Proof will be in how much they have cut prices…

The numbers look nice but I wonder if these will be slower than last gen in most tasks like the Core i9 10980XE was?

Skyflier
The numbers look nice but I wonder if these will be slower than last gen in most tasks like the Core i9 10980XE was?

That i7-10700k is almost identical to a stock 9900k so it should be easy enough to spot the differences.

These should be pretty powerful, well at least until the exploits start to come out…

Will these have meltdown/spectre fixes or are we still well off that?

I couple of generations ago the top chips where 4c8t, now thats an i3.

I wonder if AMDs lineup had anything to do with this.

2 questions that we almost certainly know the answers:
1) Are the know security issues been fixed?
2) Are prices been adjusted?

Nothing particularly exciting - the key will be the pricing….

Intel is already ahead or equal to AMD on the performance side of things for general consumers & especially gamers (i.e. things that don't scale well over more than 4 scores, which is 95%+ of consumer software) - but the problem is thats at a price point 20-40% higher than AMD…meaning that unless you have £450 to spend on a CPU (and most people don't!) the sensible thing to do atm is to buy a Ryzen chip. Even at that top end there is a good argument to go Ryzen unless your primary focus is gaming. As a result they don't really need to up performance too much, but they really do need to adjust their pricing tiers.

We're seeing that with the re-introduction of HT at the lower tiers (clearly forced upon them by the AMD competition), recent price cuts to the i7 & i9 series, and hopefully the introduction of the 10 series at an even lower price point. We'll see I guess. I won't be buying one from either company - i'll wait for the next generation before looking to upgrade my 6700k.

2021 should be the next interesting year - I predict we will see chips from both AMD and Intel with a high core count that can also do really strong single threaded performance - something that we don't really see now (closest being a 9900k clocked at 5ghz on all cores, but even then that's only 8). Things will get really interesting if that happens, and we should finally see some fairly even competition in the market, rather than the current false choice of strong single thread (Intel) or strong multi core (AMD).

Spud1
unless your primary focus is gaming

Thing is that something like the r5 3600 is enough to drive pretty much any game to the point that you'll be either GPU limited at high quality settings or >120fps anyway; any CPU more expensive from either company is usually pretty marginal gains. The i5-9400f is a decent gaming chip, but 6c/6t means it can get threadlocked and stutter in some gaming situations. The cheapest Intel part that's either 6c/12t or 8c/8t is >£300, or £130 more than the 3600. We'll see where these new i5s land on price, although the new socket requirement means this lot probably won't be a great net cost at launch.

edmundhonda
Thing is that something like the r5 3600 is enough to drive pretty much any game to the point that you'll be either GPU limited at high quality settings or >120fps anyway; any CPU more expensive from either company is usually pretty marginal gains. The i5-9400f is a decent gaming chip, but 6c/6t means it can get threadlocked and stutter in some gaming situations. The cheapest Intel part that's either 6c/12t or 8c/8t is >£300, or £130 more than the 3600. We'll see where these new i5s land on price, although the new socket requirement means this lot probably won't be a great net cost at launch.

True enough, although it does vary hugely from game to game. There are enough situations where I can get a good benefit from swapping my 6700k to a 9900k that if I had money to burn I would do it…but I don't, so its not worth a £430 upgrade to me. Upping to a 10 series would likely cost in the region of £600 by the time a motherboard is added too…very unlikely to be worth it..but then I would have that issue swapping to ryzen too, especially given how pricey good ryzen boards are. The value equation is very much a personal thing - if for example, swapping out my GPU would gain me an extra 15FPS in PUBG, and increase the min FPS I would get (Rather than the max)…then it's very much worth it. That's less critical if all I play is tomb raider & minecraft, where your FPS doesn't really matter as long as its 60 or higher and is stable.

This was a very interesting video from gamersnexus that compares a lot of CPUs from the past few years, inc the middling intel & amd parts - shows just how much the benefits can vary. This is testing using a 2080ti to mostly remove the GPU from the equation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCV9yyD8X6M

Keep buying AMD, let see how many cores we can get intel to throw at us!

