Intel Fires Back, Announces X-Series 18-core Core-i9 Skylake-X, Kaby Lake-X i7, i5, X299 Basin Falls

[teamninja]

According to this you can see that AMD is doing really well this 2nd quarter they are seriously pressuring Intel

 

[redgarl]

Still, 2000$ for 18 cores? I mean, the price is still ridiculous.

Question now is Napples going to be in that range of price?

Anyway, it is really interesting and i hope AMD is going to provide another lick in the balls, however to Nvidia this time..

 

[InvalidError]

Question now is Napples going to be in that range of price?

Yes, but likely 24-28 cores at that price point instead of 18.

 

[jaber2]

AMD does all the work and Intel gets all the sales

 

[rwinches]

So Intel has plans for the next best thing, but in the meantime is cutting margins. Plus new socket for even more money and wonky memory configurations/limitations. Lids not soldered. Less lanes on some.

Can Intel deal with lower income and the huge rush for AMD products?

No USB 3.1 is a real problem.

I find the fact that 'Windows 10 automatically assumes control of the TB 3.0 feature, so it no longer requires a utility or driver.' to be troubling, good on one hand but exclusive on the other.

Meanwhile back at the AMD camp...

http://wccftech.com/asus-teases-5ghz-overclocks-amds-ryzen-threadripper-cpus/

http://wccftech.com/asus-rog-x399-zenith-extreme-x370-crosshair-vi-extreme-motherboard/

 

[jimmysmitty]

Well, prices are still in favour of AMD. At least in the 8 core count department.
But this is much better than the 5% improvements on Intel chips for 1000 dollars.

Depends. If the CPU is a better performer than it might justify that $100 bucks. Considering that Intel has a better 14nm for higher clocks I would not doubt the new 8 core would easily OC higher.

Well, prices are still in favour of AMD. At least in the 8 core count department.
But this is much better than the 5% improvements on Intel chips for 1000 dollars.

AMD's ThreadRipper will likely max out at $1000 or less for 16C32T. Should make bang-per-buck value interesting.

I think it will depend on performance. If AMD can match or beat a higher priced CPU, they will charge what they can for it.

Intel has completely changed their lineup and strategy, slashed prices, unified the platform, and some guys still think Ryzen is not good.

Do you really think that Intel really changed everything up in 3 months? Do you have any idea how much testing and R&D goes into a platform? They probably have been working on this platform for 2+ years and it is possible that Ryzen caused them to change a few things about it but there is no way that in the three months since we have known about Ryzens performance that Intel changed an entire platform lineup.

Basically either way we were getting X299 and Skylake-X. Ryzen is just a bonus to help lower prices at best.

 

[Guest]

The prices for 12/14/16/18 cores are ridiculous but again having that many cores is also ridiculous. $599 8 Core is crippled so $389 dollars 6 core. A reason i say crippled because of number of PCIe. 10 Cores is good but for $999 too pricey. My money goes to AMD cause i bet they will bring 10 Cores < $600

 

[the nerd 389]

This is quite the bittersweet announcement. I'm glad Intel's finally showing progress in terms of it's product offerings, but as someone who simply wants a few more PCIe lanes and 6-8 cores/12-16 threads, the price just went up quite a bit.

Thank you, Intel, for making high-performance storage builds and video editing workstations significantly more expensive.

I hope Naples hits this segment price-wise. 128 PCIe lanes is excessive, to be sure, but I guess that would be the next step up from a rather meager 28 if it lands under $1000.

 

[InvalidError]

I think it will depend on performance. If AMD can match or beat a higher priced CPU, they will charge what they can for it.

The only reason why Intel can charge anywhere near as much as it does for its current chips is due to lack of a credible competitor until now. The current trend with Ryzen is between half and one third the cost for Intel-equivalent performance and I doubt AMD will change that for ThreadRipper and Naples. AMD desperately needs to rebuild market share and even at half of Intel's prices, AMD still makes a massively better profit margin than it did on its previous chips.

 

[salgado18]

Intel has completely changed their lineup and strategy, slashed prices, unified the platform, and some guys still think Ryzen is not good.

Do you really think that Intel really changed everything up in 3 months? Do you have any idea how much testing and R&D goes into a platform? They probably have been working on this platform for 2+ years and it is possible that Ryzen caused them to change a few things about it but there is no way that in the three months since we have known about Ryzens performance that Intel changed an entire platform lineup.

