boosts clocks and yet intel gets 10nm (half of what AMD did) and the clocks are settled at 3.9Ghz. Maybe that is why they start from mobile processors? Later on they will try to up the clocks a bit for desktops. I mean I think that's the case.
It isn't always the node process that drives the frequency. I can only hope the clocks will get better with maturity of the 10nm process.


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## trparky (Jun 20, 2019)

Their processors already run as hot as the surface of the sun, adding more cores to satisfy enthusiasts is only going to make their chips run even hotter. And as others have said, chip yields are already bad with their eight-core series of chips, you can tell this what with how much the 9900K costs. Believe me, Intel is no charity here folks; they'll pass the extra costs onto the consumer, guaranteed. With that being said their 10nm stuff is ready for notebooks because mobile chips historically have never been high clocked chips so the lower clocks because of their 10nm process isn't really going to hurt that segment of the market but will definitely hurt the desktop market. People here would cry foul big time if all a sudden their desktop chips can't clock to 5 GHz.

Will Intel solve their 10nm process issues? Probably, but not before AMD takes a good portion of their market share and rightfully so.


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## efikkan (Jun 20, 2019)

ratirt said:


> I'm not saying they can't make 10nm but how efficient it will be (and what yields? and of course the price since we all know Intel likes to bump it).


Intel promised just a month ago that Ice Lake-SP will ship in Q2 2020 on 10nm+. All the chips shipping this year are still on the first version of 10nm, so there is a potential for improvements to the node.



trparky said:


> Their processors already run as hot as the surface of the sun, adding more cores to satisfy enthusiasts is only going to make their chips run even hotter. And as others have said, chip yields are already bad with their eight-core series of chips, you can tell this what with how much the 9900K costs. Believe me, Intel is no charity here folks…


Coffee Lake refresh struggled initially with yields, plus a large portion of the production capacity were reserved for other stuff like modems. Intel has done a new stepping, and have now more 14nm capacity than ever reserved for CPUs, and yields are good, so they can sell these at $300 now and still make a profit.


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## ratirt (Jun 21, 2019)

efikkan said:


> Intel promised just a month ago that Ice Lake-SP will ship in Q2 2020 on 10nm+. All the chips shipping this year are still on the first version of 10nm, so there is a potential for improvements to the node.


Yes promised and then it might be delayed since they already have problems with yields(that's a fact now) and they are asking Samsung to help them out. The chips shipping this year are for mobile. Keep that in mind when you think of the 10nm. It will take some time till the desktops are out and Q2 2020 is very optimistic.



efikkan said:


> Coffee Lake refresh struggled initially with yields, plus a large portion of the production capacity were reserved for other stuff like modems. Intel has done a new stepping, and have now more 14nm capacity than ever reserved for CPUs, and yields are good, so they can sell these at $300 now and still make a profit.


Bull crap my friend. Same thing. Samsung is going to help with the production cause Intel's yields are bad and they can't pull this off. Intel has way more money from CPU's then modems so there is no way it would sacrifice their cash making CPUs for anything else. This 300$ you are talking about? Since I remember Intel has been asking always a lot for it's chips. Now you think it will be 300? You can't be serious. Especially Samsung is going to produce the chips as well and you think that this is an indication of cheaper CPUs because 3rd party is involved in this? Intel always been having problems with yields. Monolithic architecture is what they got. Their processors are huge. No matter how mature the node process can be there's always defects. Not to mention the die size area is increasing without any additional cores added. AMD is pushing for more cores and yet the die for Intel is going bigger fast without adding cores. They will never sell these at 300$ unless they want to lose money and with Intel that is not possible. I will believe it when I will see it no other option.
I'd bet if they were going to lower prices exponentially, Intel would come up with a lame idea of premium processors (basically same but the premium is there) to justify the high price.


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

efikkan said:


> Coffee Lake refresh struggled initially with yields, plus a large portion of the production capacity were reserved for other stuff like modems. Intel has done a new stepping, and have now more 14nm capacity than ever reserved for CPUs, and yields are good, so they can sell these at $300 now and still make a profit.


