Intel's Future Chips: News, Rumours & Reviews

[goldstone77]

Spoiler

You are welcome Yuka,

Guys, I have a question because we talk about how close is Ryzen IPC to Broadwell-E chips, But according to Cpu-Z and various others benchmarks (that I have personally ran), my First generation core i7 has a bit better single core performance than Ryzen 7(I'm running @4.5 GHz)

I know my 2500K@4.5 scores a 155 on Cinebench for single thread, which I tested myself. It really shows how much frequency affects single thread scores as well as multi-thread scores for that matter. Now these synthetic benchmarks are important, because they can also help you see how optimized individual programs are for a particular processor. For instance great Firestrike scores, and terrible FPS in a game like Rise of the Tomb raider. One optimization later 30% boost in FPS, which now falls more in line with the Firestrike score.

And that's the reason why I can't see myself buying a new Ryzen when new Intel chips are so much faster. My i7 990X still faster when gaming or running Gaming benchmarks. Now last week my corsair PSU died. I bought a new Thermaltake PSU with 10 years warranty. But my motherboard decided to quit a day after installing the new PSU(when the previous corsair died probably damaged the Motherboard) So now I'm stuck thinking in what should I build. The new 8 generation is not here fast enough

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz With ASROCK Z68 Extreme 3 Gen 3 & Hyper 212 Evo
I would suggest getting something to tide you over for now. Try to find something acceptable on ebay, and wait to see what 10 and 7nm bring. I'll try to find you something if the temporary route is what you want to do. You might just need a motherboard.

You can always sell it on ebay and get most or all of your money back.

Well, this is me. I really don't need an upgrade ~________~

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6xb265ytb6e04h/cine-r15_i7-2700K_4.64Ghz_64bits.jpg?dl=0

Cheers!

Yeah you still good for a few more years. I was too, but My PSU killed my Motherboard. Now I need to upgrade, my wife is sad because she hasn't been able to play minecraft. When are specting the new 8 generation ?

Are you a gambling man?
GTRIBE, the world's leading social network for technology enthusiasts and gamers, has partnered with Ryzen, Radeon, Logitech G, XFX, Seasonic, HyperX, Deepcool, Seagate and STEIGER DYNAMICS for a thrilling GLOBAL GIVEAWAY EXPERIENCE!

THREE (3) Grand Prize winners will each receive an ultimate gaming PC, meticulously handcrafted in Silicon Valley by STEIGER DYNAMICS. This savage gaming PC is powered by the Ryzen 7 1800X processor and the brand new XFX Radeon RX Vega 64 HBM2 GPU. This gaming beast is also augmented by top-of-the-line Logitech G gear.

The combined value of the prizes is $9,000.
https://www.gamingtribe.com/giveaway/defiance/?us=Radeon&um=newsletter

 

[8350rocks]

I didn't notice it at first, but you are right the Intel units definitely have a rainbow warrior theme across the product line!

Spoiler

Edit: price tag Intel $499.99 AMD $389.99

The intel board has to cost more because is better, obviously.

Now that you mention it, it does have extra leds on the back panel. Absolutely justified. A $100 extra well invested in all that glorious bling.

One board has to support 8,12/16 cores threadRipper, build around weaker cores (lower IPC, 128bit,..) and very low overclocking potential.

The other board has to support 4,6,8,10, 12, 14, 16, 18 Cores KBL-X and SKL-X. build around stronger cores (higher IPC, 256bit and 512bit,..) and very high overclocking potential.

Powering 18 strong cores @4.5GHz requires electric components of a higher quality than powering 16 weaker cores @3.9GHz; therefore the X299 board has to cost more.

It is pure physics and engineering. It is the same reason why Ferrari F150 costs more than Toyota Prius.

Wow... I won't even dignify you with an elaborate answer.

Just... Wow...

I love that he flat out ignored that the threadripper boards have more VRMs, and VRMs of higher quality...

That is the same than saying that the Toyota has tires of higher quality than the Ferrari. Ouch!

Certain people ignoring anything technical behind engineering likes to claim that Intel is an evil company that prices excessively its top products,¹ whereas AMD is some charitable organization, but now we are talking about motherboards.

So, according to you, Gigabyte is an evil company when charges $100 extra for the Intel board, but it is a charitable organization when gives us those 'cheaper' AMD mobos with lots of VRMs of higher quality VRMs. Right? It is a case of evil transfer for contact or something? Or maybe Gygabyte prices higher the Intel chip because the design is more solid because the mobo has to support higher loads from much faster chips as the 7980XE?

¹ I guess Ferrari is also an evil company because its supercars cost much more than Toyota Prius.

Actually...the top end V10 Lexus does have higher quality tires than any Ferrari.


😉

 

[mdd1963]

.....Looking at the benchmarks we can see the i7-8700K@4.3GHz has an average power draw of 308.5W, which is over 3 times higher than it's TDP!

Wtf, where would the extra 200W come from if 7700k draws at most ~140W http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-kaby-lake-core-i7-7700k-i7-7700-i5-7600k-i5-7600,4870-8.html

Two more cores = two times more power consumption?

Perhaps that was total power draw at the wall including the ever so minor GTX1080Ti in the mix? Context is everything...

 

[goldstone77]

Link to Gamers Nexus News Coffee Lake 1151

 

[goldstone77]

.....Looking at the benchmarks we can see the i7-8700K@4.3GHz has an average power draw of 308.5W, which is over 3 times higher than it's TDP!

Wtf, where would the extra 200W come from if 7700k draws at most ~140W http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-kaby-lake-core-i7-7700k-i7-7700-i5-7600k-i5-7600,4870-8.html

Two more cores = two times more power consumption?

Sandra reports 253W for the 7700k

http://ranker.sisoftware.net/show_device.php?q=c9a598d1bfcbaec2e2a1cebcd9f990a78abd8aba8ac1e780bd90a187f5c8f9dfb68bbb9df5c8f8dea69bab8de88db080a6d5e8d0&l=en

Two more KBL cores = 50% more power consumption at the socket level, not at the platform level. Moreover, CFL uses a 14nm++ process instead the 14nm+ on KBL and would reduce power compared to a hypothetical 6C KBL.

.....Looking at the benchmarks we can see the i7-8700K@4.3GHz has an average power draw of 308.5W, which is over 3 times higher than it's TDP!