Spud1
2021 should be the next interesting year - I predict we will see chips from both AMD and Intel with a high core count that can also do really strong single threaded performance - something that we don't really see now (closest being a 9900k clocked at 5ghz on all cores, but even then that's only 8). Things will get really interesting if that happens, and we should finally see some fairly even competition in the market, rather than the current false choice of strong single thread (Intel) or strong multi core (AMD).

“Strong single threaded” performance is workload dependent - the 3970X gets more single threaded performance than the 9900K in cinebench, so by that metric you've already got the best single and multithreaded performance in a single chip. AMD's boost behaviour is just plain better than intel's, so ryzen parts don't pay any penalty for having lots of cores in single threaded loads

edmundhonda
Thing is that something like the r5 3600 is enough to drive pretty much any game to the point that you'll be either GPU limited at high quality settings or >120fps anyway; any CPU more expensive from either company is usually pretty marginal gains. The i5-9400f is a decent gaming chip, but 6c/6t means it can get threadlocked and stutter in some gaming situations. The cheapest Intel part that's either 6c/12t or 8c/8t is >£300, or £130 more than the 3600. We'll see where these new i5s land on price, although the new socket requirement means this lot probably won't be a great net cost at launch.

The new socket is key, I remember when coffee lake only had the enthusiast chipset available so all the price comparisons had to factor in a massive offset for the more expensive motherboard (+ cooler also for the K CPUs). The launch is basically paper for all but the i9s if we only get Z490 boards

Spud1
True enough, although it does vary hugely from game to game. There are enough situations where I can get a good benefit from swapping my 6700k to a 9900k that if I had money to burn I would do it…but I don't, so its not worth a £430 upgrade to me. Upping to a 10 series would likely cost in the region of £600 by the time a motherboard is added too…very unlikely to be worth it..but then I would have that issue swapping to ryzen too, especially given how pricey good ryzen boards are. The value equation is very much a personal thing - if for example, swapping out my GPU would gain me an extra 15FPS in PUBG, and increase the min FPS I would get (Rather than the max)…then it's very much worth it. That's less critical if all I play is tomb raider & minecraft, where your FPS doesn't really matter as long as its 60 or higher and is stable.

This was a very interesting video from gamersnexus that compares a lot of CPUs from the past few years, inc the middling intel & amd parts - shows just how much the benefits can vary. This is testing using a 2080ti to mostly remove the GPU from the equation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCV9yyD8X6M

You need a new motherboard to get a 9th (or 8th) gen CPU already, those need 3XX chipsets

Xlucine
“Strong single threaded” performance is workload dependent - the 3970X gets more single threaded performance than the 9900K in cinebench, so by that metric you've already got the best single and multithreaded performance in a single chip. AMD's boost behaviour is just plain better than intel's, so ryzen parts don't pay any penalty for having lots of cores in single threaded loads

It is - but the 3960X is not really a consumer CPU, its a little unfair to compare it to the 9900k. If we start to bring in CPUs over £1k then the comparisons get very different :) Not sure what you mean on the boost issue - if you enable MCE the 9900k reportedly hits 5ghz boost on all cores simultaneously, so i'd assume the 10 series will be able to do the same.

You are right about the board, would need replacing either way. I hadn't spotted that :)

I like the sound of the 2.5GbE I225 chip, my AMD board has one of the Intel 1GbE chips on it so that bit of the announcement is useful ;)

I'm surprised that Intel aren't rolling out Iris Pro cache ram die on top end parts. That made a decent performance increase when using discrete graphics by acting as a huge L4 cache

Spud1
Not sure what you mean on the boost issue - if you enable MCE the 9900k reportedly hits 5ghz boost on all cores simultaneously, so i'd assume the 10 series will be able to do the same.

From what I've been reading, 9900K chips released since the KS version came out have trouble getting to 5ghz all core - something to do with the pre-binning to have the more expensive model in the line-up.

My R5 2600 is plenty powerful enough. I got bigger and better gains from a fast nvme ssd than I did from a faster cpu

do we have to get a new motherboard too?

What I'm sure is on everyone's mind is what kind of performance these CPUs will have in real world applications, such as Word and Excel.

Anyway, nice to see the effects of competition.

