Finer Details of Intel Core i7-9700K and Core i9-9900K Emerge

[Hood]

Did Intel screw over users? Sure.

I don't understand why this mindset is becoming so common, as if Intel held a gun to people's heads and made them buy their CPUs. What a crock - everyone was damn glad for the chance to use Intel's excellent products for years, when the only alternative was AMD's slow FX crap, even for half the price of intel's. In those days, people who claimed AMD superiority were considered to be crackpots, or tightwads, and rightly so. Now that Ryzen is a feasible alternative, people have all kinds of theories about how "Intel has been screwing us all for years", and that "Ryzen/Threadripper is the second coming of Jesus and He told us that intel is Satan". Try not to be that person, extreme viewpoints towards either camp are equally misguided. You could just as easily say, "AMD has been screwing us for years, making us buy their slow crap, just because we couldn't afford Intel." A balanced viewpoint is what's expedient, hate only exposes the author as biased, and ultimately, ignorable. I'm not saying that you are that person, just want you to know, I was in total agreement with your post, until I got to that part, and it just made me wonder how the perception of "being screwed" by this or that company has changed meaning. It now has extended to include any company whose products have a higher price, even if most agree it's justified by better performance.
Ironically, most of the "Intel has been screwing us for years" posts claim that the way they've been "screwing us" is by releasing new improvements at "only" 5-10% faster per generation, as if they "held back tons of performance they could have given us, if they weren't so greedy". So this gives them too much credit for innovation, and no credit at all for good business sense, keeping their upgrades linear to avoid making their own products obsolete. Go figure...

 

[Valantar]

I don't understand why this mindset is becoming so common, as if Intel held a gun to people's heads and made them buy their CPUs. What a crock - everyone was damn glad for the chance to use Intel's excellent products for years, when the only alternative was AMD's slow FX crap, even for half the price of intel's. In those days, people who claimed AMD superiority were considered to be crackpots, or tightwads, and rightly so. Now that Ryzen is a feasible alternative, people have all kinds of theories about how "Intel has been screwing us all for years", and that "Ryzen/Threadripper is the second coming of Jesus and He told us that intel is Satan". Try not to be that person, extreme viewpoints towards either camp are equally misguided. You could just as easily say, "AMD has been screwing us for years, making us buy their slow crap, just because we couldn't afford Intel." A balanced viewpoint is what's expedient, hate only exposes the author as biased, and ultimately, ignorable. I'm not saying that you are that person, just want you to know, I was in total agreement with your post, until I got to that part, and it just made me wonder how the perception of "being screwed" by this or that company has changed meaning. It now has extended to include any company whose products have a higher price, even if most agree it's justified by better performance.
Ironically, most of the "Intel has been screwing us for years" posts claim that the way they've been "screwing us" is by releasing new improvements at "only" 5-10% faster per generation, as if they "held back tons of performance they could have given us, if they weren't so greedy". So this gives them too much credit for innovation, and no credit at all for good business sense, keeping their upgrades linear to avoid making their own products obsolete. Go figure...

First, let's start off with some history. While not at all unique among major corporations, Intel has been found guilty of anticompetitive business practices. As such, yes, Intel is fundamentally unsympathetic and consumer-unfriendly. That stink doesn't wash off in a decade, even with multiple C-level execs being replaced in the meantime. I'm not saying that AMD wouldn't do the same given the same opportunity, but as they haven't had that opportunity, they haven't actually (been found to have) done so. As such, yes, I definitely hold this against Intel.

But even ignoring that, your "good business sense" is, again, fundamentally unfriendly to consumers. Why? In this case, "good business sense" means not pushing your company to innovate, instead surfing on a near-monopolist market position. Your argument is essentially "we should have sympathy with Intel, they're just doing what's smart for their business." The thing is, I don't care what's smart for their business. They make billion-dollar profits every quarter. I don't care if they make stockholders happy. I don't accept the notion that their (or any business') main purpose is generating profit for stockholders - quite to the opposite; I hold that any business that doesn't put its obligations to its customers first is fundamentally flawed. Intel has been laser-focused on product segmentation to eke out maximum profits for minimal R&D expenditure. The only segment that's seen significant innovation in later years is the server market, as customers there are far stronger and more vocal, and make strong demands.