Wtf, where would the extra 200W come from if 7700k draws at most ~140W http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-kaby-lake-core-i7-7700k-i7-7700-i5-7600k-i5-7600,4870-8.html

Two more cores = two times more power consumption?

Perhaps that was total power draw at the wall including the ever so minor GTX1080Ti in the mix? Context is everything...

.....Looking at the benchmarks we can see the i7-8700K@4.3GHz has an average power draw of 308.5W, which is over 3 times higher than it's TDP!

Wtf, where would the extra 200W come from if 7700k draws at most ~140W http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-kaby-lake-core-i7-7700k-i7-7700-i5-7600k-i5-7600,4870-8.html

Two more cores = two times more power consumption?

Sandra reports 253W for the 7700k

http://ranker.sisoftware.net/show_device.php?q=c9a598d1bfcbaec2e2a1cebcd9f990a78abd8aba8ac1e780bd90a187f5c8f9dfb68bbb9df5c8f8dea69bab8de88db080a6d5e8d0&l=en

Two more KBL cores = 50% more power consumption at the socket level, not at the platform level. Moreover, CFL uses a 14nm++ process instead the 14nm+ on KBL and would reduce power compared to a hypothetical 6C KBL.

It was the next post below the one you reference.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1581001/intel-future-chips-news-rumours-reviews/page-43.html#20107837

 

[8350rocks]

You are welcome Yuka,

Guys, I have a question because we talk about how close is Ryzen IPC to Broadwell-E chips, But according to Cpu-Z and various others benchmarks (that I have personally ran), my First generation core i7 has a bit better single core performance than Ryzen 7(I'm running @4.5 GHz)

Ryzen first generation seems to cap out about ~4.1-4.2 GHz on great silicon. The gap you are seeing is merely clock speed gap. Especially if you are comparing stock Ryzen to your chip.

A 3.6-3.7 GHz Ryzen is at a 20% clock speed deficit compared to your OC'ed chip, a 4 GHz Ryzen is at a 12% defict in clock speed. So, if the chip is 10% faster per core per clock, then you should see a 2-10% difference in single core from clockspeed.

 

[goldstone77]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8K2yc11eC4&ab_channel=HardwareUnboxed"][/video]
Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Core i7-7700K using Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Sep 15, 2017

Core i7 vs. Ryzen 5 with Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Clash of Titans
By Steven Walton on September 15, 2017

Side-by-side Breakdown of the Results
Not that long ago I compared the overclocked R5 1600 and i7-7700K in 30 games using the GTX 1080 Ti and at 1080p the Ryzen CPU was on average 9% slower. Here we see with the slower GTX 1080 the Ryzen CPU was just 5% slower, so that's pretty well in line with previous findings.
What's interesting to note about this side-by-side game comparison is that in the more modern and well put together titles, Ryzen is extremely competitive. In fact, the only real head scratchers here are Hitman, Dawn of War III and Total War Warhammer.

In many other games such as Dirt 4, Doom, Sniper Elite 4, Battlefield 1, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division, Prey, Overwatch and Resident Evil 7 we found Ryzen to be extremely competitive. These results are of course based on the GTX 1080 handling the rendering work, so let's see how things look at 1080p with Vega 64.

Dropping in Vega 64 we see that overall Ryzen is actually slightly slower as it now trailed the 7700K by a 7% margin overall. Although the Ryzen 5 1600 processor does much better in Civilization VI, it now struggles in quite a few more titles than what was seen previously with the GeForce graphics card and we'll take a closer look at that in a moment.
For now let's see how things change at 1440p.

At 1440p we are more GPU limited but even so we saw some strange things when comparing the Core i7 and Ryzen CPUs. A number of times Ryzen was at best able to match the 7700K at 1080p though at 1440p delivered noticeably better results. Only in Hitman Ryzen is slower by a 10% margin or greater and as a result is now just 2% slower overall.

Moving to the Vega 64 results at 1440p, we again find that overall Ryzen was a mere 1% slower than the Core i7 processor. The margins on a per-game basis though are significantly different to what we just saw with the GTX 1080 so let's explore that a little closer.
I guess one takeaway here is that it's bad to generalize. For example claiming that Nvidia's DX12 performance handicaps Ryzen is certainly not true in all titles, though we might start to see more of this as newer games take better advantage of modern PC hardware.
For now though, Ryzen isn't always superior in DX12 titles and we can look to Hitman as an example. The 7700K is miles better in this game. Vega 64 doesn't always perform better with Ryzen either, as seen in titles like Dawn of War III, F1 2016 and Rise of the Tomb Raider where we witnessed the R5 1600 doing much better with the Nvidia GeForce GPU.
We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.
Overall, the higher-end Vega 64 parts don't offer a great value while the complete opposite is true for Ryzen. If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.
Bottom line, it's safe to say that it doesn't matter what GPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Intel CPUs and it doesn't matter what CPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Nvidia GPUs either. It's all fair game.

If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.

With less powerful GPU's the FPS gaps disappear, and for the average budget gamer using a midgrade card you won't notice much difference between Ryzen and Intel depending on the titles.

We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.

Interesting with Vega that the 1600 did beat the 7700k in a few games at 1440P. Maybe with 7nm Vega and some availability we could see Ryzen doing very well in the future at higher resolutions.

 

[adamsleath]

A different look at mindfactory sales

(i)
One can see that the huge increase in AMD sales (+4100) is not made at the expense of Intel sales (-1800). This means that most people that is now purchasing AMD wasn't purchasing Intel before. Aka those sales correspond to AMD fans. This agrees with a Lisa Su tweet giving thanks to "fans", not to customers.

Mindfactory is an AMD retail partner and Germany is traditionally pro-AMD because AMD invest millions in the Country.

(ii)
The graph is based in a selective counting of sales. The most popular models (as Pentiums) are lacking in the count. Therefore the % of all sales is not valid.

(iii)
Despite all the bad press and the biased reviews, the SKL-X is selling very well even at Mindfactory.

7700k is selling more than combined 1800X/1700X/1700.

and the combined r5 1600/1600x is overselling the 7700k

https://segmentnext.com/2017/09/04/amd-cpu-sales-overtake-intel/

overall amd sales > intel in august. but id REALLY like to see more sales data from other large retailers that would be interesting to me.
intel and amd fanboyism... amd wins intel wins consumer wins. and still the fanboy whinging lol

x series is just a bit of icing on the cake. ...intel must be doing the dance of joy around the 7700k...massive sales.