Coffee Lake Refresh steppings are not about yields. They are about security mitigations. There have not even been hints about yield issues (for desktop CPUs).


ratirt said:


> Intel always been having problems with yields. Monolithic architecture is what they got. Their processors are huge. No matter how mature the node process can be there's always defects. Not to mention the die size area is increasing without any additional cores added. AMD is pushing for more cores and yet the die for Intel is going bigger fast without adding cores.


It is probably safe to assume Intel's 14nm yields are in the same ballpark as TSMC/GF's, right?
I see Intel having a lot of room for lowered prices, if they want that to happen.
- Current Intel's CPUs die sizes are 125mm^2 for 4-core (7700K), 150mm^2 for 6-core (8700K) and 175mm^2 for 8-core (9900K).
- Zen/Zen+ 8-core dies are a little above 200mm^2.
- Zen2 cores chiplet is 75mm^2 but IO Die is 120mm^2.


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## ratirt (Jun 21, 2019)

londiste said:


> Coffee Lake Refresh steppings are not about yields. They are about security mitigations. There have not even been hints about yield issues (for desktop CPUs).
> It is probably safe to assume Intel's 14nm yields are in the same ballpark as TSMC/GF's, right?
> I see Intel having a lot of room for lowered prices, if they want that to happen.
> - Current Intel's CPUs die sizes are 125mm^2 for 4-core (7700K), 150mm^2 for 6-core (8700K) and 175mm^2 for 8-core (9900K).
> ...


Yes. But you have to remember that chiplets are easier to make and cheaper 'cause of the yields, therefore AMD can sell them cheaper. I hope this post isn't for stating that Zen's dies are bigger. You have to remember that this isn't a monolithic chip and that's why the size of it may be bigger in comparison to the monolithic but each chiplet is very small and that boosts yields enormously.
Plus you have the CCX combinations which basically defective chips can be used as well for lower quality products or/and less cores.


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Yes. But you have to remember that chiplets are easier to make and cheaper 'cause of the yields, therefore AMD can sell them cheaper. I hope this post isn't for stating that Zen's dies are bigger. You have to remember that this isn't a monolithic chip and that's why the size of it may be bigger in comparison to the monolithic but each chiplet is very small and that boosts yields enormously.
> Plus you have the CCX combinations which basically defective chips can be used as well for lower quality products or/and less cores.


Zen die is clearly bigger. 2700X die is about 20% bigger than 9900K die.

Zen2 has at least 2 dies. For reasonably close comparison, lets look at 8-core Zen2 like 3800X. Without considering any extra aspects, just the die area - 120+75 is still 10% bigger than 9900K. One of these dies is pretty much the same size as 4-core Intel CPU. The second die is indeed small and awesome. However, from all the forums and threads (including people who should have direct knowledge of the industry) 7nm production cost is estimated to be about 60% higher than 12/14nm and defect rate to be about twice as much as a mature process like 12/14nm. Plus some of the packaging challenges AMD shared on their slides. 

I would not expect AMD's 8-core CPU production cost to be smaller than Intel's, I would lean towards the opposite.

Edit:
The problem with monolithic chips comes seriously into play with much larger chip sizes. Skylake-X 10-core (LCC) is 322mm^2, 18-core (HCC) is 484mm^2, 28-core XCC is 698mm^2. This is the sector where AMD already benefits from the ~200mm^2 Zen dies and will benefit further from 7nm Zen2 chiplets.

Defective chips are used for other SKUs by all manufacturers. Intel uses Coffee Lake Refresh dies in 9900K (9900), 9700K (9700) and 9600K. In a bit weird way not in anything lower than these. Depending on how you want to take this, it could also indicate that yields are not a problem.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

londiste said:


> Defective chips are used for other SKUs by all manufacturers.


