News Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs will seemingly use a new LGA1954 socket

[Admin]

Next-generation Nova Lake CPUs from Intel will reportedly require a new motherboard, shifting to an LGA1954 socket.

Intel's next-gen Nova Lake CPUs will seemingly use a new LGA1954 socket : Read more

 

[ezst036]

Intel needs to learn the weakness of its market position and stop doing this to its customers.

Sockets that don't last long is a major fail. I get that Intel has done this for a long time and it also takes time to change culture. That's fair. I hope this new 1954 will have twice or longer the lifetime of its predecessor.

Its fair to say that that no socket lasts forever. However Intel's socket strategy causes abandonment issues.

 

[acadia11]

1000% agree. It's not even about weakness of position and rather scale of operation , the longer and more mature a platform, the more adoption. The more chance they'll stick with you if I've got redo my mobo just to get to the next generation of chip family it opens opportunity for me to adopt another platform as I'm already making changes. Hey I got a perfectly good wife at home but if I have to get her plastic surgery every time we want to go out for dinner , I might as well go look about and see what the streets are saying I'm already doing so much just to go out to dinner.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Eh, my math is a out a bit.

16 P cores + 16 e cores, plus 4 LP cores.

Didn't Intel drop HT? Or are they bringing it back? Otherwise the 52 core count doesn't match up.

 

[Fe4rlessCloak]

Eh, my math is a out a bit.

16 P cores + 16 e cores, plus 4 LP cores.

Didn't Intel drop HT? Or are they bringing it back? Otherwise the 52 core count doesn't match up.

(8P + 16E) * 2 + 4 LPE = 52 Cores

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

(8P + 16E) * 2 + 4 LPE = 52 Cores

Aha! Thank you I prob shouldn't have had a beer whilst reading this!! 🤣

 

[closs.sebastien]

Intel needs to learn the weakness of its market position and stop doing this to its customers.

Sockets that don't last long is a major fail. I get that Intel has done this for a long time and it also takes time to change culture. That's fair. I hope this new 1954 will have twice or longer the lifetime of its predecessor.

Its fair to say that that no socket lasts forever. However Intel's socket strategy causes abandonment issues.

hum, when we change the cpu, it is mainly to change the platform, like going from pcie3/4 to 5, from ddr3/4 to 5, to get new usb (c), etc..
so no matter the socket, the motherboard is changed any way.

do you know people who only change the cpu when they do a big upgrade? or change the cpu every year? I don't.

 

[MoxNix]

Typical Intel, force everyone to change the motherboard too so they make more money.

 

[bit_user]

(8P + 16E) * 2 + 4 LPE = 52 Cores

Yeah, it sounds like they're going to take a page out of the Ryzen 3000 playbook and allow doubling up on compute chiplets?

Heh, I wonder if they'll make a version with no compute chiplets that just has the 4 LPE cores!
: D

 

[bit_user]

hum, when we change the cpu, it is mainly to change the platform, like going from pcie3/4 to 5, from ddr3/4 to 5, to get new usb (c), etc..
so no matter the socket, the motherboard is changed any way.

Funny thing about that...

• Intel didn't change sockets between Sandybridge vs. Ivy Bridge, yet Ivy Bridge increased PCIe support to 3.0.
• Same thing for Ryzen 3000 adding PCIe 4.0 on AM4.
• Same thing for Rocket Lake on LGA1200 (although, Comet Lake was originally meant to have it, before Intel pulled it back).

Oh, and about RAM? Skylake supported both DDR3L and DDR4. Alder Lake & Raptor Lake support both DDR4 and DDR5.

So, this shows a socket change isn't necessary, although the availability of some features will be board/chipset-specific.

do you know people who only change the cpu when they do a big upgrade? or change the cpu every year? I don't.

I bought an Alder Lake i5. I was planning on upgrading to an i7 or i9 Raptor Lake, but then all of the instability issues came to light and I decided to sit tight. Once the fixes for that stuff came out, rumors of Bartlett Lake started whetting my appetite and I decided I'd wait for it, instead.

I've heard of plenty of people doing a CPU-only upgrade on AM4. Motherboard might get upgraded later, or not.

My hope for AMD is that Zen 6 upgrades the chipset link to PCIe 5.0, when using a new mobo. That link is probably the most useful place on the entire board where they could've put PCIe 5.0, yet it's the one place they didn't!

