News Intel's Alder Lake CPU Prices Leak via European Retailer

[Admin]

European retailer publishes prices of Intel's upcoming Alder Lake-S processors.

Intel's Alder Lake CPU Prices Leak via European Retailer : Read more

 

[spongiemaster]

If it performs like a 5950x, Intel is not going to charge less than a 5950x.

 

[JWNoctis]

Weren't there some old parable - Japanese, perhaps - about washing potatoes by stirring them in a barrel: Sometimes they float, sometimes they sink, but neither for long.

Probably still the same with only two big ones left, if the analogy did not break down long before.

 

[PCWarrior]

Basically, this means that there will be up to a $100 price hike on the MSRP gen over gen. More specifically there will be $100 price increase on the i9s, $60-$70 on the i7s and $70-$80 on the i5s. Summarising the MSRPs should look like this:

SKU	Expected MSRP
12900K	$639- $649
12900KF	$613- $624
12700K	$469-$479
12700KF	$439-$449
12600K	$342-$352
12600KF	$317-$327

If performance leaks are accurate then Intel will be undercutting AMD's cpu offerings by $100-$186 in price while offering better or equivalent performance. That should in turn spark a price correction of $100-$200 on some AMD parts, at least during Intel's launch window during the holiday season, especially around Black Friday.

SKU	Expected MSRP	SKU	MSRP	Expected Price Difference
12900K	$639- $649
12900KF	$613- $624	5950X	$799	$175-$186
12700K	$469-$479
12700KF	$439-$449	5900X	$549	$100-$110
12600K	$342-$352
12600KF	$317-$327	5800X	$449	$122-$132

 

[InvalidError]

Significantly higher prices on the CPUs due to all of the extra manufacturing complexity, likely significantly higher prices on motherboards due to the larger socket and faster IOs, pretty much guaranteed massively more expensive memory for most of the first two years.

Looks like I'm going to be glad I got an i5-11400 to comfortably skip most if not all of this with.

 

[PCWarrior]

Significantly higher prices on the CPUs due to all of the extra manufacturing complexity, likely significantly higher prices on motherboards due to the larger socket and faster IOs, pretty much guaranteed massively more expensive memory for most of the first two years.

Sure, being on 10nm (Intel 7) instead of 14nm makes manufacturing more advanced/complex by default. And sure, the cpu design is more complex due to the more advanced microarchitecture (Golden Cove vs Sunny Cove). But I doubt that the hybrid core topology of Alderlake affects the manufacturing complexity significantly. The chip is still monolithic. So I don’t expect it to be any more complex to produce compared to Rocketlake than going from 14nm 10th gen Cometlake H-series to 10nm 11th gen Tigerlake H-series cpus on laptops. You still had a massive core microarchitecture change (Skylake to Willow Cove), iGPU change (from Intel UHD 630 to Intel UHD Xe 750), inclusion of AVX512 units, PCIe transition (from PCie3 to PCIe4) and RAM transition (from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200/LPDDR4x-4266).

I doubt memory pricing will be much of an issue. Pricing should be similar for equivalent capacity plus demand will not be high as it will only come from people purchasing Intel Z690 and K skus. I agree that motherboards will see yet another price hike at least when looking at it from equivalent tier models. For example, the ASUS ROG Maximus Hero went from costing $290 in Z390 to costing $490 in Z590. However, you now get a lot more features to the point that even the cut down Strix A or Strix F boards that cost $310-$340 are offering much more than what the Z390 Maximus Hero Wi-Fi offered for $290. So it is more of a $20-$50 increase and with that you get several upgrades.

Z390 Hero WiFi ($290)	Strix Z590 A or F ($310-$340)
1GBE	2.5GBE
WiFi5	WiFi6
BT5	BT5.2
16 CPU lanes PCIe3	20 CPU lanes PCIe4
DMI 3.0 x 4 lanes to the chipset	DMI 3.0 x 8 lanes to the chipset
2 M.2 slots (both via chipset)	3 or 4 M.2 slots (1 PCIE4 direct to CPU, 2 or 3 PCIE3 via chipset)
8+2 power stages (no doublers)	14+2 power stages (no doublers)
1 x Type-C USB 3.2. Gen 2	1 x Type-C USB 3.2. Gen 2x2
DDR4 4400 (O.C)	DDR4 5333 (OC)
4 layer PCB	6 layer PCB
LGA 1151	LGA 1200

 

[SkyBill40]

If performance leaks are accurate then Intel will be undercutting AMD's cpu offerings by $100-$186 in price while offering better or equivalent performance. That should in turn spark a price correction of $100-$200 on some AMD parts, at least during Intel's launch window during the holiday season, especially around Black Friday.

It's all speculative at this point. Intel has fudged the numbers with regularity on their performance versus AMD. It's never been a straight apples-to-apples comparison and I don't expect this time to be any different. It sure would be nice if AMD and Intel did releases at the same time to truly compare equivalent generations rather than new to old, but that isn't going to happen. Given how things are in terms of the chip shortage, we'll see if any of this even comes around when they're expecting it to launch. I'm not holding my breath here and neither should anyone else.