Understood, however, there are only so many chips you can relegate to the lower end of the product spectrum due to manufacturing defects until you've eaten too far into your profit margins.


londiste said:


> For reasonably close comparison, lets look at 8-core Zen2 like 3800X. Without considering any extra aspects, just the die area - 120+75 is still 10% bigger than 9900K. One of these dies is pretty much the same size as 4-core Intel CPU.


It's not all about the size of the die but the complexity of the die as well. Intel, due to the fact that their architecture is a monolithic architecture meaning everything that the processor needs to function is on one piece of silicon, the chances of things going wrong during the manufacturing phase are exponentially higher when compared to AMD.

AMD has the manufacturing advantage of not having to put everything on one piece of silicon thus the complexity of those dies are far lower than Intel. Splitting the processor into pieces and parts, like one die for the actual processor and another die for the I/O is ingenious. They've now cut the complexity of manufacturing the actual processor dies by nearly 50%, that's a huge chunk.

You, @londiste, sound like an Intel fanboy with your posts here. You can't seem to imagine a world where Intel isn't at the top of the heap, the cream of the crop, etc.


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> You, @londiste, sound like an Intel fanboy with your posts here. You can't seem to imagine a world where Intel isn't at the top of the heap, the cream of the crop, etc.


Just curious, what makes you think that?


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

When you have comments like this...


londiste said:


> Intel uses Coffee Lake Refresh dies in 9900K (9900), 9700K (9700) and 9600K. In a bit weird way not in anything lower than these. Depending on how you want to take this, it could also indicate that yields are not a problem.


How can you say that there are no yield issues when a 9900K costs $500? The only reason why I can think of why it costs so much is that Intel is having issues making those chips and pricing it so high in hopes that people won't be tempted to buy them when they're in short supply. You also mention that there are manufacturing issues with AMD's products while overlooking the fact the Intel is having to turn to Samsung to make some of their chips. If we go by your thinking Intel would have never had to turn to Samsung. Why else would they turn to Samsung, a direct competitor, if they didn't have yield issues? I can't imagine Intel ever giving up and turning to a competitor if they didn't have manufacturing issues, it would be like GM turning to Ford to make their engines while they (GM) still make the body of the car.


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## efikkan (Jun 21, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Yes promised and then it might be delayed since they already have problems with yields(that's a fact now) and they are asking Samsung to help them out. The chips shipping this year are for mobile. Keep that in mind when you think of the 10nm. It will take some time till the desktops are out and Q2 2020 is very optimistic.


Plans are always a bit fluid with these companies. Yet Intel have made repeated claims up until 1 month ago that Ice Lake-SP will ship in Q2 2020. Even Intel don't know the final verdict until the final stepping arrives, and my guess this will happen very late in 2019, so by then we should expect either a lot of performance "leaks" or some disastrous news, and then we'll know. Intel will get some financial troubles if Ice Lake-SP is cancelled or further postponed, their commitments there are much more serious than the desktop market.

Intel have not promised any desktop 10nm products for Q2 2020. An "Ice Lake-X" might be coming, but I would guess that would be later. Intel have driver support for a desktop "495 series" Ice Lake chipset though, we don't know what this is for.

Whatever Samsung is going to help out with, will be coming later.



ratirt said:


> efikkan said:
> 
> 
> > Coffee Lake refresh struggled initially with yields, plus a large portion of the production capacity were reserved for other stuff like modems. Intel has done a new stepping, and have now more 14nm capacity than ever reserved for CPUs, and yields are good, so they can sell these at $300 now and still make a profit.
> ...


No, I'm just stating the facts, I never said they will lower the prices that much. i9-9900K will be cheaper to make than 8-core Zen 2 for now.

Intel will lower their prices (or not) depending on how well they are selling.



ratirt said:


> londiste said:
> 
> 
> > I see Intel having a lot of room for lowered prices, if they want that to happen.
> ...


