Why_MeDidn't see the last post .. I'll check it out in a bit. Meanwhile there's a reason Intel puts out locked and unlocked cpu's. Unlocked ones are for the small minority who don't mind paying more for cooling along with a board with heftier VRM's for that small gain it brings. The rest of us look at the benchmarks along with the savings and thank ourselves for going with the locked cpu. That's where the math comes in or didn't you figure that out yet.

MakaveliI don't buy locked CPU's so no I didn't bother even thinking about it. And i'm not working with a small budget so trying to save a few bucks here and there also not a big deal.

efikkanPeople are too fixated about specs, specs which they usually know little about. We have no confirmation of the launch window for Alder Lake. It could be very late 2021, but quite possibly later.

Intel Reports First-Quarter 2021 financial results on Thursday, April 22, 2021 at the close of market. I am quite sure that the Intel boys will then let the plain facts tell the story. Discussions with their major attending institutional investors will be addressing their "readily available" Z590 product (by then on the market in full swing) and the Alder Lake arrival and its progress later this year. The pallette of their Z590 CPU's which are produced in Intel very owned foundries is expected to be selling like hotcakes. It is said that many enthusiasts simply cannot wait any longer to upgrade and then additionally to relish in the Z590 motherboard offerings. Better chipset expansion and PCIe 4.0 leading the way. Wall Street in turn is no longer in favor of AMD and prefers Intel as it can deliver for now guaranteed CPU production, deliveries and sales unlike AMD. It is well known that AMD has major production problems and is already in talk to expanding its subcontracting of their chipsets. TSMC, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of chipsets was not able to meet AMD's expectations. The engagement of an additional (overseas) new chip contractor will however take time as to complete factory retooling is necessary and as much as 120-180 days before full production is realized. AMD once the investment darling has also recently dropped in stock value and the fact remains that Wall Street has no memory. My take-away: AMD should get their own USA based foundries and get complete control of their fate and not finding it overseas. Furthermore, there are downsides to working with multiple foundry partners. AMD would be paying twice to design the same CPU, and each version would have to be customized to the foundry it was built on. We are living in interesting times.

Why_MeRocket Lake cpu's listed on US & UK sites for less than 48 hours now and they're already dropping the prices on those cpu's.

Tom SundayYes Sir...I love competition and what it does for the man on the street like me. With WFH and part-time jobs with no benefits prevailing cash remains king. I am dreaming about a Z590 Asus mobo as well but those prices are also out of reach. Perhaps coming-off a 10 plus year older PC set-up, I should consider in going with a Z490 upgrade approach and wait for those hardware components to go on sale.Thoughts?

Why_MeRocket Lake cpu's listed on US & UK sites for less than 48 hours now and they're already dropping the prices on those cpu's. Intel once again showing the :love:

agentnathan009Nah, they are admitting they have an inferior product!

Why_MeNo doubt that AMD cpu's are superior to Intel's when it comes to cpu intensive task. With that said the average buyer who is looking at a general office build and/or gaming build will most likely go Intel for not only the savings but also the simple plug & play Intel builds offer. Watch Intel continue to drop the price on their cpu's knowing that AMD can't afford to do the same due to AMD's junior league manufacturing & distribution methods.

agentnathan009AMD was a serious competitor to Intel back in the day, but they made some poor choices around 15-20 ago that lead to Intel growing a lot with the Core architecture. AMD is not in the junior leagues, they are churning out competitive and superior products. They haven’t recaptured the market share that they lost over the years. Ryzen uarch is helping them regain market share, and giving Intel much needed competition to drive innovation from both companies. AMD used to own all their own fabs but sold them off to get leaner and pay debt. Intel is stumbling badly trying to get 10nm node up and running smoothly whereas TSMC has left them in the dust with node shrinks. Obviously their respective nodes are not directly comparable, but I say this to point out that Intel isn’t doing so hot right now. AMD is spread a bit thin with manufacturing from TSMC, but they don’t have to fund their own chip fan I g, they let TSMC deal with those headaches, but that can also be a problem for them if something goes south for TSMC.

Also, you forget that AMD offers very competitive Ryzen CPU with onboard graphics that decimate Intel’s offerings and at a lower price point for OEM and system builders. The average Joe wanting a home office computer is t buying the chips we buy, they are buying the Ryzen 4000 series powered computers.

