News Core i9-9900K vs. Ryzen 9 3900X: Gaming Performance Scaling

[bit_user]

I don't think they are aiming for efficiency but for the gaming crown.
They don't want to lose "the best CPU for gaming" title.

Right, and gaming performance is still sensitive to single-thread performance. That's why it would make sense to release an 8-core CPU with higher single-thread performance, even if multi-thread performance is on-par or slightly lower than their previous 10-core model.

There is no need for 10 cores but it looks bad not to release one.

You've got to weigh that against failing to counter Ryzen 4k, or countering it with something significantly more expensive. Ricki Lake will have bigger cores, which is probably the main reason they have to drop the count.

 

[bit_user]

TSX is not a minor feature. It has the potential of major performance benefit, though is somewhat of a niche in terms of programmers that take advantage of it. It still is not something to be misdocumented in the specs.

Like crypto acceleration, as long as a few key libraries use it, most apps will automatically get a benefit.

The benefit most apps get from TSX is just faster synchronization via lock elision.

Lock elision in the GNU C library [LWN.net]

lwn.net

Of course, that's not all it can do.