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Intel's Massive 18-core Core i9 Chip Starts a Bloody Battle For Enthusiast PCs (pcworld.com) 324

Posted by msmash from the need-for-speed dept.
With Core i9, the Intel vs. AMD battle rages anew. Announced Tuesday at Computex in Taipei, Intel's answer to AMD's 16-core, 32-thread Threadripper is an 18-core, 36-thread monster microprocessor of its own, tailor-made for elite PC enthusiasts. From a report: The Core i9 Extreme Edition i9-7980XE, what Intel calls the first teraflop desktop PC processor ever, will be priced at (gulp!) $1,999 when it ships later this year. In a slightly lower tier will be the meat of the Core i9 family: Core i9 X-series chips in 16-core, 14-core, 12-core, and 10-core versions, with prices climbing from $999 to $1,699. All of these new Skylake-based parts will offer improvements over their older Broadwell-E counterparts: 15 percent faster in single-threaded apps and 10 percent faster in multithreaded tasks, Intel says. If these Core i9 X-series chips -- code-named "Basin Falls" -- are too rich for your blood, Intel also introduced three new Core i7 X-series chips, priced from $339 to $599, and a $242 quad-core Core i5. All of the new chips are due "in the coming weeks," Intel said. Most of the Core i9 chips will incorporate what Intel calls an updated Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, a feature where the chip identifies not just one, but two cores as the "best" cores, and makes them available to be dynamically overclocked to higher speeds when needed. Detailed story at AnandTech and HotHardware.
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Intel's Massive 18-core Core i9 Chip Starts a Bloody Battle For Enthusiast PCs More

Intel's Massive 18-core Core i9 Chip Starts a Bloody Battle For Enthusiast PCs

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  • Call me... (Score:3)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @09:46AM (#54510673)
    When the new processors are available in the $50 to $100 range.

    • Re:Call me... (Score:5, Informative)

      by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @09:54AM (#54510725)

      Here's a list of quad-core-or-better desktop processors priced under USD$100 [newegg.com]. Notice how it's all AMD because Intel only has dual-core processors in that price range.

      • Notice how it's all AMD because Intel only has dual-core processors in that price range.

        I already own an AMD eight-core processor (8300 @ $99). Neither AMD nor Intel have new processors in this price range yet.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        AMD's Threadripper is likely to be much more attractive I think. Ryzen seems to have the edge at the moment, especially in efficiency terms. How hot are these Intel chips going to run? Plus AMD's parts will be much, much cheaper.

        AMD really are on a roll at the moment. At the low end they have the cheapest CPUs with the best built-in GPUs, in the workstation/enthusiast range they have the best price/performance ratio and can compete with the best Intel has to offer, and in the discrete GPU market they are ve

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )

          AMD's Threadripper is likely to be much more attractive I think. Ryzen seems to have the edge at the moment, especially in efficiency terms. How hot are these Intel chips going to run? Plus AMD's parts will be much, much cheaper.

          I doubt it, Intel saw where Ryzen was going after the first launch and extrapolated, they went from 10 to 18 cores on the high end. It's $500 for the 1800x with 8 cores, bigger chips = lower yields so double+ for 16 cores that'll still have two less cores, probably slightly lower max clock and IPC than Intel too. I'm guessing threadripper will be a $1200 chip that'll compete with Intel's $1400/1700 chips. They won't let AMD get another PR win like the first Ryzen launch.

          • AMD's Threadripper is likely to be much more attractive I think. Ryzen seems to have the edge at the moment, especially in efficiency terms. How hot are these Intel chips going to run? Plus AMD's parts will be much, much cheaper.

            I doubt it, Intel saw where Ryzen was going after the first launch and extrapolated, they went from 10 to 18 cores on the high end. It's $500 for the 1800x with 8 cores, bigger chips = lower yields so double+ for 16 cores that'll still have two less cores, probably slightly lower max clock and IPC than Intel too. I'm guessing threadripper will be a $1200 chip that'll compete with Intel's $1400/1700 chips. They won't let AMD get another PR win like the first Ryzen launch.

            You haven't been paying attention, have you?

            Ryzen is designed in "CCX" modules that are linked together to allow for better scaling. A larger die size doesn't bring about yield problems to the same degree as it does in traditional designs. Threadripper is also huge to allow for cooling. Look at this surface area: https://i.redd.it/fb8obad77e0z... [i.redd.it]

            Yes, clock speeds will go down as core count goes up. Yes, Intel will still have higher IPC, and possibly even higher clocks.
            No, Intel will not win on performa

      • Notice how the best performing processor in that list was released in 2013?