Basically either way we were getting X299 and Skylake-X. Ryzen is just a bonus to help lower prices at best.

Of course I do. But lets not forget that Zen has been in development since 2012, and they re-hired Jim Keller, sending the message to everyone that follows AMD (and Intel follows them as close as possible) that the next CPU is a completely new design, with risk of catching up ground.

Intel has prepared for Zen for a long time. All they had to decide, then, would be what to launch and at what price. Zen would be great? Let's make our move based on how great it is. Zen would not be great? Let's launch what we have at the price we can.

My point is: Zen is good, good enough to make Intel switch to the aggressive plan, instead of the conservative plan (like on the Bulldozer era). But that plan is long coming, it's not a 3-month decision.

 

[the nerd 389]

For those interested, I just checked.
- None of the processors for which info is available support ECC (7900X and below),
- Only the 7820X and above support TB 3.0,
- Only the Skylake-X models have AVX-512 and execute-disable bit support, and
- Kaby Lake-X only supports 64 GB of RAM (naturally, as they only have 2 channels).

Basically, the Kaby Lake-X models are simply the i5-7500K and i7-7700K in a different package, (presumably) with different TIM, and a higher TDP.

 

[none12345]

"So you can throw away the lame i5 and buy a monster 18-core cpu, without replacing an expensive motherboard and 4 sticks of fast ram. That's common in the mainstream market, get a good mobo (Z270) with a cheap CPU (Pentium), then upgrade (i7) in the future. Only now the jump makes more sense, from 4 to up to 36 threads, while yesterday it was from 2 to 8 threads."

This makes no sense. If you can only afford a $250-$350 cpu, you have no business buying a $300-$600 motherboard that will have most of its sockets disabled because you chessed out on the cpu. Then you expect that same person to throw away the $250-$350 cpu? If they couldnt afford the cpu in the first place they cant afford to $300 away. It will have no resale value...

That person would be far better served going out and buying a $80 mobo and a $220 ryzen 6 core. And then throwing that away, or selling it when they can afford the intel system they really wanted(assuming that still makese sense once they can afford it properly). We are talking about someone who needs more cores, or the whole conversation is moot. So they would start off with a lot more computing power and they start off spending a LOT less. In the end either path wastes the same amount of money(except the ryzen chip will have resale value), but you get better performance at first with the ryzen option.

The 4 core chips on a HEDT platform is an extremely poor use of $s. The only person who would consider them is someone who has a lack of $s; the last thing that type of person should do is spend them on the worst performance/$ you can get.

 

[salgado18]

"So you can throw away the lame i5 and buy a monster 18-core cpu, without replacing an expensive motherboard and 4 sticks of fast ram. That's common in the mainstream market, get a good mobo (Z270) with a cheap CPU (Pentium), then upgrade (i7) in the future. Only now the jump makes more sense, from 4 to up to 36 threads, while yesterday it was from 2 to 8 threads."

This makes no sense. If you can only afford a $250-$350 cpu, you have no business buying a $300-$600 motherboard that will have most of its sockets disabled because you chessed out on the cpu. Then you expect that same person to throw away the $250-$350 cpu? If they couldnt afford the cpu in the first place they cant afford to $300 away. It will have no resale value...

That person would be far better served going out and buying a $80 mobo and a $220 ryzen 6 core. And then throwing that away, or selling it when they can afford the intel system they really wanted(assuming that still makese sense once they can afford it properly). We are talking about someone who needs more cores, or the whole conversation is moot. So they would start off with a lot more computing power and they start off spending a LOT less. In the end either path wastes the same amount of money(except the ryzen chip will have resale value), but you get better performance at first with the ryzen option.

The 4 core chips on a HEDT platform is an extremely poor use of $s. The only person who would consider them is someone who has a lack of $s; the last thing that type of person should do is spend them on the worst performance/$ you can get.

Ok, I agree that $250 for a CPU you will sell later is not that good idea

 

[Beholder88]

There's rumor too that they're not going to used a soldered CPU lid (can't remember the proper term), that they're going to thermal grease or some other compound between the die and the lid. They're cutting corners and the results aren't usually good for anyone.

 

[the nerd 389]

There's rumor too that they're not going to used a soldered CPU lid (can't remember the proper term), that they're going to thermal grease or some other compound between the die and the lid. They're cutting corners and the results aren't usually good for anyone.

That's not technically feasible with a 160 watt CPU. The added thermal resistance would result in something close to 40-60 C delta between the die and the IHS. That leaves almost no room for the CPU cooler at all.