Now, were people claiming AMD superiority before Ryzen crackpots? Sure, you could say that. At the very least, they were dead wrong. The [heavy machinery] series was not good at all. Period. That's not the point here, though. The thing is, people have been calling out Intel for holding back performance and innovation in the CPU space for multiple years, since long before Ryzen was even rumored. Haswell was the last Intel generation with a significant performance uplift over the previous generation, and now they have stagnated on an architecture from late 2014, getting by on (first) market dominance and (second) IPC and process advantages. The point here isn't that Ryzen is Jesus and Dr. Su is Mary, but rather that the arrival of Ryzen showed us very clearly how it took competition for Intel to "suddenly" make major performance strides that - according to their responses to customers asking for more performance, at least - was impossible for consumer prices. We now know that this is BS and has always been BS. Saying "Intel did nothing wrong, they were just practicing good business sense" is saying that Intel has the right to squeeze consumers for profit without giving anything tangible back. I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment.

 

[Assimilator]

Meh, who cares about these at the same time the Threadripper refresh is upon us?

Intel XD

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Meh, who cares about these at the same time the Threadripper refresh is upon us?

Me. Because Intel is still the go to CPU for gaming which is my primary concern.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Meh, who cares about these at the same time the Threadripper refresh is upon us?

Didn’t you just say a few posts earlier that you can’t use this many threads? Threadripper is even more so what does it matter.

And these are still mainstream useful for gaming.

 

[dorsetknob]

Running all 8 cores and thus 16 threads at 4.7Ghz with no effort is actually very good.

Only on one as

revealing more about the Core i7-9700K 8-core/8-thread processor, and the top-dog 8-core/16-thread Core i9-9900K.

 

[Prima.Vera]

So, will the i9-9900K have the same price as the 7820X one, ~520$ as currently it can be bought from Amazon?
Or more likely something like 499$??
Either way, imo I think the price it's still ridiculously high considering the nice alternative from AMD.

 

[Hood]

without giving anything tangible back

Intel gave me years of fast, well-supported PC hardware for a fair price, hardware that did everything it was supposed to, without problems, and could even be pushed farther by judicious overclocking, without damage. Also, it got a little bit faster each generation, for the same price or less, and always supported the fastest bus speeds and ports. I'm glad I had the choice of buying Intel for the years that AMD was far behind, aren't you? Did you really not get anything? Maybe you've always bought AMD parts? That would explain your viewpoint.

 

[Valantar]

Intel XD

A bit OT, but perhaps it's time for a follow-up to the build in your sig? 32 x everything? XD

Intel gave me years of fast, well-supported PC hardware for a fair price, hardware that did everything it was supposed to, without problems, and could even be pushed farther by judicious overclocking, without damage. Also, it got a little bit faster each generation, for the same price or less, and always supported the fastest bus speeds and ports. I'm glad I had the choice of buying Intel for the years that AMD was far behind, aren't you? Did you really not get anything? Maybe you've always bought AMD parts? That would explain your viewpoint.

Nope. I could never justify the cost of spending $350+ on a CPU at the time (plus an expensive Z-series motherboard), which would have been the only price point giving me an actual upgrade over my aging system. This seems to be a sentiment shared by all the people clinging to their Dandy Bridge chips and similar, too.

I expect to get something back when I spend that significant an amount on hardware. Until recently, people buying Intel largely didn't. Not to mention all the people upgrading every 1-2 generations, which I find truly baffling. More money than sense, I suppose. You think it's okay to pay ~$500 for a 5-15% performance increase every 1-2 years? I don't. Particularly during the time in history in which compute performance has otherwise increased more than ever before (a pace that isn't likely to be beat, ever). Particularly when Intel forces their customers to throw out functioning hardware when upgrading (motherboards at the very least). This is obvious profit gouging, and clearly not intended to serve the customers' best interests. Intel has delivered very tangible gains in laptops, but not desktops until CFL. Which is why I've never bothered to spend my hard-earned money on their hardware, and kept my Core2Quad for eight years.

 

[Hood]

Which is why I've never bothered to spend my hard-earned money on their hardware, and kept my Core2Quad for eight years.

So a single Intel system served your needs for 8 years, and you say they never gave you anything tangible back? Tangible like cash? Or maybe you expected a free PC every 2 years? How about 8 years of great fast computing? What about 8 years of not having to buy another PC? And you're complaining about Intel? Never mind trying to explain anything else, I sense that you are under emotional stress, and aren't thinking logically. A couple years fighting that slow Ryzen system you bought should bring you back to reality, if it doesn't break your spirit.

 

[Caring1]

I don't understand why this mindset is becoming so common, as if Intel held a gun to people's heads and made them buy their CPUs. .