      • https://www.cpubenchmark.net/c... [cpubenchmark.net]

        A chart comparing price vs performance. Note that it's mostly AMD on the "good" side of the graph.

    • What do you think will happen to the i7s now that i9s hit the market?

      Every time a new processor generation hit the market, the former generations got cheaper. Who cares about i9s, cheap i5s is what I want. Hell, even i7s might become a financially interesting option.

      • Every time a new processor generation hit the market, the former generations got cheaper.

        The tinkle down on the Intel side is a bit slower than the AMD side. As someone else pointed out, Intel only has dual-cores at my price point (some do have hyper threading for four threads).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      I put a reminder in my calendar for 2024

  • Does the i9 come with a power station? (Score:5, Funny)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @09:47AM (#54510681)
    Or do I have to pay a ransom to the electric company in order to get the darn thing to boot? :)

  • i9 (Score:2)

    by aglider ( 2435074 )
    Finally!

  • In a few months, Star Citizen will require one of these overpriced monster!

  • To bad the lowend cpu on that socket are cut down (Score:5, Informative)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @09:52AM (#54510711)

    To bad the lowed cpu on that socket are cut down big time. Like to 2 channels and 16 PCI-E lanes with quad core cpu and HT on a board with quad channel ram and 44 pci-e. For a lower price you can get an high end cpu for the socket on broad build for 16 pci-e and dual channel ram.

    Mid range is 22 pci-e lanes.

    On amd the lower end socket has 20 pci-e + USB 3.1 on die.

    All of these processors are said to support 44 PCIe lanes for the mid range socket. The higher range socket is 128 pci-e lanes with 1 or 2 cpus.

    • And me without modpoints...

      That's exactly what I was going to ask. Screw cores, what periphery will it support? And, as you point out, more importantly, what will the castrated versions be like?

      Time and again we've found that it's actually better to buy a once-been flagship of an older generation rather than one of the cut-back variants of the latest and greatest.

  • Responses from the 90’s (Score:3)

    by plague911 ( 1292006 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @09:54AM (#54510719)

    OMG Intel's extreme chips are expensive they said

    OMG who needs those speeds they said

    OMG AMD is a better bang for the buck they said

    Honestly this made me happy/nostalgic but slightly sad that no one ever says anything new. Hell this response could have been canned from the same time period

    • I think the thing to buy swung back and forth between AMD and Intel a few times since then though.

  • $1000 min cost for 44 pci-e lanes vs $300-$350 in past.

    Amd will smoke Intel there.

    Now 16 is ok for video 1 card or 2 mid range cards. But to stack storage / network / usb / sound / etc all over the DMI bus??

    With pci-e storage and fast USB more pci-e is really needed Even more so with 2.5G / 5G / 10G networking.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      For storage/network/usb/sound, going over the DMI to the chipset, which itself offers PCIe lanes is more than sufficient for most imaginable scenarios.

      Video card and certain supercomputer fabrics have real benefit going straight to the processor PCIe controller, the latter having zero relevance for any home computing use.

      So in the home scenario, if you *really* think you want more than one graphics card (there's a lot of downsides for multi-gpu gaming, so you probably don't), there's not much reason to frea

      • AND all the AMD processors support ECC RAM. You need to go Xenon to get ECC from Intel.I don't think X299 changes that.

        • You will buy ECC RAM for your workstation once.

          When you are 'done' with that PC, you will go into bios and check the ECC fix log, then never waste the money again.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bored ( 40072 )

            Then two years in with the new one, you will run a RAM test and discover that all the random crashes/garbage you see with your XMP profile memory was caused by it being just a tiny bit out of spec.

            ECC ram tends to be the most conservative stuff out there. Just because you don't see any errors with your ECC setup doesn't mean your non ECC setup doesn't have any errors.

            I've seen enough machines with one or two soft ECC errors per year to be wary of machines without.

      • DMI is only pci-e x4 and when you have storage cards that use X4 on there own. you have little left for usb / 2th storage card / sound / network etc.

        AMD desktop cups added USB 3.1 and 4 more for storage to the cpu die.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          Of course, particularly in a home setup, what is the likelihood that you'll need more than 32 Gbit of throughput at any given moment. An H270 chipset would hive you 24 lanes to install. Sure you don't have the bandwidth to drive them all at once and there is a latency penalty to pay, but for devices like USB/storage/network/etc, it's not going to be a big deal.

  • I find it strange that these are targeted towards gamers.