 

[YoAndy]

Spoiler

You are welcome Yuka,

Guys, I have a question because we talk about how close is Ryzen IPC to Broadwell-E chips, But according to Cpu-Z and various others benchmarks (that I have personally ran), my First generation core i7 has a bit better single core performance than Ryzen 7(I'm running @4.5 GHz)

I know my 2500K@4.5 scores a 155 on Cinebench for single thread, which I tested myself. It really shows how much frequency affects single thread scores as well as multi-thread scores for that matter. Now these synthetic benchmarks are important, because they can also help you see how optimized individual programs are for a particular processor. For instance great Firestrike scores, and terrible FPS in a game like Rise of the Tomb raider. One optimization later 30% boost in FPS, which now falls more in line with the Firestrike score.

And that's the reason why I can't see myself buying a new Ryzen when new Intel chips are so much faster. My i7 990X still faster when gaming or running Gaming benchmarks. Now last week my corsair PSU died. I bought a new Thermaltake PSU with 10 years warranty. But my motherboard decided to quit a day after installing the new PSU(when the previous corsair died probably damaged the Motherboard) So now I'm stuck thinking in what should I build. The new 8 generation is not here fast enough

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz With ASROCK Z68 Extreme 3 Gen 3 & Hyper 212 Evo
I would suggest getting something to tide you over for now. Try to find something acceptable on ebay, and wait to see what 10 and 7nm bring. I'll try to find you something if the temporary route is what you want to do. You might just need a motherboard.

You can always sell it on ebay and get most or all of your money back.

Well, this is me. I really don't need an upgrade ~________~

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6xb265ytb6e04h/cine-r15_i7-2700K_4.64Ghz_64bits.jpg?dl=0

Cheers!

Yeah you still good for a few more years. I was too, but My PSU killed my Motherboard. Now I need to upgrade, my wife is sad because she hasn't been able to play minecraft. When are specting the new 8 generation ?

Are you a gambling man?
GTRIBE, the world's leading social network for technology enthusiasts and gamers, has partnered with Ryzen, Radeon, Logitech G, XFX, Seasonic, HyperX, Deepcool, Seagate and STEIGER DYNAMICS for a thrilling GLOBAL GIVEAWAY EXPERIENCE!

THREE (3) Grand Prize winners will each receive an ultimate gaming PC, meticulously handcrafted in Silicon Valley by STEIGER DYNAMICS. This savage gaming PC is powered by the Ryzen 7 1800X processor and the brand new XFX Radeon RX Vega 64 HBM2 GPU. This gaming beast is also augmented by top-of-the-line Logitech G gear.

The combined value of the prizes is $9,000.
https://www.gamingtribe.com/giveaway/defiance/?us=Radeon&um=newsletter

Gaming beast with a Ryzen 1800X processor and RX Vega 64. Insert laugh here :lol:.With 9000 i can build something way better. I think the i7 7700K or the i9 and a 1080 Ti (or dual) then you can call it a gaming beast.

 

[YoAndy]

I didn't notice it at first, but you are right the Intel units definitely have a rainbow warrior theme across the product line!

Spoiler

Edit: price tag Intel $499.99 AMD $389.99

The intel board has to cost more because is better, obviously.

Now that you mention it, it does have extra leds on the back panel. Absolutely justified. A $100 extra well invested in all that glorious bling.

One board has to support 8,12/16 cores threadRipper, build around weaker cores (lower IPC, 128bit,..) and very low overclocking potential.

The other board has to support 4,6,8,10, 12, 14, 16, 18 Cores KBL-X and SKL-X. build around stronger cores (higher IPC, 256bit and 512bit,..) and very high overclocking potential.

Powering 18 strong cores @4.5GHz requires electric components of a higher quality than powering 16 weaker cores @3.9GHz; therefore the X299 board has to cost more.

It is pure physics and engineering. It is the same reason why Ferrari F150 costs more than Toyota Prius.

Wow... I won't even dignify you with an elaborate answer.

Just... Wow...

I love that he flat out ignored that the threadripper boards have more VRMs, and VRMs of higher quality...

That is the same than saying that the Toyota has tires of higher quality than the Ferrari. Ouch!

Certain people ignoring anything technical behind engineering likes to claim that Intel is an evil company that prices excessively its top products,¹ whereas AMD is some charitable organization, but now we are talking about motherboards.

So, according to you, Gigabyte is an evil company when charges $100 extra for the Intel board, but it is a charitable organization when gives us those 'cheaper' AMD mobos with lots of VRMs of higher quality VRMs. Right? It is a case of evil transfer for contact or something? Or maybe Gygabyte prices higher the Intel chip because the design is more solid because the mobo has to support higher loads from much faster chips as the 7980XE?

¹ I guess Ferrari is also an evil company because its supercars cost much more than Toyota Prius.

Actually...the top end V10 Lexus does have higher quality tires than any Ferrari.


😉

What are you talking about lol.:lol: Are you joking comparing a lexus LFA the most expensive car toyota makes right now($375,000) http://www.carbuzz.com/Lexus/2017_Lexus_LFA/, with a Ferrari For example Ferrari La Ferrari(7million) https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/5/13840958/ferrari-laferrari-auction-7-million-record-price-charity? My 2 main hobbies are Electronics and cars that's why I enjoy mixing them. For cars like the McLaren P1 and the LaFerrari, an off-the-shelf tire simply won’t do, which is why Pirelli has created bespoke P Zero Corsa tires for the latest generation of hypercars.

The tires for the LaFerrari (265/30-19 fronts, 345/30-20 rears) are unique to the car and designed in conjunction with Ferrari’s engineers. The front tires’ width is specifically designed to aid turn-in and reduce understeer in corners, ultimately producing lower lap times.

Even the inner and outer shoulders of the ultra-low profile tires differ in construction and stiffness to optimize grip across a broader range of conditions. Pirelli says the P Zero Corsa’s compounds rely on the latest-generation polymers, and that the tire compounds were optimized specifically for the LaFerrari.
AMD motherboards are like that lexus and Intel high end motherboards like the Rampage line are the ferrari's of motherboards, That's why quality craftsmanship, exclusive components and unique features always have a higher price and some people just don't get it.

