AMD THREADRIPPER VS INTEL SKYLAKE X

[drunkenmaster]

News today that, as could have been seen by anyone seeing the lack of details on the 18/16/14 core Skylake-X, they aren't coming till at least next year and that will be the 18 core with the 16/14 core to follow some time behind that. So they've announced it as if they were launching soon purely to try and crap on Threadripper launch. They've panicked, attached the next tier Xeon info to the more real launch of info for the 12 core and lower chips. Kabylake-x, I still can't explain, it's so bad it's painful.

 

[Rroff]

I don't think Intel are panicking - more deludedly thinking people will still buy overpriced tat when there are other options.

 

[stewski]

This is why one Vendor (Intel) becoming too dominant is bad for consumers. AMD have blind-sided Intel with Threadripper, they know its MORE than just competitive with SkyLake-X, so Intel to protect their massive margins on their ridiculously priced CPU's are stripping out and locking down features on the lower core count SkyLake-X to force you to buy the higher core count ones to get all of the enthusiast features.

This is calculated corporate BS that they know they can get away with because of their massive mind-share, its high time Intel dominance was quashed.

There is a good reason AMD have focused their push in High End Consumer and Pro segments.
Mindshare/Brand loyalty isnt worth (here) anything like what it is elsewhere, if they (intel) fail to make a realistic response AMD will create a beach head in a profitable segment fast, given time AMD will push into the larger segments.

Intel are making a massive mistake if they underestimate that, in any case I'll just buy bang for buck like everyone else in the Highend consumer/pro segment!

 

[Panos]

I love the 64 PCI-E lanes on offer by AMD. If all goes well I will be upgrading to x399 and ideally drop in a new CPU if AMD sticks with this socket. I wonder how this will impact the used market - Ryzen/x99 after the release - Good times ahead for everyone I guess. AMD have moved us on from the curse of the Quads.


any news on pricing?

Yep. 64 pci-e lanes of which 48 are dedicated to GPUs.
Personally not going to need more than 1 GPU but the sheer core count in addition to what seems lower cost, and ability to take all the upcoming Zen+ and Zen++ without limitations, is perfect platform for me. (need it for Unity 5)

 

[humbug]

I don't think Intel are panicking - more deludedly thinking people will still buy overpriced tat when there are other options.

Intel are not deluded.

If AMD keep this level of competition up eventually more and more pepole will see the light and move away from Intel in significantly enough numbers to make Intel hyperventilate, your right, its not a panic, but, they know for as long as they can match AMD on performance 9 out 10 will still buy Intel, the problem is AMD are knocking out 16 core CPU's and Intel's pre-planed 12 is nothing like enough to compete with that so they threw in an <18 core CPU, but, while AMD are getting 80% yields on their 16 core parts Intel might only get 10% yields on their 18 core parts, the reason is with Infinity Fabric AMD can use lots of very small very high yield CPU'lets on a PCB to make up the core count, Intel have no such thing, they still rely on the wafer yields they would get for huge dies, at 14 core + for Intel that is going to be very low what they will get per wafer is going to be low and expensive, that in turn will eat into their 'usually' very high margins, they can't charge what they would like for 18 core CPU's because AMD can charge 4x less than that $3000 they would like, and will.
So at $2000 they need more people to buy those 18 core CPU rather than the much lower priced 14 core salvage CPU's because if they don't the margins will be even lower, so they cut out and lock features out of the lower CPU's to force you to by the 18 core CPU if you 'for example' actually want enough PCIe 3 lanes to make good use of CPU's with that much power.... because you know what, AMD are not doing 44 for the highest core count and then reduce them as you go down in core count and price, no, with Threadripper you get 64 PCIe 3 lanes with any CPU no matter what the core count, that among many such things has ####ed on Intel's exploitative business model, what a shame....

But its ok, PCPer would say (Have said) you don't need more PCIe lanes than Intel offer, AMD are just being stupid, AMD being clowns again.

PCPer are clowns lead by multi-billion $ clowns.

 

[Rroff]

One of the reasons I bought the 4820K over other options was for the 40 PCI-e lanes while other options were 16-28 :s

Intel are not deluded.

Maybe not entirely deluded but I think it is more that way than panic.

 

[humbug]

Intel's problem is this:

AMD in their quest to save money and make high performance products at a cost level they and consumers can far more easily afford have come up with a brilliant way to engineer out the problem of die per wafer yields, Infinity Fabric, its incredibly innovative, ingenious, its put Intel on the back foot because AMD can make CPU's 'within reason' with as many Cores as they like at a much lower cost than Intel.