 

[hotaru251]

intel needing a new socket already?

such a shocker [insert pikachu face here]

ok so sarcasm aside who is buying intel desktop? (unless you "need" thunderbolt)

 

[TerryLaze]

ok so sarcasm aside who is buying intel desktop? (unless you "need" thunderbolt)

Only about 75-80% of people....you can look up their revenues, they don't keep it a secret.
That's the amount of people that just go to a big store and buy a prebuild and keep it until it dies on them or becomes too slow even for basic tasks.
They don't care if the socket changes every year or not, they aren't gonna touch the inside of their PC for the 5-10 years they are gonna use it.

(8P + 16E) * 2 + 4 LPE = 52 Cores

Yeah, it sounds like they're going to take a page out of the Ryzen 3000 playbook and allow doubling up on compute chiplets?

Heh, I wonder if they'll make a version with no compute chiplets that just has the 4 LPE cores!
: D

Extreme doubt!
Unless intel can charge twice the money for it they won't do it.
Maybe they can though but I doubt it.
It would have to be a threadripper counterpart.

 

[shady28]

hum, when we change the cpu, it is mainly to change the platform, like going from pcie3/4 to 5, from ddr3/4 to 5, to get new usb (c), etc..
so no matter the socket, the motherboard is changed any way.

do you know people who only change the cpu when they do a big upgrade? or change the cpu every year? I don't.

I think what he's saying is that, if you have to change the motherboard, hence associated drivers, thus likely needing a fresh OS install, essentially you are migrating to an entire new PC.

In that scenario, going to a new (potentially competitors) platform is no more difficult.

One of the biggest things that people dislike about getting a 'new' PC is the time, trouble, and risk of migrating. The risk shouldn't be understated : "IRS is auditing?" "Where are all those digital receipts? Oh yeah, I forgot all those tax related docs on my old PC. #!&@!"

Just swapping a CPU rarely requires any action by the user. A BIOS patch perhaps, but that pales in comparison to the trouble of migrating everything.

 

[Notton]

The newer sockets aren't the same as the decade of LGA115x, they offer an actual improvement in I/O.
LGA1200: 16x4.0+4x3.0 (DMI), DDR4
LGA1700: 16x5.0+4x4.0+8x4.0 (DMI), DDR5
LGA1851: 20x5.0+4x4.0+8x4.0 (DMI), DDR5
LGA1954: ???
Now as for what the extra pins actually do, IDK. Seeing as DMI is just PCIe, an x4 requires 64 pins while an x8 requires 98 pins, I'd say that it's possible those are extra DMI, or PCIe lanes. If I had to speculate, the extra pins are for signal integrity on a 8x5.0 DMI, rather than a 12x4.0.

With that said, LGA1954 sounds expensive to wire up and we'll all be joking about how expensive the mobo is compared to AM5 (which was already expensive compared to AM4).

 

[atomicWAR]

I agree that Intel's socket position is unwise. I went with AMD for my build when AM5 dropped. I like a platform that gives me clear upgrade path that won't end in one or two generations. Intel should be taking notes on this with their marketshare increasingly deteriorating. Granted enthusiast's are a small group that would benefit most, but they are a very vocal group...sharing their stance with friends, family or anyone in the market for a new PC. Intel has lost much of its mindshare and it is time they admit that to themselves going forward.

 

[TheSecondPower]

hum, when we change the cpu, it is mainly to change the platform, like going from pcie3/4 to 5, from ddr3/4 to 5, to get new usb (c), etc..
so no matter the socket, the motherboard is changed any way.

do you know people who only change the cpu when they do a big upgrade? or change the cpu every year? I don't.

I went from a Ryzen 1800X to a Ryzen 5700X3D. That's almost an ideal use case and to make it better I had 3200MHz memory that I had bought years before but was running at 2400MHz because of CPU support, so the 5700X3D was a huge upgrade for me. And it was cheap.

But I almost regret it. My 1800X still worked well; I don't usually notice a difference with the new CPU and my games are still GPU-limited. And I don't want a lot of the newer GPUs with PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 x8, because my motherboard supports PCIe 3.0 x16. (Yeah, I know, in most games I can get 97% of the performance.) I already had one of the fastest PCIe 3.0 SSDs. To get my computer where I was hoping I really need a whole new platform so the new CPU for the old platform wasn't a good value.