 

[juanrga]

You are welcome Yuka,

Guys, I have a question because we talk about how close is Ryzen IPC to Broadwell-E chips, But according to Cpu-Z and various others benchmarks (that I have personally ran), my First generation core i7 has a bit better single core performance than Ryzen 7(I'm running @4.5 GHz)

Ryzen first generation seems to cap out about ~4.1-4.2 GHz on great silicon. The gap you are seeing is merely clock speed gap. Especially if you are comparing stock Ryzen to your chip.

A 3.6-3.7 GHz Ryzen is at a 20% clock speed deficit compared to your OC'ed chip, a 4 GHz Ryzen is at a 12% defict in clock speed. So, if the chip is 10% faster per core per clock, then you should see a 2-10% difference in single core from clockspeed.

Intel has a 10--20% IPC gap over Zen.

 

[juanrga]

A different look at mindfactory sales

(i)
One can see that the huge increase in AMD sales (+4100) is not made at the expense of Intel sales (-1800). This means that most people that is now purchasing AMD wasn't purchasing Intel before. Aka those sales correspond to AMD fans. This agrees with a Lisa Su tweet giving thanks to "fans", not to customers.

Mindfactory is an AMD retail partner and Germany is traditionally pro-AMD because AMD invest millions in the Country.

(ii)
The graph is based in a selective counting of sales. The most popular models (as Pentiums) are lacking in the count. Therefore the % of all sales is not valid.

(iii)
Despite all the bad press and the biased reviews, the SKL-X is selling very well even at Mindfactory.

7700k is selling more than combined 1800X/1700X/1700.

and the combined r5 1600/1600x is overselling the 7700k

https://segmentnext.com/2017/09/04/amd-cpu-sales-overtake-intel/

overall amd sales > intel in august. but id REALLY like to see more sales data from other large retailers that would be interesting to me.
intel and amd fanboyism... amd wins intel wins consumer wins. and still the fanboy whinging lol

x series is just a bit of icing on the cake. ...intel must be doing the dance of joy around the 7700k...massive sales.

R5 1600/1600x aren't competing in the same bracket than than the 7700k. The R5 1600/1600x target a higher volume bracket.

Those aren't overall sales. The reddit user that collected the data didn't count the real volume sales chips. And OEM sales are missing as well.

No one complained about if customers win or not. The complain is about how sales from an AMD retail partner have been twisted to generate a false vision of the market and exaggerate the success of RyZen.

No one is negating that RyZen is selling, what the graph demonstrates is that not all RyZen sales are coming at the expense of Intel sales.

 

[juanrga]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8K2yc11eC4&ab_channel=HardwareUnboxed"][/video]
Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Core i7-7700K using Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Sep 15, 2017

Spoiler

Core i7 vs. Ryzen 5 with Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Clash of Titans
By Steven Walton on September 15, 2017

Side-by-side Breakdown of the Results
Not that long ago I compared the overclocked R5 1600 and i7-7700K in 30 games using the GTX 1080 Ti and at 1080p the Ryzen CPU was on average 9% slower. Here we see with the slower GTX 1080 the Ryzen CPU was just 5% slower, so that's pretty well in line with previous findings.
What's interesting to note about this side-by-side game comparison is that in the more modern and well put together titles, Ryzen is extremely competitive. In fact, the only real head scratchers here are Hitman, Dawn of War III and Total War Warhammer.

In many other games such as Dirt 4, Doom, Sniper Elite 4, Battlefield 1, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division, Prey, Overwatch and Resident Evil 7 we found Ryzen to be extremely competitive. These results are of course based on the GTX 1080 handling the rendering work, so let's see how things look at 1080p with Vega 64.

Dropping in Vega 64 we see that overall Ryzen is actually slightly slower as it now trailed the 7700K by a 7% margin overall. Although the Ryzen 5 1600 processor does much better in Civilization VI, it now struggles in quite a few more titles than what was seen previously with the GeForce graphics card and we'll take a closer look at that in a moment.
For now let's see how things change at 1440p.

At 1440p we are more GPU limited but even so we saw some strange things when comparing the Core i7 and Ryzen CPUs. A number of times Ryzen was at best able to match the 7700K at 1080p though at 1440p delivered noticeably better results. Only in Hitman Ryzen is slower by a 10% margin or greater and as a result is now just 2% slower overall.

Moving to the Vega 64 results at 1440p, we again find that overall Ryzen was a mere 1% slower than the Core i7 processor. The margins on a per-game basis though are significantly different to what we just saw with the GTX 1080 so let's explore that a little closer.
I guess one takeaway here is that it's bad to generalize. For example claiming that Nvidia's DX12 performance handicaps Ryzen is certainly not true in all titles, though we might start to see more of this as newer games take better advantage of modern PC hardware.
For now though, Ryzen isn't always superior in DX12 titles and we can look to Hitman as an example. The 7700K is miles better in this game. Vega 64 doesn't always perform better with Ryzen either, as seen in titles like Dawn of War III, F1 2016 and Rise of the Tomb Raider where we witnessed the R5 1600 doing much better with the Nvidia GeForce GPU.
We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.
Overall, the higher-end Vega 64 parts don't offer a great value while the complete opposite is true for Ryzen. If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.
Bottom line, it's safe to say that it doesn't matter what GPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Intel CPUs and it doesn't matter what CPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Nvidia GPUs either. It's all fair game.

If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.

With less powerful GPU's the FPS gaps disappear, and for the average budget gamer using a midgrade card you won't notice much difference between Ryzen and Intel depending on the titles.

We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.

Interesting with Vega that the 1600 did beat the 7700k in a few games at 1440P. Maybe with 7nm Vega and some availability we could see Ryzen doing very well in the future at higher resolutions.

For a while I have referred to HU as a biased site because they use dirty tricks that favor AMD in reviews: overclock vs stock, frame-limiting and GPU-bound settings, incompatible mobos for Intel and engineering samples instead retails chips...

But lately I am not so sure... and it seems I am not alone, other people in forums think the same:

I'm starting to think Steve is just incompetent instead of shilling for the underdog brand.

For instance I would like to know how he got that "5%". Direct averaging the percents in the graph don't give 5%.