TSMC 7nm is expected to become about twice as expensive per chip size vs. 14nm, but that's when 7nm approaches optimal yields. Currently an 8-core Zen 2 would cost more to make than an i9-9900K, and that's even with factoring in the benefits of the small chiplets.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

efikkan said:


> TSMC 7nm is expected to become about twice as expensive per chip size vs. 14nm, but that's when 7nm approaches optimal yields. Currently an 8-core Zen 2 would cost more to make than an i9-9900K, and that's even with factoring in the benefits of the small chiplets.


Then how is AMD's chips so much cheaper than Intel's chips? I can't imagine AMD eating the cost, they're not a charity here folks.


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## efikkan (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> Then how is AMD's chips so much cheaper than Intel's chips? I can't imagine AMD eating the cost, they're not a charity here folks.


What's you logic here?
i9-9900K is a relatively small chip produced on a very mature node, Intel have a massive profit on this one. As I've said, Intel could have cut the price, but they don't until they have to.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

efikkan said:


> What's your logic here?


If you look at many of AMD's prices they tend to be significantly lower than Intel for more performance. How can AMD do this if it's going to cut into their bottom line?


efikkan said:


> As I've said, Intel could have cut the price, but they don't until they have to.


I argue the reason why the PC industry has been in freefall the last five years is because of Intel's high prices. Why did it take AMD to suddenly come up from in back of Intel and whack them upside the head to suddenly make them want to lower their prices? My argument is that if Intel had lowered their prices on their own, despite lower profit margins they would have made it up in volume and thus the PC market wouldn't have nosedived as it did. Intel hurt themselves with high prices; if they had lowered their prices they wouldn't be in the world of hurt that they are in now.


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## efikkan (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> If you look at many of AMD's prices they tend to be significantly lower than Intel for more performance.


AMD have some offerings with more performance per dollar, but claiming more performance for lower price, that's a stretch, unless you're talking Cinebench etc. Cores don't equal performance either.



trparky said:


> How can AMD do this if it's going to cut into their bottom line?


I never said it was.
Coffe Lake 8-core is ~174 mm² (incl. graphics), considering the much larger Skylake-X/SP dies (which also have more layers) starts at $589, it's a fairly safe assumption that these dies are cheap to manufacture. They are also small compared to the desktop GPU on the market.



trparky said:


> I argue the reason why the PC industry has been in freefall the last five years is because of Intel's high prices.


Until 2015, Intel had substantial progress. Since then they have just pushed clocks, due to their problem with node shrinks.



trparky said:


> Why did it take AMD to suddenly come up from in back of Intel and whack them upside the head to suddenly make them want to lower their prices?


It's called competition, and it's something we've lacked since the glory days of Athlon 64.
Without competition, there is less motivation to cut costs. But there is still the motivation to sell new products, which is the reason why Intel have slowly lowered costs without competition, like i7-5820K with a good 6-core for $389.



trparky said:


> My argument is that if Intel had lowered their prices on their own, despite lower profit margins they would have made it up in volume and thus the PC market wouldn't have nosedived as it did. Intel hurt themselves with high prices; if they had lowered their prices they wouldn't be in the world of hurt that they are in now.


Perhaps, but the demand for Intel CPUs have actually been high. Any decline in the PC market have been consumed by the enterprise market. Intel would have required more production capacity to do this, so far they've been maxed out on 14nm. So why would they, from their standpoint, lower the prices until they have to when their desktop CPUs are selling well?


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

I'm talking more from the idea that many people didn't see a need to upgrade due to cost/benefit analysis. In other words, for the price of upgrading, there wasn't enough of a need to upgrade. If perhaps Intel had lower prices maybe, just maybe, the PC industry would not have seen the huge decline in sales over the last five years.


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## efikkan (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> I'm talking more from the idea that many people didn't see a need to upgrade due to cost/benefit analysis. In other words, for the price of upgrading, there wasn't enough of a need to upgrade. If perhaps Intel had lower prices maybe, just maybe, the PC industry would not have seen the huge decline in sales over the last five years.


Sure, in terms of wanting to upgrade, most desktop buyers have seen little to gain since Sandy Bridge, except for content creators and developers of course.

