Intel’s surprise Ryzen killer

[4K8KW10]

Does it run windows?

Yes.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

One things for sure though. When there is competition there is advancement. If amd take the leed then intel will be working hard at it. Doubt they are going to sleep like they did after they pulled out sandybridge.
And hopefully amd doesnt pull another bulldozer going to am5.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Does it run windows?

Does it run crysis?

 

[kitfit1]

Does it run crysis?

Nah................not enough ram.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Is that lappy running Windows for arm version?

 

[4K8KW10]

Nah................not enough ram.

Crysis, any version, runs perfectly fine with 8 GB of system memory.

 

[jigger]

Windows ARM and a leg.

 

[Chaos666]

Crysis, any version, runs perfectly fine with 8 GB of system memory.

if you have monstrous gpu and cpu ;]

 

[chrcoluk]

I think the companies should rather jump off ship and move to the much more progressive ARM ecosystem.

It is easier to progress when you behind, thats why I said the test will be now for AMD to carry on their rate of improvement having finally caught up with intel.

 

[Chaos666]

It is easier to progress when you behind, thats why I said the test will be now for AMD to carry on their rate of improvement having finally caught up with intel.

Thats is correct.. But we alsovsee how intel is struggling now.. So it is not that easy to be in the lead

 

[DeathStorm]

Thats is correct.. But we alsovsee how intel is struggling now.. So it is not that easy to be in the lead

It's a very optimistic view to consider Intel's problems stem from being in the lead.

 

[RBImGuy]

It is easier to progress when you behind, thats why I said the test will be now for AMD to carry on their rate of improvement having finally caught up with intel.

wont be an issue.
and here is the deal they didn't caught up with intel they surpassed them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is a Freudian slip showcasing that you still are not onboard with reality
Intel is second tier now.
Game over

 

[Chaos666]

It's a very optimistic view to consider Intel's problems stem from being in the lead.

intels lead may end soon..

 

[chrcoluk]

wont be an issue.
and here is the deal they didn't caught up with intel they surpassed them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is a Freudian slip showcasing that you still are not onboard with reality
Intel is second tier now.
Game over

They have now just caught up and a bit ahead, they were still behind on 3000 series. I suppose if you look at core count you can say they were ahead, but per core performance has and will be king for a while yet.

Although bear in mind we have no real world performance data, no geekbench.

cinebench is just a encoder, it doesnt represent all other types of loads.

 

[Destination]

yeah lets wait to see how userbenchmark shill this one, even at full shrouting mode they'll be unlikely to manage it.
Maybe they'll make avx512 perf worth 99% or similar.

 

[RBImGuy]

Intel - benchmarks dont matter.
AMD smart access cache and rage mode for gaming.
Intel has left the gaming arena

 

[Grim5]

yeah lets wait to see how userbenchmark shill this one, even at full shrouting mode they'll be unlikely to manage it.
Maybe they'll make avx512 perf worth 99% or similar.

$100 says userbenchmark changes the weighting's so that avx-512 now becomes the go to measurement of single core performance so that userbenchmark can claim an intel 9400k is faster than a Ryzen 5950x

 

[Joxeon]

wont be an issue.
and here is the deal they didn't caught up with intel they surpassed them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is a Freudian slip showcasing that you still are not onboard with reality
Intel is second tier now.
Game over

AMD was 2nd tier up till this launch and they still outsold Intel especially in the 6 and 8 core segments so this time around its Intel that needs the aggressive pricing by matching the zen 2 price level and offering better price performance over AMD as that's what matters to a lot of buyers and not the 5% gaming lead.

 

[Justintime]

Intel - benchmarks dont matter.
AMD smart access cache and rage mode for gaming.
Intel has left the gaming arena

Intel : Things don't matter when they're not in our favour

 

[Grim5]

Intel's desperation on full display, as they release a few slides with rocket lake specs - key to note is that rocket lake-s maxes out at 8 core 250w, yes you read that right PL2 state is 250w. Rocket Lake-S is less efficient than Comet Lake, but I guess thats what you get when you take something that was not designed for 14nm and try to force it anyway

Companies don’t backport because a core is designed for a process. It’s efficiency and architecture is based on the transistors that it will use from the design start, caches are sized based on the process too, and a lot of the architectural gains are due to the added transistor counts. If you backport a CPU you lose the efficiency of these new transistors so the energy use goes up and the clocks likely go down as well. Cores take up 2x the size, or at least a lot more than the older core did on the older process, so costs go up too. You can either cut out bits of the core and lose performance or eat it on area and therefor cost. Backporting a design not made for portability isn’t a lose/lose proposition, it is a lose/lose/lose/lose proposition. But Intel is desperate so…

