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Intel Releases Final Core i9 Specs and Release Dates -- And Threadripper Is Faster (Sometimes) (pcworld.com)
On Monday, Intel took the wraps of final details of its Core i9 microprocessors. From a report: Remember that Intel's Core X-series family (also called the Core i9) was announced with several key omissions: namely the clock speeds of the 12-core Core i9-7920X and above, as well as the thermal design power, or TDP. On Monday, Intel filled those in. The 12-core Core i9-7920X launches Aug. 28 while the 14-, 16-, and 18-core Core i9 chips ship on Sept. 25. Perhaps most important, though, is that we now know how fast Intel's Core i9s will run. When Intel inadvertently revealed that its 12-core Core i9-7920X was 2.9-GHz -- slower than the comparable AMD Threadripper -- a subset of the internet had a small freakout. We now know that that will be true for the remaining Core i9s as well, but with a big caveat. Here are the remaining speeds and feeds for the high-end Core i9 chips:
Core i9-7980XE (18 cores, 36 threads): 2.6GHz; Boost, 4.2GHz to 4.4 GHz.
Core i9-7960X (16 cores, 32 threads): 2.8GHz; Boost, 4.2GHz to 4.4 GHz.
Core i9-7940X 14 cores, 28 threads: 3.1GHz; Boost: 4.3GHz to 4.4GHz.
Core i9-7920X (12 cores, 24 threads): 2.9-GHz; Boost: 4.3-GHz to 4.4GHz.
Note that the boost speeds refer to both Intel's Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 and 3.0. [...] Essentially, both Intel and AMD can claim the title of fastest processor. Threadripper's base clock speeds are faster, but Intel's boost speeds climb higher than Threadripper can. It's also important to note that while Threadripper consumes 180 watts, even the fastest Core i9 chips Intel has announced have a lower TDP of 165 watts.
Core i9-7980XE (18 cores, 36 threads): 2.6GHz; Boost, 4.2GHz to 4.4 GHz.
Core i9-7960X (16 cores, 32 threads): 2.8GHz; Boost, 4.2GHz to 4.4 GHz.
Core i9-7940X 14 cores, 28 threads: 3.1GHz; Boost: 4.3GHz to 4.4GHz.
Core i9-7920X (12 cores, 24 threads): 2.9-GHz; Boost: 4.3-GHz to 4.4GHz.
Note that the boost speeds refer to both Intel's Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 and 3.0. [...] Essentially, both Intel and AMD can claim the title of fastest processor. Threadripper's base clock speeds are faster, but Intel's boost speeds climb higher than Threadripper can. It's also important to note that while Threadripper consumes 180 watts, even the fastest Core i9 chips Intel has announced have a lower TDP of 165 watts.
... on slashdot no less. How about some real workload comparisons?
That market segmentation is like a parasite to their thinking. They can't do anything without chopping the product line into as small as bites as they're able.
"It's also important to note that while Threadripper consumes 180 watts, even the fastest Core i9 chips Intel has announced have a lower TDP of 165 watts."
The actual power draw of even the 10-core i9 is >200W. Intel are deceiving us yet again.
Depends on longevity in the market.
Back in the Netburst days, you marvelled at how Intel did so poorly despite 'looking' like it should be faster.
From Conroe to about Bulldozer, things were about the same.
The bulldozer screwed up AMD in the same way that Netburst screwed up Intel for a while. Meanwhile Intel progressed well.
Now with Zen, at least on desktop it's back to mostly neck and neck. In high end server, it's a mixed bag, Epyc having more memory channels means better capacity, but individual memory performance is equal to their desktop product. This is fine for a lot of applications (e.g. VDI, similar virtualization) and gets more aggregate performance and capacity, though single thread/process memory throughput takes a hit.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Threadripper Is half the cost with more pci-e lanes.
On Intel it's about $1000 min to get 48 pci-e lanes. AMD $550 for there 64 pci-e lane one.
For the same reason that carriers don't upgrade infrastructure unless it literally crashes, why companies like HP got rid of expensive engineers, and why small oil companies don't dig lots of exploration bores. You don't need 'real' growth if quarterly profits look good on paper because you are slashing costs, and everyone at the top of the pile is going to be gone in 3 years when the old wells run dry.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Threadripper officially launches on 8/10. Expect reviews to hit the internet first thing that morning as most hardware sites have had a week or two to play with their samples. Intel is trying desperately to make some last minute noise I suppose. Makes me suspect the official reviews of TR will be quite positive. Intel is going to find that having bigger numbers (Mhz, core count), is going to count for little when the other guy gets you 90% or more of the performance for half the price.
Data centers don't care about noise or heating like an oven, they have massive power supplies and massive cooling. At worst you'll replace one 4P server with one 2P server with 2x the cores. Or two 2P VM platforms with one 2P VM platform with the same number of cores. I very much doubt they'll ever feel it's too much processing power in one place.
This is just plain wrong -- data centers care very deeply about power consumption. Since data centers pack thousands of CPUs into warehouse-size rooms, even a single extra watt per CPU is a big deal. Higher power consumption means a greater power delivery requirement for the room, more cooling, a bigger UPS requirement, and a bigger power bill. Operating costs are driven by transactions per second per watt.
High performance computing and high-end desktops are pretty much the only remaining markets where power consumption is a secondary concern. This has not been true for data centers in a long time.