I think Intel have been too focused on the enterprise market, but hopefully the competition from AMD can make them take it more seriously again.

The laptop market is sort of selling by itself, and is usually not performance driven, as the average laptop wears out physically long before its usefulness.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

efikkan said:


> Sure, in terms of wanting to upgrade, most desktop buyers have seen little to gain since Sandy Bridge, except for content creators and developers of course.


Myself included. For the last five years, that is up until the release of the 8700K, all Intel was offering was the same old tired quad-cores year after year with absolutely pathetic increases in performance. Combine that with consistently high prices despite the fact that they were just releasing the same warmed-over crap year after year led to the decrease in sales across the PC industry in the last five years. Nobody saw a need to upgrade, there wasn't any excitement, there was nothing to really make people sit up and take notice.

Now if Intel hadn't been sitting back with cruise control on perhaps the PC industry wouldn't have seen such a huge decline. If you ask me the likes of Dell, HP, and other OEMs should have put more pressure on Intel to actually get their asses in gear to make something great to move more PCs.


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> How can you say that there are no yield issues when a 9900K costs $500? The only reason why I can think of why it costs so much is that Intel is having issues making those chips and pricing it so high in hopes that people won't be tempted to buy them when they're in short supply.


Well, you might want to read half the people in any news comments who keep saying Intel is simply greedy. It is a business that wants to make money - if customers are buying it at that price, why sell it for less? Either way, while it definitely plays a role, price at the store is not directly determined by manufacturing cost.


trparky said:


> You also mention that there are manufacturing issues with AMD's products while overlooking the fact the Intel is having to turn to Samsung to make some of their chips.


I never mentioned manufacturing issues with AMD's products. I simply argued that Zen2 processors are not necessarily cheaper to make than Intel's current CPU line. I stand by that argument. Turning to Samsung is a capacity question, not capability or any technical measure.


trparky said:


> If we go by your thinking Intel would have never had to turn to Samsung. Why else would they turn to Samsung, a direct competitor, if they didn't have yield issues? I can't imagine Intel ever giving up and turning to a competitor if they didn't have manufacturing issues, it would be like GM turning to Ford to make their engines while they (GM) still make the body of the car.


Not yield - capacity. They simply do not have enough fabs. Intel produces a lot more than CPUs. Chipsets, FPGAs, modems (including Apple deal), NAND Flash, Optane (last two have their own dedicated fabs) and some other things. In addition to making a lot of stuff, there is reason to suspect they are moving some of their fabs to 10nm or even 7nm. Retooling a fab takes year-year and a half at least, maybe two. If Intel really intends to mass manufacture 10nm chips, bad yields or not, they need fabs for that. Unfortunately the exact details for what exactly each fab is doing are hard to come by.


efikkan said:


> TSMC 7nm is expected to become about twice as expensive per chip size vs. 14nm, but that's when 7nm approaches optimal yields. Currently an 8-core Zen 2 would cost more to make than an i9-9900K, and that's even with factoring in the benefits of the small chiplets.


Wasn't the AMD slide about price for the situation at that time or close enough? That presentation was in December 2017 and had a graph showing 7nm being close to twice the price of 12nm. All current indications are that the difference has been reduced a little since then.


trparky said:


> Then how is AMD's chips so much cheaper than Intel's chips? I can't imagine AMD eating the cost, they're not a charity here folks.


They need the market share and AMD has more than a healthy profit margin. Are AMD's chips really much cheaper than Intel's chips?


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

londiste said:


> if customers are buying it at that price, why sell it for less?


Because more sales, even at a lower cost, is good. Who wouldn't want to sell more?



londiste said:


> Not yield - capacity.


Bad yields could cause capacity constraints if the yields are bad enough.



londiste said:


> Are AMD's chips really much cheaper than Intel's chips?


Per core? Hell yeah!


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> Because more sales, even at a lower cost, is good. Who wouldn't want to sell more?


They are capacity-bound. Less sales at higher margins would be better in these circumstances 


trparky said:


> Bad yields could cause capacity constraints if the yields are bad enough.