In a duopoly with no real competition, there was no need to use a gun, people had to pay the ridiculous prices asked or put up with a lesser option. Now there is finally a competitor worth buying again, we can freely say what we think of being overcharged, and go elsewhere.

 

[Prima.Vera]

A little offtopic, I am curious on what will be the next nameing scheme for Intel regarding those CPUs??
i7-10700K, i9-10900K ? or something like i7-107K, i9-109K , or worst?

 

[HD64G]

This is a good move from Intel, but ONLY IF they are well priced. They are trying hard to get people milked again before 7nm Ryzen 3 series comes out in 2019.

Meanwhile...

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/three-new-vulnerabilities-in-intel-processors-discovered-l1tf.html

How much slower will an Intel CPU end to become if one patches them properly to be secure?

 

[Valantar]

So a single Intel system served your needs for 8 years, and you say they never gave you anything tangible back? Tangible like cash? Or maybe you expected a free PC every 2 years? How about 8 years of great fast computing? What about 8 years of not having to buy another PC? And you're complaining about Intel? Never mind trying to explain anything else, I sense that you are under emotional stress, and aren't thinking logically. A couple years fighting that slow Ryzen system you bought should bring you back to reality, if it doesn't break your spirit.

Wow. Just wow. How about you come back when you're capable of actually presenting an argument, and not being utterly ridiculous? Jesus ******* Christ, man. I definitely wasn't "under emotional stress" (wtf does that even mean?), but if you mean "pissed off", I sure am now. Unlike you, at least I have the self control to not take it out on you through idiotic ad hominems and dumb jibes. I'm sure that was very satisfying for you. Now can you please grow up?

And yes, I got great value for my purchase back in late 2008. In fact, I was (or am? I don't have it any more, so...) extremely happy with that cpu, and believe Intel made a hell of a product line with the C2Q series, as well as some subsequent series (Sandy Bridge in particular). At that point, Intel were in a tough, competitive market, and they came out with some great chips, mine included. So great that they pretty much outcompeted AMD in a couple of years. There's no question about this. The thing is, when I started looking for an upgrade 3-4 years after this, I found... essentially a side-grade (same cores, same threads, better IPC, somewhat higher clocks) for a bit more money than I paid in 2008 (i5s at around 2500NOK), requiring overclocking for a significant performance advantage. Or I could pay around 33% more for ~20% more performance through HT with an i7. So I held off, waiting for performance to "trickle down" from the top-of-the-line chips, which had been the norm for quite a while. This didn't actually happen until CFL though, when an i5 suddenly outperforms the previous generation's top i7, and i3s are suddenly useful again. Before that, the new i5s never touched the previous i7s, at least without OCing one and not the other. Now, what changed before CFL? Competition. Intel made measly progress every generation until they were suddenly under threat again. One might be inclined to interpret that as a highly conservative, profits-first stance, no?

So: what I mean by getting something tangible for my money, is (shocker!) getting an actual performance upgrade of note when buying a new CPU for more money after several years. A 50-70% increase after 3-4 years for more money (or a 100-120% increase for even more than that) did not cut it for me then, and likely won't cut it in the coming years either (considering that we can only expect performance increases to slow in the coming years, hardware will inevitably last longer). If that's Intel's business model, I'm afraid that doesn't sound sustainable in the long run.

It's also rather fascinating that you come out with "I don't get the hate" (in response to an opinionated, but nuanced, factually precise and not at all emotionally written post, I might add), and follow it up with that piece of insult-laden drivel. Well done.

 

[rtwjunkie]

Wow. Just wow. How about you come back when you're capable of actually presenting an argument, and not being utterly ridiculous? Jesus ******* Christ, man. I definitely wasn't "under emotional stress" (wtf does that even mean?), but if you mean "pissed off", I sure am now. Unlike you, at least I have the self control to not take it out on you through idiotic ad hominems and dumb jibes. I'm sure that was very satisfying for you. Now can you please grow up?