A more elaborated reply of why this new HU 'review' doesn't demonstrate that pretends, as someone else posted in another forum:

What this test shows is that even at 1080P, we are often hitting GPU limits on the GTX 1080 if running at ultra settings / max AA in the latest games.

I touched on this topic in the other thread about Coffee Lake and it's merits for gaming. Is Ryzen 'bad' at gaming? No, not at all. It's a competent gaming CPU but its true strengths lie in its MT performance. Its performance 'ceiling' at gaming is a lot lower than a highly clocked i7, and you only need to find a non GPU limited test like this one to prove it: http://www.legitreviews.com/cpu-bot...ed-on-amd-ryzen-versus-intel-kaby-lake_192585

Yes, it does take a 1080 GTX Ti to truly show the differences between an i7 and Ryzen, and not many of us can afford such a high end GPU. However, what about the next generation of GPUs? Or the ones after? These will be as fast or faster than the 1080 GTX Ti. We tend to hang on to our CPUs much longer than GPUs, and a faster gaming CPU remains relevant for longer without seriously bottlenecking future GPU upgrades.

For example, I'm still running my 2011 era i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz and it started out running a then top of the line Radeon 7970. That was then upgraded to a GTX 970 in 2015 and I upgraded again to a Radeon Fury earlier in the year. I would estimate the Radeon Fury to be roughly 2.0x the performance of the 7970... would have I have been able to get the full benefits from the GPU upgrades had I opted for a cheaper, slower CPU at the time, say an i3 or AMD FX CPU? I would say probably not.

The same arguments can probably be made about CPUs today. Unless games suddenly became massively multi-threaded in the next couple of years, I would bet that a 7700K would remain 'relevant' for gaming longer than a R5 would be. When it comes to gaming, IPC + clockspeed are still the most important metrics. Thread count is important in certain games (AOTS, for example) but that is more of an exception than the norm.

There is not anything interesting on AMD with Vega reducing the gap at higher resolutions. Vega is a slower card and it is simply increasing the GPU bottleneck and crippling still more the true performance of the Intel CPU.

 

[juanrga]

I didn't notice it at first, but you are right the Intel units definitely have a rainbow warrior theme across the product line!

Spoiler

Edit: price tag Intel $499.99 AMD $389.99

The intel board has to cost more because is better, obviously.

Now that you mention it, it does have extra leds on the back panel. Absolutely justified. A $100 extra well invested in all that glorious bling.

One board has to support 8,12/16 cores threadRipper, build around weaker cores (lower IPC, 128bit,..) and very low overclocking potential.

The other board has to support 4,6,8,10, 12, 14, 16, 18 Cores KBL-X and SKL-X. build around stronger cores (higher IPC, 256bit and 512bit,..) and very high overclocking potential.

Powering 18 strong cores @4.5GHz requires electric components of a higher quality than powering 16 weaker cores @3.9GHz; therefore the X299 board has to cost more.

It is pure physics and engineering. It is the same reason why Ferrari F150 costs more than Toyota Prius.

Wow... I won't even dignify you with an elaborate answer.

Just... Wow...

I love that he flat out ignored that the threadripper boards have more VRMs, and VRMs of higher quality...

That is the same than saying that the Toyota has tires of higher quality than the Ferrari. Ouch!

Certain people ignoring anything technical behind engineering likes to claim that Intel is an evil company that prices excessively its top products,¹ whereas AMD is some charitable organization, but now we are talking about motherboards.

So, according to you, Gigabyte is an evil company when charges $100 extra for the Intel board, but it is a charitable organization when gives us those 'cheaper' AMD mobos with lots of VRMs of higher quality VRMs. Right? It is a case of evil transfer for contact or something? Or maybe Gygabyte prices higher the Intel chip because the design is more solid because the mobo has to support higher loads from much faster chips as the 7980XE?

¹ I guess Ferrari is also an evil company because its supercars cost much more than Toyota Prius.

Actually...the top end V10 Lexus does have higher quality tires than any Ferrari.

😉

 

[goldstone77]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8K2yc11eC4&ab_channel=HardwareUnboxed"][/video]
Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Core i7-7700K using Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Sep 15, 2017

Spoiler

Core i7 vs. Ryzen 5 with Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Clash of Titans
By Steven Walton on September 15, 2017

Side-by-side Breakdown of the Results
Not that long ago I compared the overclocked R5 1600 and i7-7700K in 30 games using the GTX 1080 Ti and at 1080p the Ryzen CPU was on average 9% slower. Here we see with the slower GTX 1080 the Ryzen CPU was just 5% slower, so that's pretty well in line with previous findings.
What's interesting to note about this side-by-side game comparison is that in the more modern and well put together titles, Ryzen is extremely competitive. In fact, the only real head scratchers here are Hitman, Dawn of War III and Total War Warhammer.

In many other games such as Dirt 4, Doom, Sniper Elite 4, Battlefield 1, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division, Prey, Overwatch and Resident Evil 7 we found Ryzen to be extremely competitive. These results are of course based on the GTX 1080 handling the rendering work, so let's see how things look at 1080p with Vega 64.

Dropping in Vega 64 we see that overall Ryzen is actually slightly slower as it now trailed the 7700K by a 7% margin overall. Although the Ryzen 5 1600 processor does much better in Civilization VI, it now struggles in quite a few more titles than what was seen previously with the GeForce graphics card and we'll take a closer look at that in a moment.
For now let's see how things change at 1440p.

At 1440p we are more GPU limited but even so we saw some strange things when comparing the Core i7 and Ryzen CPUs. A number of times Ryzen was at best able to match the 7700K at 1080p though at 1440p delivered noticeably better results. Only in Hitman Ryzen is slower by a 10% margin or greater and as a result is now just 2% slower overall.