Why do you think they have bad yields?



trparky said:


> I argue the reason why the PC industry has been in freefall the last five years is because of Intel's high prices. Why did it take AMD to suddenly come up from in back of Intel and whack them upside the head to suddenly make them want to lower their prices?


Competition is the main answer here.

However, there is a simple answer to Intel's apparent lack of progress - Intel failing to develop a working 10nm process. That was planned to 2016, I think. We know Intel's 6-core and 8-core CPUs are clearly too much for 14nm given the intended TDP constraints. They were waiting for 10nm to materialize and it did not... and so far still hasn't.

Industry as a whole has had a lot more to worry about. Lack of progress is a factor but not the only one. Mobile is/was a big thing. Remember a few years ago when doom was predicted for PC and tablets, mobiles etc replacing them? That really was a thing in several fronts - hardware, RAM/Flash prices, software and a lot of supporting services and things made bets on mobile.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

londiste said:


> Why do you think they have bad yields?


Well, we know that Intel makes their chips as a monolithic die meaning all of the stuff that makes that processor is on that one die. Considering that the 7700K launched at a price of $305 USD, then the 8700K with two more cores and the launch price is $359 USD. OK, $50 more for two more cores ain't bad. But here we have the 9900K with an insane MSRP of $488 with many selling for more than that. Holy crap!

Why did adding just two more cores on top of the already six cores of the 8700K shoot the price up so badly? The only thought that comes to mind is that too many 9900K chips are coming off the line with defects in them. So if you want one, be prepared to pay dearly for it.


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> londiste said:
> 
> 
> > Are AMD's chips really much cheaper than Intel's chips?
> ...


This got me curious. I would expect this to be true but how much does the cheapest CPU with certain amount of cores from either manufacturer actually cost?

AMD lineup:
8-core $299 (Ryzen 7 2700) 
6-core $199 (Ryzen 5 2600)
4-core $100 (Ryzen 5 2200G)
2-core $55 (Athlon 200GE)
Note that Ryzen 7 3700X will be 329, raising the 8-core bar slightly.

Intel lineup:
8-core $323 (Core i7 9700)
6-core $182 (Core i5 9400)
4-core $122 (Core i3 9100)
2-core $42 (Celeron G4900)

Less of a difference than I expected.



trparky said:


> Well, we know that Intel makes their chips as a monolithic die meaning all of the stuff that makes that processor is on that one die. Considering that the 7700K launched at a price of $305 USD, then the 8700K with two more cores and the launch price is $359 USD. OK, $50 more for two more cores ain't bad. But here we have the 9900K with an insane MSRP of $488 with many selling for more than that. Holy crap!
> 
> Why did adding just two more cores on top of the already six cores of the 8700K shoot the price up so badly? The only thought that comes to mind is that too many 9900K chips are coming off the line with defects in them. So if you want one, be prepared to pay dearly for it.


You are basing this squarely on price. That is a bad indicator. Pricing is much more marketing than technical thing.
i7 7700K never really sold for $305. Its retail price was pretty much $350-360, even more so with i7 6700K still being sold and occupying the slot at $300-ish. i7 8700K effectively formalized that price.
i9 9900K is the top processor of the class you can get which inevitably comes with a price premium. Ryzen 9 3950X is bound to take that spot now with $250 (50%) higher price over Ryzen 9 3900X for 4 extra cores.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

Whoa. I didn't expect that. I expected to see dramatic price differences.


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## londiste (Jun 21, 2019)

trparky said:


> Whoa. I didn't expect that. I expected to see dramatic price differences.


There are caveats to that list. Disabled HT and no OC are the ones you (or someone else) will soon bring up. Both are true but not strictly technical questions. Limited OC is about marketing (and Intel's stupid amount of models), lack of HT is due to vulnerabilities (as I said before, I am willing to bet it is due to MDS). The point was that Intel is capable of manufacturing and selling CPUs with same amount of cores with prices that are not that much different.