And yes, I got great value for my purchase back in late 2008. In fact, I was (or am? I don't have it any more, so...) extremely happy with that cpu, and believe Intel made a hell of a product line with the C2Q series, as well as some subsequent series (Sandy Bridge in particular). At that point, Intel were in a tough, competitive market, and they came out with some great chips, mine included. So great that they pretty much outcompeted AMD in a couple of years. There's no question about this. The thing is, when I started looking for an upgrade 3-4 years after this, I found... essentially a side-grade (same cores, same threads, better IPC, somewhat higher clocks) for a bit more money than I paid in 2008 (i5s at around 2500NOK), requiring overclocking for a significant performance advantage. Or I could pay around 33% more for ~20% more performance through HT with an i7. So I held off, waiting for performance to "trickle down" from the top-of-the-line chips, which had been the norm for quite a while. This didn't actually happen until CFL though, when an i5 suddenly outperforms the previous generation's top i7, and i3s are suddenly useful again. Before that, the new i5s never touched the previous i7s, at least without OCing one and not the other. Now, what changed before CFL? Competition. Intel made measly progress every generation until they were suddenly under threat again. One might be inclined to interpret that as a highly conservative, profits-first stance, no?

So: what I mean by getting something tangible for my money, is (shocker!) getting an actual performance upgrade of note when buying a new CPU for more money after several years. A 50-70% increase after 3-4 years for more money (or a 100-120% increase for even more than that) did not cut it for me then, and likely won't cut it in the coming years either (considering that we can only expect performance increases to slow in the coming years, hardware will inevitably last longer). If that's Intel's business model, I'm afraid that doesn't sound sustainable in the long run.

It's also rather fascinating that you come out with "I don't get the hate" (in response to an opinionated, but nuanced, factually precise and not at all emotionally written post, I might add), and follow it up with that piece of insult-laden drivel. Well done.

Dude, you would have been amazed at the huge jump in performance you could see and feel just going to IB from Core2 quad or duo. Really, it was like day and night.

 

[bug]

Didn’t you just say a few posts earlier that you can’t use this many threads? Threadripper is even more so what does it matter.

And these are still mainstream useful for gaming.

Well, no, I don't have use for so many threads. But if I'm not going to buy any of these, I might as well drool over the most impressive/expensive, right?

Me. Because Intel is still the go to CPU for gaming which is my primary concern.

You can still game just as well on an Intel CPU that costs probably a quarter of what these will.

 

[Valantar]

Dude, you would have been amazed at the huge jump in performance you could see and feel just going to IB from Core2 quad or duo. Really, it was like day and night.

After reading long and hard about this, I concluded that I'd get better value from investing in SSDs and improved GPUs at the time. Can't say I've regretted this later, as all of these upgrades have turned out to be long-lasting, well-performing and economical. I was very tempted by Haswell, but ultimately couldn't justify a platform upgrade while keeping my then aging GPU, so I upgraded that instead (making the C2Q live through three GPUs). Of course, the speed-up when I got my new Ryzen system was fantastic, but all in all it's amazing how much life I could squeeze from that old C2Q with some OC elbow grease, boot+game SSDs and a good GPU.


Now, can we perhaps get back to discussing the topic at hand?

 

[rtwjunkie]

And here I thought this was part of the topic, since it all stemmed from whether new cpu lines were valid or not.

I keep mine several gens before I upgrade, because I understand the tic tics were not good or meaningful upgrades.

 

[bug]

And here I thought this was part of the topic, since it all stemmed from whether new cpu lines were valid or not.

I keep mine several gens before I upgrade, because I understand the tic tics were not good or meaningful upgrades.

What makes a CPU line valid or not? They're all "valid" from a certain angle, otherwise they wouldn't be produced.

 

[Blueberries]

Looking back at Sandy Bridge and remembering people struggling to hit 4.8 with marginal over-clocks and a nominal voltage that wasn't ideal for everyday use and seeing these new CPUs coming out of the box at these speeds with the IPC increases of Ivy/Haswell/Devil's/etc...

It's quite spectacular, really. Nobody in 2011 thought we would make it this far in 7 years.

 

[Valantar]

And here I thought this was part of the topic, since it all stemmed from whether new cpu lines were valid or not.

I keep mine several gens before I upgrade, because I understand the tic tics were not good or meaningful upgrades.

Discussing (Intel's, though arguably any) CPU product lines and their development and the tactics behind this? Sure, that's on topic. Discussing the reasoning behind my personal PC parts purchase history? Not really a topic for discussion, other than that I made a point out of my experience as it related to Intel's arch update cycle (and arguably "getting in" at a near-ideal time in terms of longevity). Arguing over whether my reasoning was correct or not is definitely not on-topic.