Moving to the Vega 64 results at 1440p, we again find that overall Ryzen was a mere 1% slower than the Core i7 processor. The margins on a per-game basis though are significantly different to what we just saw with the GTX 1080 so let's explore that a little closer.
I guess one takeaway here is that it's bad to generalize. For example claiming that Nvidia's DX12 performance handicaps Ryzen is certainly not true in all titles, though we might start to see more of this as newer games take better advantage of modern PC hardware.
For now though, Ryzen isn't always superior in DX12 titles and we can look to Hitman as an example. The 7700K is miles better in this game. Vega 64 doesn't always perform better with Ryzen either, as seen in titles like Dawn of War III, F1 2016 and Rise of the Tomb Raider where we witnessed the R5 1600 doing much better with the Nvidia GeForce GPU.
We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.
Overall, the higher-end Vega 64 parts don't offer a great value while the complete opposite is true for Ryzen. If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.
Bottom line, it's safe to say that it doesn't matter what GPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Intel CPUs and it doesn't matter what CPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Nvidia GPUs either. It's all fair game.

If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.

With less powerful GPU's the FPS gaps disappear, and for the average budget gamer using a midgrade card you won't notice much difference between Ryzen and Intel depending on the titles.

We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.

Interesting with Vega that the 1600 did beat the 7700k in a few games at 1440P. Maybe with 7nm Vega and some availability we could see Ryzen doing very well in the future at higher resolutions.

For a while I have referred to HU as a biased site because they use dirty tricks that favor AMD in reviews: overclock vs stock, frame-limiting and GPU-bound settings, incompatible mobos for Intel and engineering samples instead retails chips...

But lately I am not so sure... and it seems I am not alone:

I'm starting to think Steve is just incompetent instead of shilling for the underdog brand.

For instance I would like to know how he got that "5%". Direct averaging the percents in the graph don't give 5%.

A more elaborated reply of why this new HU 'review' doesn't demonstrate that pretends:

What this test shows is that even at 1080P, we are often hitting GPU limits on the GTX 1080 if running at ultra settings / max AA in the latest games.

I touched on this topic in the other thread about Coffee Lake and it's merits for gaming. Is Ryzen 'bad' at gaming? No, not at all. It's a competent gaming CPU but its true strengths lie in its MT performance. Its performance 'ceiling' at gaming is a lot lower than a highly clocked i7, and you only need to find a non GPU limited test like this one to prove it: http://www.legitreviews.com/cpu-bot...ed-on-amd-ryzen-versus-intel-kaby-lake_192585

Yes, it does take a 1080 GTX Ti to truly show the differences between an i7 and Ryzen, and not many of us can afford such a high end GPU. However, what about the next generation of GPUs? Or the ones after? These will be as fast or faster than the 1080 GTX Ti. We tend to hang on to our CPUs much longer than GPUs, and a faster gaming CPU remains relevant for longer without seriously bottlenecking future GPU upgrades.

For example, I'm still running my 2011 era i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz and it started out running a then top of the line Radeon 7970. That was then upgraded to a GTX 970 in 2015 and I upgraded again to a Radeon Fury earlier in the year. I would estimate the Radeon Fury to be roughly 2.0x the performance of the 7970... would have I have been able to get the full benefits from the GPU upgrades had I opted for a cheaper, slower CPU at the time, say an i3 or AMD FX CPU? I would say probably not.

The same arguments can probably be made about CPUs today. Unless games suddenly became massively multi-threaded in the next couple of years, I would bet that a 7700K would remain 'relevant' for gaming longer than a R5 would be. When it comes to gaming, IPC + clockspeed are still the most important metrics. Thread count is important in certain games (AOTS, for example) but that is more of an exception than the norm.

Source for the rant?

 

[KirbysHammer]

[video="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8K2yc11eC4&ab_channel=HardwareUnboxed"][/video]
Ryzen 5 1600 vs. Core i7-7700K using Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Hardware Unboxed
Published on Sep 15, 2017

Spoiler

Core i7 vs. Ryzen 5 with Vega 64 & GTX 1080
Clash of Titans
By Steven Walton on September 15, 2017

Side-by-side Breakdown of the Results
Not that long ago I compared the overclocked R5 1600 and i7-7700K in 30 games using the GTX 1080 Ti and at 1080p the Ryzen CPU was on average 9% slower. Here we see with the slower GTX 1080 the Ryzen CPU was just 5% slower, so that's pretty well in line with previous findings.
What's interesting to note about this side-by-side game comparison is that in the more modern and well put together titles, Ryzen is extremely competitive. In fact, the only real head scratchers here are Hitman, Dawn of War III and Total War Warhammer.

In many other games such as Dirt 4, Doom, Sniper Elite 4, Battlefield 1, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division, Prey, Overwatch and Resident Evil 7 we found Ryzen to be extremely competitive. These results are of course based on the GTX 1080 handling the rendering work, so let's see how things look at 1080p with Vega 64.

Dropping in Vega 64 we see that overall Ryzen is actually slightly slower as it now trailed the 7700K by a 7% margin overall. Although the Ryzen 5 1600 processor does much better in Civilization VI, it now struggles in quite a few more titles than what was seen previously with the GeForce graphics card and we'll take a closer look at that in a moment.
For now let's see how things change at 1440p.

At 1440p we are more GPU limited but even so we saw some strange things when comparing the Core i7 and Ryzen CPUs. A number of times Ryzen was at best able to match the 7700K at 1080p though at 1440p delivered noticeably better results. Only in Hitman Ryzen is slower by a 10% margin or greater and as a result is now just 2% slower overall.

Moving to the Vega 64 results at 1440p, we again find that overall Ryzen was a mere 1% slower than the Core i7 processor. The margins on a per-game basis though are significantly different to what we just saw with the GTX 1080 so let's explore that a little closer.
I guess one takeaway here is that it's bad to generalize. For example claiming that Nvidia's DX12 performance handicaps Ryzen is certainly not true in all titles, though we might start to see more of this as newer games take better advantage of modern PC hardware.
For now though, Ryzen isn't always superior in DX12 titles and we can look to Hitman as an example. The 7700K is miles better in this game. Vega 64 doesn't always perform better with Ryzen either, as seen in titles like Dawn of War III, F1 2016 and Rise of the Tomb Raider where we witnessed the R5 1600 doing much better with the Nvidia GeForce GPU.
We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.
Overall, the higher-end Vega 64 parts don't offer a great value while the complete opposite is true for Ryzen. If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.
Bottom line, it's safe to say that it doesn't matter what GPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Intel CPUs and it doesn't matter what CPU reviewers use to compare AMD and Nvidia GPUs either. It's all fair game.

If I didn't have money to burn, which I don't, and I was building a gaming system today intending it to last for the next three, four or possibly even five years, then I'd invest in the Ryzen 5 1600 rather than the more expensive Core i7-7700K, especially if $500+ GPUs aren't in your future.