HenrySomeoneTwice the power, huh? Not in your average workloads and certainly not while gaming - actually AMD still manages to hold "the crown" in that regard:

Why_MeIntel is dropping prices while AMD is raising theirs in some countries. If AMD learned anything from this virus, it's don't have a junior league manufacturing & distribution setup if you want to trade blows with Team Blue. btw how good of onboard graphics does one require to run MS Office @ 1080P.

Minus InfinityGee you'd have to be desperate to get this toaster rather than wait for Alder Lake. Alder Lake will have 20% IPC uplift but massive multi-thread uplift. Alder Lake looks likely to give AMD a hurry up and even Zen3+ might not be enough to overtake it. Rocket Lake is a desperate move to win 1080p laming benchmarks, because hey I spend big dollars on high-end CPU and GPU to play at 1080p.

Tom SundayYes Sir...I love competition and what it does for the man on the street like me. With WFH and part-time jobs with no benefits prevailing cash remains king. I am dreaming about a Z590 Asus mobo as well but those prices are also out of reach. Perhaps coming-off a 10 plus year older PC set-up, I should consider in going with a Z490 upgrade approach and wait for those hardware components to go on sale.Thoughts?

AlexaI'd like to see Intel attempt to compete with this:

Chrispy_Intel don't even need to attempt, they won the Frequency wars that nobody cared about decades ago! :D


photoshop, you say? how deplorable!

AlexaHoly hell

Chrispy_If value for money is important and your existing rig is 10+ years old, just grab an i5-11400 with some DDR4-3200 on a B560 board. It's going to be a vast improvement over a C2Q and if you grab yourself a decent budget 1TB NVMe drive like the WD SN550 or Kingston A2000 you're going to be getting a big upgrade for not a lot of cash.

I'll assume you already have a GPU, if not stick with the HD 750 IGP until GPUs are available again. Amusingly the GTX 970 is terrible for mining so those are going for a reasonably price on ebay (£125 or so) which makes them "good" performance/$ if you need something right now that's approximately capable of 1080p60 in plenty of games.

Chrispy_Alder Lake won't compete with Zen3, at least not for long. AMD's answer to Alder Lake already exists in the flesh - as Epyc engineering samples, and it's reported to have 29% higher IPC than Zen3.

By the time Alder Lake and DDR5 hit mass market, AMD will be selling something 29% faster than Zen3 on TSMC 5nm and I don't know about you but I trust TSMC more than Intel's still no-show for any high-performance 10nm parts. 10nm might be better than it was but there are no desktop, server, or datacenter products made using 10nm. It's flaky and unimpressive - we've had a bunch of Ice Lake laptops and they run hot and slow, two have gone back under warranty for IGP failure. Tiger Lake may be better but once bitten, twice shy so I've never used one.


If value for money is important and your existing rig is 10+ years old, just grab an i5-11400 with some DDR4-3200 on a B560 board. It's going to be a vast improvement over a C2Q and if you grab yourself a decent budget 1TB NVMe drive like the WD SN550 or Kingston A2000 you're going to be getting a big upgrade for not a lot of cash.

I'll assume you already have a GPU, if not stick with the HD 750 IGP until GPUs are available again. Amusingly the GTX 970 is terrible for mining so those are going for a reasonably price on ebay (£125 or so) which makes them "good" performance/$ if you need something right now that's approximately capable of 1080p60 in plenty of games.

Tom SundayMany thanks and your points are very well taken and really appreciated. Indeed I am long overdue for a total new 'set-up' and as you probably gleaned from my cobbled together and posted existing system specifications. Even though I am limping along, I am currently on my third Mobo, AIO, GPU and PSU and upgraded memory. Most of which having been costly compliments of Dell's splendid propiatary hardware. For the "New Build" of course I want to be sure first in having all of the new hardware parts on my table. And not finding myself hung-up (as an example) on a GPU unavailability and which money cannot buy. This said my trusty GTX 980ti should be able to carrying me through until the 3000 series cards are readily available at MSRP. Until then I will just play Dishonored, Fallout 4 and Wolfenstein for the 100th time. No rest for the weary.

Why_MeI admire value and the fact Intel allows us poors to build a solid gaming rig for cheaper than what AMD allows. That and I'm all for plug & play builds these days. If you look at the System Builders Advice forum on here there's a couple of threads that are two and three pages deep on what RAM to get for an AMD build. I see that and all I can think is 'wtf'.