 

[chalabam]

Xeon: 54 cores
Desktop: 16 cores. Why

 

[InvalidError]

Xeon: 54 cores
Desktop: 16 cores. Why

Desktop: < $1000 CPU on a < $300 motherboard
Xeon: > $10 000 CPU on a > $1000 motherboard

 

[JWNoctis]

Xeon: 54 cores
Desktop: 16 cores. Why

Desktop: < $1000 CPU on a < $300 motherboard
Xeon: > $10 000 CPU on a > $1000 motherboard

Core counts of that kind might well become common on desktop before the decade is out. Remember graphic cards with, what, 8 pixel and 4 vertex shader pipelines?

Just gonna take a while.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Core counts of that kind might well become common on desktop before the decade is out. Remember graphic cards with, what, 8 pixel and 4 vertex shader pipelines?

Just gonna take a while.

You mean like how the RTX 3090 has so many cores they can't be used effectively in the consumer space because game engines aren't advanced enough, or Threadripper motherboards have to come with a down-core selector because some software can't handle 32-64 cores?

We're at or almost at the time when pure x86 is capped out, with these first hybrid chips from Intel and in development chips from AMD being the first step towards a future where there may be 2-8 general purpose x86 cores on a chip, but also complemented by multiple sets of specialized sub-processors on their own chiplets in order to perform tasks that much faster. This kind of setup is not unheard of. Back before GPU processing became the thing for supercomputers, IBM built a system using thousands of their own PowerPC processors, but also thousands of AMD Opteron processors whose main task was to feed data to the proper PowerPC processors.

 

[Eximo]

If the processors get fast enough and more hardware level emulation occurs, we might see a blending of x86 into other architectures like Apple is doing. Has to be a massive market shift to make that happen. Apple PCs have always been a minority market share ~10%. And chromebooks are making some moves in education at least.

Not a huge drive to get x86 onto smartphones and tablets.

But high core count desktops. Let's see. Dual cores were big 15 years ago, Quad thread at least became mainstream about 5 years ago, and we are just getting into hex core standard. Though most mobile processors people buy are still quad cores.

High end PCs are running 8, 10, 12, and 16 cores, but far from mainstream. Don't really see a jump to 50+ cores on the consumer side anytime soon. Unless every piece of software out there becomes super multithread capable (Or we all start running personal AI on our systems)

 

[TerryLaze]

We're at or almost at the time when pure x86 is capped out, with these first hybrid chips from Intel and in development chips from AMD

Alderlake is not a hybrid CPU, both core types are x86.
It's just that after a number of cores you have to compromise on core clocks that much that you can just as well use a smaller core that will have the same performance as a bigger core at those lowered clocks.
You can see that with the 5950X where single core is almost 30% higher than all core.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1621...e-review-5950x-5900x-5800x-and-5700x-tested/8

being the first step towards a future where there may be 2-8 general purpose x86 cores on a chip, but also complemented by multiple sets of specialized sub-processors on their own chiplets in order to perform tasks that much faster.

Intel had iGPUs since 2005 that took over some specialized workloads, actually "specialized sub-processors" are a thing since 1999 with sse.

Unless every piece of software out there becomes super multithread capable (Or we all start running personal AI on our systems)

99% of software, games included, doesn't even use enough instructions for a single core to be maxed out.
Intel bought up AI hardware startups and integrated the tech into their iGPUs, rocket lake has AI on their iGPUs.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Alderlake is not a hybrid CPU, both core types are x86.
It's just that after a number of cores you have to compromise on core clocks that much that you can just as well use a smaller core that will have the same performance as a bigger core at those lowered clocks.
You can see that with the 5950X where single core is almost 30% higher than all core.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1621...e-review-5950x-5900x-5800x-and-5700x-tested/8

Intel had iGPUs since 2005 that took over some specialized workloads, actually "specialized sub-processors" are a thing since 1999 with sse.

99% of software, games included, doesn't even use enough instructions for a single core to be maxed out.
Intel bought up AI hardware startups and integrated the tech into their iGPUs, rocket lake has AI on their iGPUs.

Intel is referring to these Big.Little processors as "CPUs with Intel Hybrid Technology", so by Intel's label, they are.

Intel Dishes on Alder Lake-S: First x86 Hybrid CPU for Desktops | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

 

[TerryLaze]

Intel is referring to these Big.Little processors as "CPUs with Intel Hybrid Technology", so by Intel's label, they are.

Intel Dishes on Alder Lake-S: First x86 Hybrid CPU for Desktops | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

Sure, but they are hybrid between x86 and x86-slightly-different.
It's not a hybrid between x86 and something else.

 

[TJ Hooker]

You mean like how the RTX 3090 has so many cores they can't be used effectively in the consumer space because game engines aren't advanced enough

Do you have a source for this?

 

[johnmeredith]

Looks like I'm going to be glad I got an i5-11400 to comfortably skip most if not all of this with.

I'm in a quandry about this. I have an 11400 and new motherboard on order but supplies have been limited. And 32GB of DDR4 in the drawer after a successful eBay punt. I'm really not sure if I should cancel my order. The main thing for me is just a solid desktop experience and Win 11, light gaming. I didn't realise there was a next-gen chip imminent when i placed my order (upgrading from 4th gen is a big enough step). I don't really want to be that behind the curve but the complexity of Alder Lake makes me worry.

I dunno...