With less powerful GPU's the FPS gaps disappear, and for the average budget gamer using a midgrade card you won't notice much difference between Ryzen and Intel depending on the titles.

We also saw how much more the higher 1440p resolution brings both Ryzen and Vega into play. Ryzen still did well at 1080p for the most part, though Vega certainly appears much more competitive at 1440p versus 1080p.

Interesting with Vega that the 1600 did beat the 7700k in a few games at 1440P. Maybe with 7nm Vega and some availability we could see Ryzen doing very well in the future at higher resolutions.

For a while I have referred to HU as a biased site because they use dirty tricks that favor AMD in reviews: overclock vs stock, frame-limiting and GPU-bound settings, incompatible mobos for Intel and engineering samples instead retails chips...

But lately I am not so sure... and it seems I am not alone:

I'm starting to think Steve is just incompetent instead of shilling for the underdog brand.

For instance I would like to know how he got that "5%". Direct averaging the percents in the graph don't give 5%.

A more elaborated reply of why this new HU 'review' doesn't demonstrate that pretends:

What this test shows is that even at 1080P, we are often hitting GPU limits on the GTX 1080 if running at ultra settings / max AA in the latest games.

I touched on this topic in the other thread about Coffee Lake and it's merits for gaming. Is Ryzen 'bad' at gaming? No, not at all. It's a competent gaming CPU but its true strengths lie in its MT performance. Its performance 'ceiling' at gaming is a lot lower than a highly clocked i7, and you only need to find a non GPU limited test like this one to prove it: http://www.legitreviews.com/cpu-bot...ed-on-amd-ryzen-versus-intel-kaby-lake_192585

Yes, it does take a 1080 GTX Ti to truly show the differences between an i7 and Ryzen, and not many of us can afford such a high end GPU. However, what about the next generation of GPUs? Or the ones after? These will be as fast or faster than the 1080 GTX Ti. We tend to hang on to our CPUs much longer than GPUs, and a faster gaming CPU remains relevant for longer without seriously bottlenecking future GPU upgrades.

For example, I'm still running my 2011 era i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz and it started out running a then top of the line Radeon 7970. That was then upgraded to a GTX 970 in 2015 and I upgraded again to a Radeon Fury earlier in the year. I would estimate the Radeon Fury to be roughly 2.0x the performance of the 7970... would have I have been able to get the full benefits from the GPU upgrades had I opted for a cheaper, slower CPU at the time, say an i3 or AMD FX CPU? I would say probably not.

The same arguments can probably be made about CPUs today. Unless games suddenly became massively multi-threaded in the next couple of years, I would bet that a 7700K would remain 'relevant' for gaming longer than a R5 would be. When it comes to gaming, IPC + clockspeed are still the most important metrics. Thread count is important in certain games (AOTS, for example) but that is more of an exception than the norm.

Source for the rant?

What source do they need? Most of it is an opinion. We don't know what the future holds CPU and GPU wise beyond the next couple of months we get coffee lake.

 

[goldstone77]

This is the graph that intrigues me the most. Some kind of synergy with Ryzen and Vega at higher resolutions for a few games.

 

[juanrga]

It seems that the successor to CoffeLake will bring 8-cores for mainstream.

 

[adamsleath]

A different look at mindfactory sales

(i)
One can see that the huge increase in AMD sales (+4100) is not made at the expense of Intel sales (-1800). This means that most people that is now purchasing AMD wasn't purchasing Intel before. Aka those sales correspond to AMD fans. This agrees with a Lisa Su tweet giving thanks to "fans", not to customers.

Mindfactory is an AMD retail partner and Germany is traditionally pro-AMD because AMD invest millions in the Country.

(ii)
The graph is based in a selective counting of sales. The most popular models (as Pentiums) are lacking in the count. Therefore the % of all sales is not valid.

(iii)
Despite all the bad press and the biased reviews, the SKL-X is selling very well even at Mindfactory.

7700k is selling more than combined 1800X/1700X/1700.

and the combined r5 1600/1600x is overselling the 7700k

https://segmentnext.com/2017/09/04/amd-cpu-sales-overtake-intel/

overall amd sales > intel in august. but id REALLY like to see more sales data from other large retailers that would be interesting to me.
intel and amd fanboyism... amd wins intel wins consumer wins. and still the fanboy whinging lol

x series is just a bit of icing on the cake. ...intel must be doing the dance of joy around the 7700k...massive sales.

R5 1600/1600x aren't competing in the same bracket than than the 7700k. The R5 1600/1600x target a higher volume bracket.

Those aren't overall sales. The reddit user that collected the data didn't count the real volume sales chips. And OEM sales are missing as well.

No one complained about if customers win or not. The complain is about how sales from an AMD retail partner have been twisted to generate a false vision of the market and exaggerate the success of RyZen.

No one is negating that RyZen is selling, what the graph demonstrates is that not all RyZen sales are coming at the expense of Intel sales.

the real volume sales chips... which are? who of us here have cpus (on desktops ) that are not on that list? id say for the average punter they dont buy server chips. the chips listed are desktop chips. no mobile chips listed. no lower end pentiums listed. what else?

the lineup of chips listed is all im really interested in. and it is the only market segment that is being compared.

I touched on this topic in the other thread about Coffee Lake and it's merits for gaming. Is Ryzen 'bad' at gaming? No, not at all. It's a competent gaming CPU but its true strengths lie in its MT performance. Its performance 'ceiling' at gaming is a lot lower than a highly clocked i7, and you only need to find a non GPU limited test like this one to prove it: http://www.legitreviews.com/cpu-bot...ed-on-amd-ryzen-v...

Yes, it does take a 1080 GTX Ti to truly show the differences between an i7 and Ryzen, and not many of us can afford such a high end GPU. However, what about the next generation of GPUs? Or the ones after? These will be as fast or faster than the 1080 GTX Ti. We tend to hang on to our CPUs much longer than GPUs, and a faster gaming CPU remains relevant for longer without seriously bottlenecking future GPU upgrades.