But I had a friend go from Ryzen 2600X to 3600X and he was very happy with the change. A particular game saw like a 100% performance boost for him.

 

[IntelRyzen4070XT]

Intel needs to learn the weakness of its market position and stop doing this to its customers.

Sockets that don't last long is a major fail. I get that Intel has done this for a long time and it also takes time to change culture. That's fair. I hope this new 1954 will have twice or longer the lifetime of its predecessor.

Its fair to say that that no socket lasts forever. However Intel's socket strategy causes abandonment issues.

Not to mention the amount of e-waste that such a decision creates.

 

[TerryLaze]

One of the biggest things that people dislike about getting a 'new' PC is the time, trouble, and risk of migrating. The risk shouldn't be understated : "IRS is auditing?" "Where are all those digital receipts? Oh yeah, I forgot all those tax related docs on my old PC. #!&@!"

What is this 1994?!
All the things are backupped on the web nowadays.
Windows comes with onedrive preinstalled and 5Gb free space, that's more than enough for all the receipts of all of your life.
Every single gmail you create comes with 15Gb of free storage.
Any situation where the IRS would actually audit would be a person that has all their things backed up in at least 3 different places.

 

[TerryLaze]

Not to mention the amount of e-waste that such a decision creates.

How?!
A mobo-cpu combo is much easier to sell (or to use for something else) than a CPU on its own.

 

[JRStern]

I don't need 52 cores for a laptop or even most desktops, I'd much rather have longer battery life or a fanless, silent workstation.
Most anything heavy goes up in the cloud anyway.
Crazy stuff.

 

[thestryker]

Heh, I wonder if they'll make a version with no compute chiplets that just has the 4 LPE cores!

Yes please? I mean I know they won't do it, but it would be fascinating to see what sort of real world performance and efficiency it would have.

 

[rluker5]

I went from a Ryzen 1800X to a Ryzen 5700X3D. That's almost an ideal use case and to make it better I had 3200MHz memory that I had bought years before but was running at 2400MHz because of CPU support, so the 5700X3D was a huge upgrade for me. And it was cheap.

But I almost regret it. My 1800X still worked well; I don't usually notice a difference with the new CPU and my games are still GPU-limited. And I don't want a lot of the newer GPUs with PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 x8, because my motherboard supports PCIe 3.0 x16. (Yeah, I know, in most games I can get 97% of the performance.) I already had one of the fastest PCIe 3.0 SSDs. To get my computer where I was hoping I really need a whole new platform so the new CPU for the old platform wasn't a good value.

But I had a friend go from Ryzen 2600X to 3600X and he was very happy with the change. A particular game saw like a 100% performance boost for him.

I feel the same about my upgrade from a 12700k to a 13900kf.

Also, if NVL is getting that boatload of cores, it might come with MR DIMM support. That alone would be worthy of a motherboard change.

 

[thestryker]

I always find it amusing when people go all doom and gloom over Intel changing sockets. Do I wish Intel would do longer support? sure, but do I expect it? absolutely not. LGA 1156-1200 was basically arbitrary changes and their real customers (OEMs) didn't care at all. This set the standard going forward that their engineers didn't have to worry about backwards compatibility so they don't.

Regarding the "e-waste" argument against it: a CPU doesn't work without a motherboard so unless you throw away everything when you're done there is no difference.

 

[Makaveli]

lol intel never changes even when doing poorly.

I was a AM4 board for 5 years with a 3800X, 5800X, 5800X3D (3 Gens)

And i'm now on AM5 I did skip Zen 4 and starting with Zen 5 so I think will see Zen 6 on this socket and not Zen 7 but still worth it just for the socket longevity. As it will be the same 3 gens on AM5 if you started from Zen 4.

 

[Anton Longshot]

Intel needs to learn the weakness of its market position and stop doing this to its customers.

Sockets that don't last long is a major fail. I get that Intel has done this for a long time and it also takes time to change culture. That's fair. I hope this new 1954 will have twice or longer the lifetime of its predecessor.

Its fair to say that that no socket lasts forever. However Intel's socket strategy causes abandonment issues.

I hear you.
However, ever since I started 'home computing' starting with ye olde 8088 I've built my own boxes. Many.
I've NEVER plugged a new CPU into an old board/socket. When I get a new CPU I also want other i.e. more advanced new hardware to go with it. I see no reason to recycle the old stuff.