Intel delivered 5-10% increases year-on-year in pretty much any product segment until Broadwell, when things started slowing down (particularly on the fab node side). Then, all of a sudden, we have >50% increases in a single generation (at least for i5s, i7s are a bit lower, i3s are higher and it's of course all workload dependent). What changed? Competition. The competition arrived too soon for CFL to be a direct, after-the-fact response (as CPU design lead times are at least two years, even with ~0 arch changes like KBL-CFL), but AMD wasn't exactly quiet about their upcoming arch before launch. I don't count myself as a conspiracy theorist for seeing a pattern here. And, of course, Intel all of a sudden launching 6-cores for the same price (and now 8-cores a short time later, which are definitely an "oh s**t!" response) means they could have done this a while ago if they were interested. Of course, recent efficiency gains play a large role here, there's no doubt about that. They very likely couldn't have shipped a full-speed Haswell or Broadwell 6-cores at 95W (or even ~110W, which would be reasonable for a consumer platform), let alone Sandy Bridge or similar. (Significant) Clock speed trade-offs would have been necessary. But why not give users the choice between cores or clock speed? Not only would that have enabled access to faster multi-threaded performance for normal users (who don't need a 2x-priced HEDT platform with all its accompanying annoyances), but it would very likely have accelerated development of software making use of more threads (which the computing world needs, as the single-core-perf race is slowing down dramatically). Of course, this would have required Intel to cut their margins on some products a bit. A lot? No. But Intel has been laser-focused on protecting and maintaining their profits. The result has been that the PC CPU space has been boring as all hell until Ryzen came around. Of course, in the future, this is likely to be the norm, not the exception. But for now, I hold that against Intel as a highly consumer-unfriendly business tactic.

As for these chips in particular, they look/sound very, very impressive, even if I don't think they'll come even close to all-core turbo at TDP. No doubt they'll be fantastic for both gaming and content creation. This is Intel making the most of their IPC and process advantage. Still, for me the big question is how close 7nm Zen2 will come to the IPC and clock speeds of these chips, how long after, and for what cost. 2019 is going to be interesting. Which is pretty new in the PC CPU space.

 

[Berfs1]

The ring bus still needs to be active, and given that it'll be bigger than it is for CFL, power draw will be higher for the uncore regardless of disabled cores. Also, power-binned KBL-R and CFL U-series chips pull more than 50w when turboing to 4.2-ish on two cores (with the other two active, of course). Achieving no increase in power draw on a bigger chip with a bigger uncore at 0.8GHz up from that, even with disabled cores, seems wildly optimistic. Even if they manage to eke out a 10% power improvement from their next tweaked node (which is by itself extremely unlikely), that sounds far, far too low.



Sure, most consumer OCs could probably be tuned quite a bit more. But getting even a majority of CFL chips to 5GHz all-core below 1.4V is really unlikely. Golden samples run 5.4GHz at 24/7 voltages, while even most 8086Ks (all of which are top-binned silicon, limited to 50 000 units) top out between 5.2-5.3. A minority of these seem to go above 5.1 below 1.4V. And you expect a majority non-top-bin silicon to reach 5 at 1.35? Sure, it can probably be done by, as you say, seasoned OCers who know exactly how to balance on that knife edge. That is a pretty low bar, though, and definitely not indicative of possible binning for mass-produced chips that aren't hand tuned,even if the 4th-gen 14nm process is significantly improved.

Only if you disregard... well, the entire design of the chip. Some hints: ring bus vs mesh interconnect, cache size and layout, binned) LCC die.

Surely you didn’t read the second part, when I said that 1.35V statement. I said with .05V variance, as in between 1.3V and 1.4V. Read the numbers again and see if that made sense.

 

[Valantar]

Surely you didn’t read the second part, when I said that 1.35V statement. I said with .05V variance, as in between 1.3V and 1.4V. Read the numbers again and see if that made sense.

I did, and I disregarded it, considering it contradicts your earlier arguments against inexperienced overclockers "putting down 1.4V Vcore and slapping 5 GHz". Which, if 1.4V is within variance for seasoned OC'ers, would ... mean that these inexperienced people are actually doing quite well? Which, again, means that 200W (or higher) power draw for CFL is ... within variance even for skilled OCers.

 

[Berfs1]

I did, and I disregarded it, considering it contradicts your earlier arguments against inexperienced overclockers "putting down 1.4V Vcore and slapping 5 GHz". Which, if 1.4V is within variance for seasoned OC'ers, would ... mean that these inexperienced people are actually doing quite well? Which, again, means that 200W (or higher) power draw for CFL is ... within variance even for skilled OCers.

200W is normal, under full load, and 5 GHZ, and 1.4V, it’s just that it CAN be tweaked down to 190-195W with proper tuning...