For example, I'm still running my 2011 era i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz and it started out running a then top of the line Radeon 7970. That was then upgraded to a GTX 970 in 2015 and I upgraded again to a Radeon Fury earlier in the year. I would estimate the Radeon Fury to be roughly 2.0x the performance of the 7970... would have I have been able to get the full benefits from the GPU upgrades had I opted for a cheaper, slower CPU at the time, say an i3 or AMD FX CPU? I would say probably not.

The same arguments can probably be made about CPUs today. Unless games suddenly became massively multi-threaded in the next couple of years, I would bet that a 7700K would remain 'relevant' for gaming longer than a R5 would be. When it comes to gaming, IPC + clockspeed are still the most important metrics. Thread count is important in certain games (AOTS, for example) but that is more of an exception than the norm.

good point. if you're prepared to pay the intel premium.

there is no way to measure whether amd sales have affected intel sales - at least no way that has yet been presented to me. but obviously if amd chips are selling at volume, these are sales intel does not get.

 

[juanrga]

Real sales are cheaper Pentiums and similar, mobile chips, and OEMs. The graph only considers a niche market. Those percents on the graph don't represent real marketshare.

AMD sales affect Intel sales, and vice verse. See point (i).

 

[adamsleath]

Real sales are cheaper Pentiums and similar, mobile chips, and OEMs. The graph only considers a niche market. Those percents on the graph don't represent real marketshare.

AMD sales affect Intel sales, and vice verse. See point (i).

agreed, they dont show total market share.

 

[manleysteele]

It seems that the successor to CoffeLake will bring 8-cores for mainstream.

I saw that too. Now I'm waiting a year to upgrade, maybe. I may wait for the refresh behind that.

 

[aldaia]

It seems that the successor to CoffeLake will bring 8-cores for mainstream.

Yup, there was an article yesterday at computerbase.de https://www.computerbase.de/2017-09/intel-ice-lake-acht-kerne-z390/

For those not knowing german first paragraphs more or less say:

It was an open secret that Intel had a lot to do with Cannon Lake - but it all failed at the 10 nm production. This is two years late, Cannon Lake now degraded to the mobile-only chip. The plans for the entire platform have passed on to Ice Lake, including eight cores for the mass market.

Early rumors were much more conspicuous with the move to Cannon Lake than what will ultimately arrive in 2018. According to the old Tick-Tock model, planned for the beginning of 2016, the 10-nm chips should be used not only in notebooks, but also cover all areas of the system down to the high-end server processor.

However, the massive problems with Intel's 10nm fabrication made a dash for all plans, two years ago the Plan B processors were launched: Kaby Lake, Kaby Lake Refresh and Coffee Lake should be the scepter in the notebook- and desktop area, in the server segment, Cascade Lake will be a mini-refresh of Skylake-SP . All models have one goal: to bridge the time up to Ice Lake, which will then take over the job that originally Cannon Lake should do, and will address every market segment.

 

[goldstone77]

Intel’s next generation chip plans: Ice Lake and a slow 10nm transition
Company quietly announces chips built on “10nm+” process even before 10nm ones are out.
PETER BRIGHT - 8/15/2017, 3:55 PM

Intel has given an unusual insight into the road ahead for its mainstream desktop and laptop processors, confirming the existence of a new processor family called Ice Lake.

Once upon a time, the company planned to follow up Skylake, built on a 14nm process, with Cannon Lake, built on a 10nm process and shipping in late 2016. But that plan was derailed. The 14nm process took longer than expected to bed down and start working properly. Our understanding is that Intel moved engineers that were developing 10nm to help with fixing 14nm. This had a few knock-on effects. First, it required Intel to produce additional designs built on 14nm: last year's Kaby Lake uses the second-generation 14nm+ process, and this year's Coffee Lake will use a third-generation 14nm++ process.

Second, it delayed 10nm. 10nm parts aren't now expected until 2018, when Cannon Lake finally materializes. The newly confirmed Ice Lake will use a second-generation 10nm process, 10nm+.

Intel's current plan is to split the desktop and laptop chips up. Desktop chips will stick with 14nm variants, currently Kaby Lake and soon Coffee Lake. Laptop chips will diverge; there will be not only 14nm++ Coffee Lake laptop parts but also 10nm Cannon Lake parts. Ian Cutress at AnandTech speculates that the split will be driven by core size and power; the smaller 15W parts will be Cannon Lakes because small chips will maximize the yields of the new 10nm process. Larger processors, from 35W and up, will stick with 14nm++ and Coffee Lake.

Ice Lake, built on 10nm+, may re-unify things. In principle, the second-generation, more mature 10nm process should offer better yields for larger chips and hence be suitable for a wider range of Intel's processors.

Underpinning all these delays and difficulties with new processes is the continued difficulty of developing production-ready extreme UV (EUV) lithography techniques. The circuit and gate patterns are transferred to the silicon wafer using an optical process called "photolithography." Currently, that uses ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 193nm. While this large wavelength can be used to create chips with much smaller features, including the 14nm processors today and 10nm parts imminently, doing so requires complex, multistage manufacturing in a technique called "multipatterning." EUV, which uses 13.5nm light, would make that aspect of the manufacturing much simpler—but it presents the problem that the EUV light itself is hard to generate and hard to manipulate. EUV systems can't generally uses lenses (most lens materials absorb EUV), only mirrors.

EUV is one of those technologies that has been just around the corner for years. Its arrival has been anticipated since the 1990s. In 2013, it was hoped that commercially viable systems would ship in 2015, but they didn't. Intel is, however, continuing to invest in the technology. The development of working EUV will make new processes easier to introduce, at least for a while.

 

[juanrga]

Back in 2014--2015 Intel planed a 10nm Cannonlake with 4/6/8 cores for mainstream. Then found big difficulties with the 14nm node, which delayed the development of the 10nm node, forced a change on the roadmaps and introduced the new refresh cycles, with 4-core Kabylake and 6-core CoffeLake.

Scaling down to the smallest nodes is getting more and more difficult. Glofo canceled its 14nm node. TSMC and Samsung avoided the problems of dealing with a 14nm node by introducing hybrid '14nm' and '16nm' nodes based in a real 20nm substratum. Glofo canceled also the 10nm node, whereas Samsung and TSMC newest '10nm' are closer to Intel 14nm than to Intel 10nm.

10nm Cannonlake chips start shipping in second half of this year. And 10nm+ Icelake is coming in 2018.