I don't participate here much anymore for
reasons, but I figured I'd drop a few tidbits of info:
NOTE: before I start, for those of you that are new here, I don't own stock in Intel. I don't have a single Intel CPU or motherboard in my house, etc. In other words, I'm not a fanboy.
- Many people think 10nm has yield issues. They have capacity issues. Also, a corporation like Intel does NOT divert from their internal roadmaps. Shoot, you'll find that AMD doesn't either. These products have a LONG lifecycle. It takes years to bring them from the concept stage to production stage. The bottom line is that even if Intel had 10nm ready for the desktop, Rocket Lake is still going out the door.
- Intel is positioning itself to be extremely competitive with AMD. AMD is paying almost no attention to client based ML (machine learning) (as far as we know, and if they are, they haven't leaked a thing). Intel is rolling out Xe alongside Rocket Lake, Tiger Lake, and future generations. This is an early attempt at bringing intelligent ML to mainstream platforms. Apple has also done this with the M1 (and other chips) with their "neural engine". It baffles me why AMD is letting themselves be blindsided by this. Xe graphics were never about gaming, they were always about getting stuff done. Machine learning. Yes, HPG is launching later this year, but once again: Intel users will have Xe graphics onboard to handle things like AI upscaling, etc. What will AMD have? It remains to be seen if they will stumble or if they can adapt. The lack of leaks in this regard are pretty scary. They don't even have a decent video encoder or decoder right now...
- Rocket lake was originally planned for March. Off the top of my head I believe it was March 17th (but I'd have to dig for the exact date and quite frankly I don't care). It was never slated for January. That leak was fake. There is an IPC increase, and yes, it will be Zen 3 chips *some of the time*. In non gaming tasks (or in gaming tasks that properly utilize cores) Zen 3 will still come out on top. The leaks involving the 5900X weren't necessarily fake or biased, but there are caveats that we'll all find out later on.
One thing I did NOT know, but rather, I learned: The decrease in core count wasn't due to heat or power, it was due to size. The drop in core count was to keep margins consistent. Nothing more. I was under the assumption that it was all about both heat and power. (EDIT: point of clarification: Intel would have pushed chips with higher power consumption or worse thermal performance out the door regardless. It was all about the chip size.)
Anyway, happy commenting. I'm going back into my hole for another 6 months or so (At least. Those of you that know me know where to find me). Happy new year to all!