Spud1
It is - but the 3960X is not really a consumer CPU, its a little unfair to compare it to the 9900k. If we start to bring in CPUs over £1k then the comparisons get very different :) Not sure what you mean on the boost issue - if you enable MCE the 9900k reportedly hits 5ghz boost on all cores simultaneously, so i'd assume the 10 series will be able to do the same.

You are right about the board, would need replacing either way. I hadn't spotted that :)

Ah, I though that was what you meant by “high core count”. On the consumer socket the 3950X meets the bill then, both highest core counts and the highest single threaded performance (more performance at stock than an overclocked 9900k!).

Intel boost is bad for high core count CPUs as it's too conservative - there's a larger gulf in single threaded performance between intel HEDT chips and intel consumer chips than there is on the AMD side. It also has the arbitrary time limits, but that's a different matter

rabidmunkee
Will these have meltdown/spectre fixes or are we still well off that?

Even the 8series and 9series processors had some mitigations baked in to the silicon, and the 9900-KS had yet more micro-code revisions for yet more mitigations. So, yes, it is very likely the 10series will have even more mitigations baked in.

New vulnerabilities of the same sort are “constantly” being found, however, and once discovered they'll require a mix of micro-code updates (which some UEFI/BIOS manufacturers -may- support for a -while-) or software updates in the OS kernal, which will -likely- have -some- performance impact. That said, most of the vulnerabilities are considered by some to be non-issues for general consumers, we -should- have “the worst” behind us now.

NB: That's even true for AMD, though to a measurably smaller degree.

What will interest me is whether Hyperthreading will continue to be one of the more prominent weak points (such as ZombieLoad).

edmundhonda

Spud1
unless your primary focus is gaming

Thing is that something like the r5 3600 is enough to drive pretty much any game to the point that you'll be either GPU limited at high quality settings or >120fps anyway; any CPU more expensive from either company is usually pretty marginal gains. The i5-9400f is a decent gaming chip, but 6c/6t means it can get threadlocked and stutter in some gaming situations. The cheapest Intel part that's either 6c/12t or 8c/8t is >£300, or £130 more than the 3600. We'll see where these new i5s land on price, although the new socket requirement means this lot probably won't be a great net cost at launch.

It's never quite that simple.

While it's true that Ryzen (Zen2) now has superior IPC to iCore (9th Gen), and in some cases has high single thread throughput than iCore (3900X vs 9900K, cinebench), it doesn't necessarily translate in to frames-per-second. At 1080p, in particular, iCore maintains quite a noticable FPS lead over Ryzen.

This appears to be related the behaviours of InfinityFabric, memory controller (speeds, latency interaction with on-chip cache), Windows Scheduler, etc, etc. Which -may- in turn mean that, as software evolves to better utilise Ryzen chips, we could (hopefully) see this discrepancy erode.

While it IS true to say that in many games this only becomes prominent at Very high refresh rates, some games already show the difference at under 120Hz (Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Far Cry 5, etc). The further down the product stack you go the lower the FPS ceiling becomes (the discrepancy is visible at lower FPS on a 3600 than on a 3900X).

This also means that in the years to come more and more games will show this discrepancy up.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-amd-ryzen-9-3900x-vs-core-i9-9900k-review?page=2

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-amd-ryzen-9-3900x-vs-core-i9-9900k-review?page=3

For those -not- in the market for high FPS (like me, stuck on a 2500K, or those aiming at 4K rather FPS, etc), the argument does become mute. Just like having 8C/16T is overkill for me, because I don't do any highly parrallel work.

I just like to dream about being in that market segment, where the upper end of gaming performance matters :)

Would just like to point out mitigations != fixes.

They make it harder to exploit but do not outright fix the issue. Silicon baked mitigations only exist in 9900ks, more recent releases of 9th gen and the hedt lineup.

It seems a lot of people are mistaking a mitigation for a fix…

Tabbykatze
It seems a lot of people are mistaking a mitigation for a fix…

The silicon is still broken, but with a mitigation in place no-one should be able to use the underlying flaw. Otherwise, it isn't a mitigation. For the end user, that particular problem that the mitigation addresses will be as good as fixed, albeit at some penalty.