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## trparky (Jun 21, 2019)

Yeah, Intel provides unlocked chips only on their more expensive K-class chips whereas AMD freely gives it away on all of their chips regardless of what model you buy.


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## ratirt (Jun 24, 2019)

londiste said:


> lack of HT is due to vulnerabilities (as I said before, I am willing to bet it is due to MDS).


I don't think you are right here or fair. Lack of HT was done by Intel before vulnerabilities were introduced. Intel wanted to charge extra for the HT option in processors. Intel has so many processors cause Intel wanted to get more cash from customers and played with the features like HT and OC possibility.
AMD is changing that. I wonder what the new Intel's processor lineup will look like. I'd bet it will have less products.


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## Midland Dog (Jun 24, 2019)

HwGeek said:


> If Zen 2.0 already got ~12% IPC advantage over current Intel parts, how do you think the Zen 3.0 gonna perform? another 5% IPC + 10% performance at same TDP[Higher All core boost]? this make very big gap for 2020, so maybe Intel is reconsidering it's timeline?


zen 3 is a pipe dream at this point, think of it as a redesign of a redesign, 7nm + is EUV and 7nm is duv (TSMC) so it wont be as easy as make the same chip on the + node and get better clocks, design adaptations will certainly happen, i expect perf per watt and amds margins will get the biggest gains from EUV



trparky said:


> Yeah, Intel provides unlocked chips only on their more expensive K-class chips whereas AMD freely gives it away on all of their chips regardless of what model you buy.


*athon 200ge flops around like a spastic*


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## londiste (Jun 24, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Lack of HT was done by Intel before vulnerabilities were introduced.


9000-series was released on October 2018. MDS vulnerabilities were discovered and reported to Intel from March to September 2018.


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## EarthDog (Jun 24, 2019)

londiste said:


> 9000-series was released on October 2018. MDS vulnerabilities were discovered and reported to Intel from March to September 2018.


...and Intel CPUs without HT have been around for several generations prior. This has nothing to do with vulnerabilities.


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## londiste (Jun 25, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> ...and Intel CPUs without HT have been around for several generations prior. This has nothing to do with vulnerabilities.


Are you sure about that?
2c/4t, 4c/4c, 4c/8t is a fairly logical lineup. With the addition of a 6-core in 8000-series, they were kind of stuck in terms of lineup (4c/8t is faster than 6c/6t in several situations, relegating what is effectively i7-7700K to i5 in less than a year would look bad etc). 4c/4t, 6c/6t, 6c/12t is the best they could come up with.
Now, with the addition to 8-core in 9000 series Intel did have a perfect opportunity to match AMD-s offerings in terms of threads. They did not. We do know that all 4, 6 and 8-core do have HyperThreading in hardware but it is disabled in everything except 9900/9900K. With MDS and mitigation effectively being "disable HT", I really do suspect it is not a coincidence.

I am not saying that it is definitively so but it looks like a valid theory, no?


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## ratirt (Jun 25, 2019)

londiste said:


> Are you sure about that?
> 2c/4t, 4c/4c, 4c/8t is a fairly logical lineup. With the addition of a 6-core in 8000-series, they were kind of stuck in terms of lineup (4c/8t is faster than 6c/6t in several situations, relegating what is effectively i7-7700K to i5 in less than a year would look bad etc). 4c/4t, 6c/6t, 6c/12t is the best they could come up with.
> Now, with the addition to 8-core in 9000 series Intel did have a perfect opportunity to match AMD-s offerings in terms of threads. They did not. We do know that all 4, 6 and 8-core do have HyperThreading in hardware but it is disabled in everything except 9900/9900K. With MDS and mitigation effectively being "disable HT", I really do suspect it is not a coincidence.
> 
> I am not saying that it is definitively so but it looks like a valid theory, no?


