Intel Rocket Lake CPU Appears with 6 Cores and 12 Threads

[HenrySomeone]

Overzealous fan? I am not sure who you are implying here when you sound like one yourself.

If you look at a one dimensional metric, then yes, Intel's 14nm is able to clock faster than a TSMC 7nm. But at the expense of it taking more than 2x the power. Clock for clock, Intel's ageing Skylake architecture will lag behind, thus the desperate need to increase clockspeed to retain the single core performance crown. Unfortunately, the earliest you can see a 7nm from Intel could be late next year if not the year after, assuming no delays. The current Intel 10nm appears to be completely messed up. While Intel claims that its turning out better than they expected, I am not sure how high is the expectation now after the many years of delay.

It's only 2x the power in borderline situations; certainly not stock vs stock and in most cases also not OCed vs OCed. Actually at around 4 Ghz, Intel's 14nm is still more power efficient at most workloads, let that sink in for a moment.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's only 2x the power in borderline situations; certainly not stock vs stock and in most cases also not OCed vs OCed. Actually at around 4 Ghz, Intel's 14nm is still more power efficient at most workloads, let that sink in for a moment.

This is just as misleading. At 4ghz, the Intel chip pulls less power in a instant, but it is utterly crushed in performance. Not only does this allow amd' to pull even further ahead in productivity, but at 4 ghz Intel also loses its gaming advantage. And to complete a benchmark, the Intel rig will still pull more power to do the same amount of work due to how long it takes compared to ryzen.

The term "grasping at straws" comes to mind.

 

[watzupken]

It's only 2x the power in borderline situations; certainly not stock vs stock and in most cases also not OCed vs OCed. Actually at around 4 Ghz, Intel's 14nm is still more power efficient at most workloads, let that sink in for a moment.

Sure, you can continue to sink in your moment though. Clock for clock, Intel gets beaten and that is a fact. Otherwise why do you think they are so desperate to push for high clockspeed? Power efficient means performance relative to power requirement. There are reviews out there already pointing that fact out, which I think you are too stuck in your moment to believe. If you think Intel is better, no harm for you to stick around with it.

 

[Vayra86]

It's only 2x the power in borderline situations; certainly not stock vs stock and in most cases also not OCed vs OCed. Actually at around 4 Ghz, Intel's 14nm is still more power efficient at most workloads, let that sink in for a moment.

Just... don't. Its painful to watch, a bit like watching a guy flogging himself.

 

[watzupken]

This is just as misleading. At 4ghz, the Intel chip pulls less power in a instant, but it is utterly crushed in performance. Not only does this allow amd' to pull even further ahead in productivity, but at 4 ghz Intel also loses its gaming advantage. And to complete a benchmark, the Intel rig will still pull more power to do the same amount of work due to how long it takes compared to ryzen.

The term "grasping at straws" comes to mind.

Problem is he/she chooses to ignore certain metrics to focus on a 1 dimensional comparison to paint a flawed picture deliberately. At 4Ghz, sure the Intel chips draws substantially less power than when it is running at 4.8 to 5+ Ghz, but soundly beaten by AMD if comparing clock for clock at both single and multicore performance. That's why I think its better to agree to disagree with people who choose to stick to certain brands blindly.

Objectively, I don't think Intel's Comet Lake is all bad. After all, it is the fastest gaming processor based on conclusions from multiple reviewing sites (giving credit where credit is due). What I feel though is Intel's strategy is no different from doping by advertising a low TDP, but in the background drawing over 2x the amount. Sure they did clarify with tech savvy people that they have a PL2 that draws significantly higher power to give you the "up to" boost speed, but how many people out there are actually aware about this secondary power requirement to get them to the performance level that is advertised? While AMD used to draw the same amount of power with their Bulldozer chips, i.e. >200W, I feel at least they are honest about it by stating it on their TDP.

 

[londiste]

At the same time, it is not clear that Current Lake always loses vs Zen2. The opposite may sometimes be true - there are things like gaming where the results differ from Cinebench or productivity benchmarks.

4GHz CPU Battle: Ryzen 3900X vs. 3700X vs. Core i9-9900K

Expanding upon all the testing we performed in our day-one 3rd-gen Ryzen coverage, today we'll be running a clock-for-clock comparison benchmark. IPC can be a good indicator...

www.techspot.com

Intel Core i9-10900K och Core i5-10600K "Comet Lake-S" - Test - Test: Vid samma klockfrekvens

Det blir femte gången gillt för arkitekturen Skylake när Intel äntrar testlabbet med tionde generatonens Core-processorer i familjen Comet Lake-S.

www.sweclockers.com

Unfortunately, I don't think I have seen fixed frequency articles with nice comparable power measurements though. There are a couple 10400F videos that point out it seems to use less power when gaming compared to 3600.