    Most games still only seem to support one thread (or at most two or three, if you're lucky), so that many cores is a disadvantage because your per-core speed is usually lower.

    • Some of this is build-it-and-they-will-come. Why would a studio go to the effort to architect their game for 6+ cores if that is 1% of your customer base? It likely makes the most sense to make sure your game is usable on 2 cores, and scaleable to 4 to satisfy the vast majority of your paying customers. But if 6-8 cores become the norm, you would be a fool not to make use of that capability if you can do so.

      So while I agree that existing games will not see any improvement, I can see patches and new title

    • Most games still only seem to support one thread

      2007 called and wants it argument back.

  • It's actually a 21-core processor, but three of them are disabled.

  • Way to price yourselves out of the market (Score:3)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @10:23AM (#54510979)

    CPUs @ $999 - $1,999 = DOA, way too expensive.

    Even for enthusiasts... Enough people are just not this stupid. For same money you can buy another NVidia Titan X, more SSDs or RAM and have something that actually stands to provide a somewhat noticeable improvement. Cost way out of line with benefit.

  • 18 cores? Please. It has already established that not even eight cores buy you a whole lot over decent four core CPU, such as the desktop Core i5. But 18 cores? please. Call me when you figure out the Amdahl's law.

  • Why? Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @11:00AM (#54511325)
    Why because I have a job and a extra few grand laying around, that's why.

    Literally every time there has been any kind of advancement people have just moaned about how useless or unneeded the new tech was.

    People were bitching about games being monochrome saying that 16 color monitors were pointless back in the day.

    16 core CPUs just means anything less will eventually become the bargain basement processors. Once the average machine is an 8 core CPU, software companies will figure out how to take advantage of them, but they are most certainly not going to bother until market share large enough.

    I'm looking forward to the next upgrade. This machine is getting very long in the tooth. I'm glad to see the hardware companies have not been resting on their ass so that I have goodies to pick out when it comes time to do so.

  • Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0

    Not only does it have Turbo Boost Max Technology, but it has the third version of it! Some marketing dickhead must have had one hell of an orgasm when that name got approved. Sounds way too similar to "Blast Processing" [segaretro.org] for me.

  • What's the point? (Score:3)

    by TheOuterLinux ( 4778741 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @12:59PM (#54512245) Homepage
    Micro$oft and Google aren't going to ever have anything like this out of the box for their desktop environments, which means this only benefits the other end of the cloud computing nazis. They'd much rather you buy a cloud computing dependent tablet and call it a laptop. Affordable RAM has only doubled in the last ten years. Anyone else find that weird? Yay! Multiple cores! Ok, but what's the point if you either can't upgrade them or each core is 2GB or lower of RAM, making full advantage expensive anyway? This tech is for future servers because Micro$oft is murdering the desktop. Intel hardly does anything anymore without checking with them first. Meanwhile Apple, one of the very few proprietary companies with a desktop I can comfortably fall asleep connected to the Internet with, is still charging an arm and a leg for i5 computers. Good for for you Intel, but will we actually see this as a desktop standard between now and ten years? I'm a Linux user; it makes more sense to me to make what you have already more affordable and a standard rather than create another want for enthusiasts to make it possible for the rest of us. Even to this day, I've barely grazed 3 GB of RAM, and that was me trying to see what would happen if I opened Firefox, LivreOffice, Kodi, GIMP, and PCSXR (Bushido Blade ;) ) at the same time. Not a whole lot; it all worked just fine. That was my nine year old, 32-bit MacBook running OpenSUSE 13.2 with 4.10 kernel, which just proves to me that people get geeky but don't have the brains to back most of their reasons why anymore. The smart have become suckers like everyone else.

  • I can't wait... (Score:3)

    by DidgetMaster ( 2739009 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2017 @02:40PM (#54513043) Homepage
    ...for ThreadRipper and i9 products to hit the market. I am building a new multi-threaded data management system that gets a lot faster as you add cores/threads so I want to benchmark it against the best CPUs from both Intel and AMD. It is not simply a system where you can run a bunch of different queries simultaneously (every server does that), but one that can also break a single query into pieces and run them in parallel. For the database functionality (just a small part of the system), if you have a query that says "SELECT name, address, zipcode FROM table WHERE name ILIKE '%Smith'" and the table has 50 million rows in it, it will run about 50% faster on a hex core than a quad core CPU with the same clock speed. Not every query can be broken into 36 pieces that are independent of each other so you will not see ever-increasing performance as you approach 36 threads, but most queries against big data will utilize as much horsepower as the hardware can throw at you.

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