Yes it is fairly logical theory but my logic dictates that this is due to get more cash from customers charging extra for features like OC possibility and HT enabled. I think you are not seeing the bigger picture. You need to ask yourself, instead of putting a "nice lineup" here as an answer, why this lineup looks like that. Vulnerabilities are already out so what is left? 
Give you a hint. More products more money. More features more money


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## EarthDog (Jun 25, 2019)

londiste said:


> Are you sure about that?


FWIW...yes.

6c/6t is plenty for years for the average user. 8c/8t...better and fine for enthusiast...8c/16t mainstream flagship. Why complicate things?


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## londiste (Jun 25, 2019)

EarthDog said:


> 6c/6t is plenty for years for the average user. 8c/8t...better and fine for enthusiast...8c/16t mainstream flagship. Why complicate things?


Why not do 4c/8t, 6c/12t, 8c/16t like competition does. All this quite literally exists in the same pieces of silicon they are selling (= no additional cost).



ratirt said:


> Yes it is fairly logical theory but my logic dictates that this is due to get more cash from customers charging extra for features like OC possibility and HT enabled. I think you are not seeing the bigger picture. You need to ask yourself, instead of putting a "nice lineup" here as an answer, why this lineup looks like that. Vulnerabilities are already out so what is left?
> Give you a hint. More products more money. More features more money


Intel is currently not selling any 4c/8t or 6c/12t CPUs for consumer.


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## ratirt (Jun 25, 2019)

londiste said:


> Intel is currently not selling any 4c/8t or 6c/12t CPUs for consumer.


Maybe they are more worried about AMD release now than about their lineup. Releasing something with HT now wouldn't make a difference when they need to fight AMD. Enabling HT on 4c and 6c CPU changes nothing. They need new CPU and new lineup to counter to AMD's 3000 series processors.


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## londiste (Jun 25, 2019)

ratirt said:


> Maybe they are more worried about AMD release now than about their lineup. Releasing something with HT now wouldn't make a difference when they need to fight AMD. Enabling HT on 4c and 6c CPU changes nothing. They need new CPU and new lineup to counter to AMD's 3000 series processors.


Having HT turned on would make a world of difference in fighting AMD. That is exactly what causes big losses for Intel CPUs in production benchmarks vs Zen.


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## ratirt (Jun 25, 2019)

londiste said:


> Having HT turned on would make a world of difference in fighting AMD. That is exactly what causes big losses for Intel CPUs in production benchmarks vs Zen.


You are missing the point. Intel doesn't want to fight back. Was never interested in fighting AMD back. Intel wants to win the battle. Diminish the opponent and show superiority just as it has been for the couple of years when Intel's products were superior to AMD's. having a processors 6c 12t or 4c 8t is not going to win the battle for Intel against AMD.


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## londiste (Jun 25, 2019)

ratirt said:


> having a processors 6c 12t or 4c 8t is not going to win the battle for Intel against AMD.


Why not? As an example, 9600K with 6c/6t is currently intended to compete with 2600x 6c/12t. If not for less threads it would be very competitive in production performance as well. There is a similar situation with Ryzen 7 and i7 and Ryzen 3 and i3.


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## EarthDog (Jun 25, 2019)

londiste said:


> Why not do 4c/8t, 6c/12t, 8c/16t like competition does. All this quite literally exists in the same pieces of silicon they are selling (= no additional cost).
> 
> Intel is currently not selling any 4c/8t or 6c/12t CPUs for consumer.


I dont have that answer... Respectfully WGAF though? There is the 8700k and w/e the 4/8 count derivative (8600k?) Are still for sale... just like zen+ will still be too.You act like coffelake improved on anything except clocks. Why fill that portion in and waste precious silicon when they are already limited?

All I know is that they didnt drop HT because of vulnerabilities. It's an interesting theory, but I dont buy it. Maybe Intel is the only saner one not pumping useless core and thread counts into the mainstream platform.


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## plonk420 (Jul 8, 2019)

the frustrating thing is how long Intel has been sitting on the same IPC. tho, i suppose it's good they didn't swoop in with Ice Lake before Zen 2 launched, giving AMD some breathing room and some room for competition for a while


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