 

[kal326]

I'm still using an i7-3820/x79 with 64GB of ram as a lab VM host machine. I haven't really seen much of a reason to upgrade beyond this machine is capped on RAM. Anything in the Xeon realm has been prohibitively expensive and the HEDT offerings haven't been anywhere near worth while. A 7820X at $600 getting closer, yet 5 years later it's only twice the cores, at the same clock rate, with fewer PCIe lanes for roughly twice what I paid for my 3820. Slow golf clap Intel...I see the comparable E5 v4 1S chips are still twice even these new offerings.

 

[bit_user]

That trend also changes with the addition of the four-core Kaby Lake-X i5 and i9 series to the HEDT stable.

No, it didn't. Where are the Kaby Lake i9's? Where are the Kaby Lake's with > 4 cores? They're MIA, I think because Intel is just using the same die for Kaby Lake-X as they used for desktop Kaby Lake.

This is also the reason Kaby Lake-X is missing extra PCIe lanes. The die doesn't have them, and they didn't want to add a PCIe switch in-package.

Intel also quadrupled per-core L1 capacity from 256KB to 1MB, which benefits multi-threaded performance.

No, the exclusive cache is probably referring to L1 + L2. Perhaps it's even divided into yet more levels (hence, Multi-Level Cache).

 

[bit_user]

There's rumor too that they're not going to used a soldered CPU lid

That's not technically feasible with a 160 watt CPU.

Right, so maybe this was concerning the Kaby Lake-X CPUs, which are only 112 W. So, this would be just like the socket 1151 version in every way, except bigger package and a tick higher stock clocks.

Now, if Kaby Lake-X doesn't even have a soldered lid, then it's really just a bad joke.

 

[melvis72]

I agree with many others that Intel really screwed up with the shift in lowering the PCIe lanes when the older versions had more. The structure of these CPUs leaves a door open for AMD to come in and shift buyers away from Intel.

 

[bit_user]

For those interested, I just checked.
- None of the processors for which info is available support ECC (7900X and below),

This goes without saying. This is how they differentiate their Xeon line. The HEDT line (Extreme Edition) never supported ECC, at least not since the Core2 days.

Nore did desktops, for that matter. The only exception was the i3's, but with Kaby Lake, even most of the i3's lack ECC support. I bought a Haswell i3, a while ago, specifically to use it in a server application warranting ECC.

 

[bit_user]

i hope AMD is going to provide another lick in the balls, however to Nvidia this time..

Lol, I know lick can have multiple meanings, but I think it doesn't actually come across how you intend...

 

[bit_user]

These are dead on arrival. 112W TDP for a 4C/4T chip? That's both ridiculous and it's not going to work. I put a 95W 1800X in my Node202 and it was too difficult to keep cool and quiet (my board ignores the +20C offset). Then bought a R7 1700 (65W) in and it's been great. So there's your TDP limit on SFF.

The 7820X is attractive till you see the 140W TDP, will require a full ATX build (or larger mITX/mATX) with AIO.

Yes! Why are you even talking about SFF or AIO? This is their High-End DeskTop platform, which has been 140 W for a long time! There have been a handful of mini-ITX LGA2011* boards, but the vast majority are ATX.

 

[bit_user]

So whoever bought regular Kaby Lake wasted money. It looks like socket 2066 is a way to go.

hmm...

This Intel lineup is completely unattractive because in order to get 44 PCIE you have to pay $999 for 10 cores which is not a good deal at all. 28 PCIe personally won't do it. In my opinion Intel really f. it up. Can't wait for AMD offering, i believe will have much better deals and lower price.

Ouch! I'm sensing some cognitive dissonance...

...did you perhaps change your opinion of Intel's offering like mid-way through typing your post? And not bother to re-edit?

 

[kyotokid]

..so the question remains. Will the Skylake X CPUs still support W7/8.1? That is a big deal maker/breaker for those of us who are aware of the shortcomings of W10 and are particularly involved in 3D CG and do GPU rendering as W10 reserves a "noticeable" percentage of VRAM.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Apologies to interject but minor correction for your article please:

"Intel's six-core also drops from $583 to $339, which contends with the $249 six-core Ryzen 5 1600X and the $219 Ryzen 5 1600."

That $339 price is a 4-core, their 6-core is actually $389.

The Ryzen 5 1600X MSRP is $249.