Not for the first time Intel have underestimated AMD's innovation and resourcefulness.

When you are the underdog you are forced to think outside the box, Intel have never been the underdog, and it shows with their high cost incrementalism.

PS: just wait for this technology to hit their GPU's.

 

[faceman123]

News today that, as could have been seen by anyone seeing the lack of details on the 18/16/14 core Skylake-X, they aren't coming till at least next year and that will be the 18 core with the 16/14 core to follow some time behind that. So they've announced it as if they were launching soon purely to try and crap on Threadripper launch. They've panicked, attached the next tier Xeon info to the more real launch of info for the 12 core and lower chips. Kabylake-x, I still can't explain, it's so bad it's painful.

if this is true then.....

 

[Brutos]

I have to give AMD a pat on the back for their efforts and I will certainly upgrade to X399 as i run tons on VM on my 4930K which is ok but i could do with a lot more performance.

 

[beany_bot]

If Skylake was a new architecture over broadwell/Haswell, how come it's performance was really about the same?

 

[DragonQ]

If Skylake was a new architecture over broadwell/Haswell, how come it's performance was really about the same?

Ask Intel. Maybe they've approaching the limit of the underlying design and hoped to squeeze it out for another 3 years by bumping clock speeds, whilst working on something more radical for Icelake. AMD's resurgence has clearly made them panic a bit with the bringing forward of Coffee Lake and the huge extension of X299 to 18c/36t chips (although they won't be ready until maybe next year because they never intended to release them at all).

Also note that despite Ivy Bridge and Broadwell both offering minor IPC gains, Kaby Lake did not. Not much of an "optimization" step really; you'd have thought the "process" (node shrink) step would be the one not to feature any real improvements other than power efficiency and increased IGP performance.

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

Wonder if Icelake chips will be compatible with x299? Guessing not, however i am pretty adamant that i likely won't swap out my x99 stuff for Skylake-x, a whole change for small differences. Nope, i am happy to wait until Icelake at this point. Hopefully AMD will make Intel push that new architecture out sooner as well.

 

[Freddie1980]

That's some cute marketing by AMD to call their platform x399 reminds of when they jumped on board the Windows XP bandwagon and gave their chips the XP mokier in the early to mid 2000's.

 

[El_MUERkO]

I'll await the Threadripper reviews, but it's likely my next upgrade from my 4960X

 

[Freddie1980]

AMD are certainly giving the CPU market a good shake up with this release, if nothing else it goes to show just what competition can provide and how stagnant things can get with just one company ruling the roost.

With more and more cores now being accessible to more and more users we now start to software coders writing applications that can take advantage all the extra processing power.

 

[akarypid]

Oligatory...

 

[humbug]

Is it time to switch to AMD? Has Intel lost its mind?

 

[Orcvader]

If Skylake was a new architecture over broadwell/Haswell, how come it's performance was really about the same?

In terms of development, Intel seems more focused on power efficiency and IGP performance instead of CPU performance. Sure there's been some IPC/clock speed improvements, but it's quite small and more due to the result of Intel optimising the power usage and process.

I suspect it may be too late for Icelake to introduce big CPU performance gains on a single core, but it should allow them to match the core count. Zen+ may close the gap because of this, so whatever is after Icelake and Zen+ should hopefully be the real performance wars.

 

[humbug]

In terms of development, Intel seems more focused on power efficiency and IGP performance instead of CPU performance. Sure there's been some IPC/clock speed improvements, but it's quite small and more due to the result of Intel optimising the power usage and process.

I suspect it may be too late for Icelake to introduce big CPU performance gains on a single core, but it should allow them to match the core count. Zen+ may close the gap because of this, so whatever is after Icelake and Zen+ should hopefully be the real performance wars.

So why are Intel's CPU's becoming less power efficient? Kaylake is just Skylake with a clock bump and higher TDP, 4 core Skylake-X are again even higher TDP. from 91 watts to 111 Watts.

They are not doing a good job of being efficient, the AMD chip here is an 8 core, the Intel one a 4 core.

 

[Orcvader]

One big point of KBL over SL was 14nm+, and judging from this 14nm+ uses taller fins and wider gate pitch which allows less defects. However, this also means higher voltages is required to hit the higher speeds, so I guess this could be the reason for KBL using more power when on heavy load.

Really in terms of power efficiency I mean from an overall use, including sleep and idle, not just when running a game. Intel knows most users will have light usage so they focused on the CPUs clocking down faster and trying to do that efficiently. There's also the deeper sleep states, which probably helps with laptops more than desktops. So for the gamer and other users with CPU heavy tasks... yeah, power efficiency does seem to be going backwards.