Blogs Why Intel needs a six-core mainstream CPU

Leaks are now appearing of Intel i9 CPUs, in the 6-12 core range.

http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/105679-intel-said-readying-core-i9-cpus-6-8-10-12-cores/

 

They aren't mainstream though, that's Intel's successor to X99 and will be priced accordingly (aka, out of reach for most people).

But as I said in the other i9 news thread, it's all gonna get very confusing with Z370/Coffelake bringing an actual mainstream 6c/12t chip... Gonna be interesting to see how they approach it really, it's no secret Ryzen has forced Intel's hand here. With the inevitable performance crossover between high end Z370 and entry level X299 parts, along with AMD no doubt undercutting them in price-per-core metrics across the entire range, Intel are going to have to bite a few bullets I reckon.

 

After - what 7(?) - years I am finally actually starting to think that my Sandy Bridge 2500K is not still okay...! The one before that was also a very OC'd E8500 which was chosen over 4C and it was also a beast. Feel that intel have definitely missed a trick here letting AMD beat them to the punch, but perhaps they did get a bit too complacent.

I've been using intel/nV for a very long time now but I think finally I can switch to AMD for the next build.

 

Well I thought the incoming 6c 12t Coffee Lakes were the answer to this article.

..of course this being Intel, they'll still try and charge a ridiculous price for them relative to the Ryzen parts, probably filling the 7700K price slot of £320-350.

There's no doubt that they'll clock higher and have a superior IPC to the Ryzen 1600, so I guess those that are willing to pay the price premium for the extra performance that the Intel cores have, will do so.

Everyone else can go with Ryzen.

 

Whilst 6c/12t at the top end [of the consumer line] would be great... really wish intel would move away from 2c at the bottom end...

 

This is a good point, actually. The lowest Ryzen 3 parts will still be quad cores, but if Intel continue to sell bucket loads of cheap Pentium/Celeron systems to schools and offices, developers will continue to optimise to the lowest denominator... Which will render all these tasty HEDT chips mostly redundant for all but the 5% of the 5% that can afford them.

 

If this is really the start of things to come then Intel will need far more than a 6c 12t chip. I don't want people wanting a 6c 12t chip tbh. That just means we are giving Intel the flag to go ahead and keep us stuck for years and years like they have already. There is an all out core war coming (Starship and X299 etc) well if AMD can keep the price of the 10 core Starship down to affordable levels Intel are going to have to do a lot better than 6 cores.

I've been a bit of a core whore since Piledriver. Multi tasking, for example, was always very good on the PD chips. Kinda like I7 920 IPC w/o HT but when it was threading it was very nice indeed.

I've since moved on to higher cored Intel chips and tbh? if this core war kicks off and both teams start getting more cores involved and more importantly added by devs then what I have should be more than good enough going into the future (as it is now really).

Sure, if I dropped core count and went with higher IPC and clocks I am sure I could get more performance but I suppose I am at that bit where I just want enough and that's good for me.

 

Even if Intel existed in isolation and Ryzen wasn't far better value per core there would be a problem with 6 core chips from Intel:

Currently you pay around £320 for a 7700k and around £420 for a 6800k (which will get a like for like replacement soon).

Logic would dictate that that gap of ~£100 will be filled by the quadcore(s) on their new HEDT platform.

So where would a 6 core chip on the mainstream platform fit in?
Because if it costs anywhere near the 6800k (or its replacement) then who would buy it?

 

Somebody who would not buy Ryzen no matter how fantastic or cheap it is?

There were plenty of them in the past. Intel's P4/Netburst was fail and AMD were making chips for half of the price that were faster yet Intel managed to get through it.

I watched a video recently about ATI and how they continued to lose money even when they had the 5000 series GPUs. People were still buying GTX 260s, even though they were crap compared to AMD.

I think AMD getting in with Intel could well prove to be their best move ever really.

 

Even if Ryzen didn't exist it would still be a problem.

If the price of the 6 core chip on the mainstream platform ends up near the 6 core on the high end platform then who would choose the inferior platform?

 

Another 2500k owner, been waiting for intel to produce something for years because basically there is little point in upgrading - same number of cores, IPC boost isn't that great.

You look at how gpu's have changed since sandy bridge was released, and then look at cpu's...Intel have practically done nothing in comparison. For such a big rich company they don't seem to get much done.

Anyway Rizen has put the pressure on Intel at last - and Rizen's limited IPC gives Intel a chance. If they can deliver 6 cores and more IPC at sensible prices then they have a winner.

 

I'll be sticking with fewer, faster cores until I have some actual workloads that can benefit from more slower cores. I can't remember the last time I transcoded a video (even cheap media-player devices happily ingest High Profile h.264 in MKV nowadays, many can even do raw BD .ts streams without even needing to remux), any rendering I do is on the GPU anyway (raster or otherwise), and I've yet to bench any perceptible impact on gaming with a few hundred Firefox & Chrome tabs open vs. the game on its own.

At the moment, I'd have to pay a whole lot more (to either vendor) just to approach performance parity with a 6/8 core part. And until Amdahl's Law stops applying (and Gustafson's law applies to massive HPC workloads only) I'm not expecting adding more cores to provide a practical boost to everyday tasks anytime soon.

 

Thanks for making me feel old

 

16 Cores from AMD this Summer official now rather than just open secret:

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/am...essors-16-cores-and-32-threads-confirmed.html

 

i'm still using my Q9650 and its nice to see all 4 cores being used

 

This...cause it accounts for most situations except benchmarks