Several quarters ago Stacy Rasgon asked Intel management when they would cross over from 14nm to 10nm production and they dodged the question. Now you know why, they never will exceed 14nm production with 10nm, ever

With this disaster now being shouted about by Intel, albeit in code, what are they talking about today? Rocket Lake is the 14nm backport of Ice Lake and uses the Cypress Cove core. The bullet points are up to 8C/16T, DDR4/3200, PCIe Gen 4, Xe GPU, new media encoders, USB 3.2 Gen 2, up to 3 4K monitors, and VNNI. Sounds good right? Sure until you ask some questions.

Lets start out with the core. Intel calls it “new” with IPC improvement but it is just the year plus old Ice core backported. Technically they are right but no sane observer would call that new unless they were technically unaware and not given the chance to ask questions. The 20 PCIe4 lanes which Intel says, “Allows both SSD and Discrete Graphics Direct CPU Attach” shows just how bad their current line is because you can’t do that now.

That said AMD has been offering 24 as standard for years now so best case Intel is still way behind. That said they don’t break down how many are on the CPU and how many are on the chipset, plus how many are needed for the chipset connection, just vague wording that implies they are all directly on the CPU. Given Intel’s honesty in messaging of late, don’t believe it until you see the real specs. Allowing real questions would clear this up but for some reason Intel is desperate to avoid that eventuality.

The new memory controller will catch Intel up to AMD, a year late but that is better than before, as will the new USB 3.2 Gen 2 controllers. The media encoders and added display resolutions and outputs are nice but barely catch up to AMD’s last gen part. Don’t forget Rocket Lake is not a 2020 part, it is a Q1 2021 device that should be out a month or two before AMD’s updated APUs hit. Good luck beating those Zen 3 cored devices with a 14nm backport.

Then we come to the last bit, the vaunted Xe graphics designed for 10nm transistors. It is backported to 14nm so onward to victory, right? Remember what we said above about backports being power hungry, bloated, and slow? Well Intel is claiming that the GPU in Rocket has 50% more performance than Gen 9 graphics! Wow! Right? Remember that bit about not wanting questions asked?

The first one SemiAccurate would ask would be along the lines of, “Xe on 10nm in Tiger Lake guise is 2x faster than that same Gen 9 part. Why do you spin this as a win rather than a flaming disaster wrapped in a distraction attempt?” We probably wouldn’t get an answer mind you but we would ask but probably in a less friendly way. As you can see the area, efficiency, and raw performance losses of backporting lost double digit performance versus the same architecture on 10nm. Without die area figures you can’t tell how much area Intel burnt to get this loss but we will go out on a limb and say it is substantially larger than the 10nm equivalent.

Then we come to the cores, all eight of them. The current top 14nm part, the 10900K, has 10 cores and runs at the same 125W TDP. If you recall that Ice core has a 18% IPC increase over the 14nm cores which is a great number until you realize that is against a 2015 core and the Cannon Lake generation was omitted from the history lesson. And you don’t know that AMD’s Zen 3 core is a 19% uplift from last year’s Zen 2. But if you don’t have time to think or ask questions before you write, that performance increase of 18% seems pretty darn impressive.

Then we come to the math which may not be SemiAccurate’s strong point but we do think that the 14nm 10900K’s 10 cores are 25% more than the 8 cores in the Rocket Lake part. Where things get tricky is that 25% does indeed seem like a bigger number than 18%. Actually Rocket may have the lead in CPU performance if, and it is a big if, it clocks as high as the 10900K. Given how badly a backport hobbles performance, increases energy use, and all of that, this is unlikely but it could happen. Then again Intel talks about architectural enhancements and IPC but curiously omits any talk of actual CPU performance. They do talk about GPU performance so infer what you will. We will again go out on a limb and say that Rocket will lose to the current parts on most benchmarks for the reasons we discussed above. The details would come out if questions were allowed though, once again any guesses why the disclosure format precluded them?

Last but not least is another kick in the teeth to enthusiasts. If you want a Rocket Lake CPU you will need a new motherboard, it isn’t compatible with anything Intel has done and given the hacky nature of Rocket, it is unlikely to be compatible with anything that come out later. How many generations is AMD on for the same boards now, is it three or four, we forget. Either way if you invest in a new setup you get a slower part. Wait, that’s not good.