 

[tabascosauz]

Unfortunately, I don't think I have seen fixed frequency articles with nice comparable power measurements though. There are a couple 10400F videos that point out it seems to use less power when gaming compared to 3600.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 10400 and 10400F turn out to be efficient. They run in the 14nm process' sweet spot, just like Zen 2 at the 3.6-4GHz mark on N7.

Also, if Ian at AT is to be believed (and it didn't sound like speculation), the locked i5 parts are using true fully enabled 6-core dies, unlike the 10600K with its gimped and nearly half-disabled 10-core die.

Really goes to show how much of a stopgap Comet Lake-S is turning out to be. The entire lineup is focused around the 10900K and nothing else. No pulling production away from mobile by keeping top binned 6-core and 8-core dies from Coffee Lake for proper unlocked i5s and i7s. Just take the 10900K and disable more cores as you go down the product stack. The fact that the ringbus is stretched to its absolute limit shows, and is a disadvantage, however small, that the i5 and i7s are dragged into.

 

[londiste]

Also, if Ian at AT is to be believed (and it didn't sound like speculation), the locked i5 parts are using true fully enabled 6-core dies, unlike the 10600K with its gimped and nearly half-disabled 10-core die.

Locked i5 parts in 9000 series were 6-core dies while 9600K was a cut-down 8-core. AT article did not note if it was specifically asked about but it is a pretty sure educated guess anyway. The difference is not just the disabled cores. Non-K CPUs have thermal paste, not solder, and we do not know if they have the thinner die that Intel has been using to market 10-series K models.

We will get confirmations when people start delidding the 10-series CPUs. We know they will whether it makes sense or not
Der8auer has done 10900K, I can't seem to find other models with a search right now.

Intel i9-10900K Delidding - Temperatures and Die-Analysis. Details vs. 8700K and 9900K

I do think that idea of disabled-skipped cores causing the latency hops is a bit strange. Even if that is the case, the increases in latency are minor and should not matter in the larger scale of things. AT article does say Intel has done ringbuses for up to 12 cores and they have been OK. Maybe not great but OK.

 

[efikkan]

Comet Lake-S features 6-core and 10-core dies, but which dies are used for 6-core CPUs might even vary depending on yields etc. At least Nvidia does this with GPUs. It shouldn't matter to anybody but hardcore overclockers though.

As for the ringbus, in most cases there are no signs of issues with it. Gaming works just as fine from 4 to 10 cores, and most heavy multithreaded workloads are throttling long before this becomes an issue, well except perhaps for an edge case or two. There might be some point where a mesh makes more sense, but the choice of ringbus is probably due to the placement of the cores on the die more than anything. I think many are way too narrowly focused on the ringbus these days.

 

[Bruno Vieira]

Current chips, including all 7nm are already obsolete, 5nm has entered production, 1-2 years to appear in GPU,CPU.
and even 3nm very very soon. I mean it is just such a letdown to buy anything using DDR4 right now.

Just such a waste buying anything on 7,14nm. All the same, old beta testing devices.

The initial performance of Willow doesn't look promising. the physics score 3dmark is lower than 10400F.
I expected ground breaking performance, +40% or something.

CPU performance is very hard to move like GPU does, the answer is simply x86 is too old + people dont want to re-write/compile new code. ARM is moving very fast because is a better iSA as well

 

[londiste]

CPU performance is very hard to move like GPU does, the answer is simply x86 is too old + people dont want to re-write/compile new code. ARM is moving very fast because is a better iSA as well

ARM is moving where?
Bigger dies, more caches, more cores, wider cores, more complex extensions. ARM is going down the path x86 has already taken.
What exactly happens when it catches up is a good question, I guess we will see once they get there.

 

[efikkan]

CPU performance is very hard to move like GPU does, the answer is simply x86 is too old + people dont want to re-write/compile new code. ARM is moving very fast because is a better iSA as well

This old misconception again…
The short story is, recompiling for ARM isn't hard, but ARM needs to become CISC to be competitive. All x86 microarchitectures since the 90s have solved the "legacy problem" by using micro-operations. x86 will evolve (or be replaced by something) in the direction of more superscalar scaling and SIMD. At some point we will probably get new ISA features which helps facilitate superscalar scaling and resource dependencies, useful contextual information which are lost in the compilation process.

 

[Bruno Vieira]

ARM is moving where?
Bigger dies, more caches, more cores, wider cores, more complex extensions. ARM is going down the path x86 has already taken.
What exactly happens when it catches up is a good question, I guess we will see once they get there.

Year, but they have 30-40% ipc gains per year, year after year.

 

[bug]

Year, but they have 30-40% ipc gains per year, year after year.

I would very much like to see a source for that.
Because I can source you this, no problem: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14384/arm-announces-cortexa77-cpu-ip