
Intel to Launch Core I9-9900KS Next Month: 5 GHz on All Cores - rbanffy
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14837/intel-core-i99900ks-5-ghz-on-all-cores-launches-next-month
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drewg123
Does anybody else have a serious case of Deja-vu?

It feels like we're living in 2005 again. AMD has technical leadership, and
Intel is bragging about clock rates.

~~~
dis-sys
back in 2005, Intel had Core 2 Due and Core 2 Quad already in its pipeline. I
don't think Intel has anything comparable in its pipeline now.

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gnu8
I always saw Intel naming their product “Core” as a cynical ploy to confuse
terminology by associating their product with multi-core computers. It is as
if an automaker decided to brand their new motor with the name “Engine”.

~~~
mikepurvis
Ha, I totally remember that confusion— my first laptop was the first gen white
MacBook, with a Core Duo processor. But not a Core 2, or a Core 2 Duo, just a
Core Duo. The other ones came along later.

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PedroBatista
Whatever.

This is yet another pure marketing move to get their name on YouTube videos.

Almost nobody ( in their right mind ) would pay top dollar to have that mini
nuclear reactor.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
> Almost nobody ( in their right mind ) would pay top dollar to have that mini
> nuclear reactor.

Give it a few years after die-shrinks and efficiency improvements. A 5Ghz
clock means a lot for solving problems that aren't parallelizable.

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Bootwizard
TSMC has already shrunken their die to 7nm. Intel can't keep up anymore. AMD
wins this generation.

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big_chungus
Intel still beats on IPC. Their nodes are better-performing at the same
process size, so they can be a little larger and still perform like a smaller
AMD. That said, AMD is doing significantly better.

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kllrnohj
AMD is winning on IPC. Zen2 soundly passed up Intel on IPC.

Intel's higher clocks are its only remaining strength through which it can
overcome the lower IPC just barely.

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big_chungus
Hmm, my information is old. Thanks for the update. I was aware AMD had been
better value for money for quite some time, but didn't know they had lost even
IPC... big trouble for them. Makes me almost wonder if intel was purposely
holding back 10nm until it really needed it. AMD beats on IPC, intel suddenly
fixes their garbage?

~~~
kllrnohj
> Makes me almost wonder if intel was purposely holding back 10nm until it
> really needed it.

Why would they do that? Intel didn't need to knock it out of the park, but
they'd make more money doing yet another incremental improvement on 10nm just
to get all the upgrade money. And to add in those laptop improvement features
(wifi 6, integrated thunderbolt 3).

I'd understand them holding back large IPC improvements just to trickle it
out, but holding back 10nm entirely doesn't make sense. Especially since it'd
let them do even higher core count Xeon chips which make stupid huge profit.

> AMD beats on IPC, intel suddenly fixes their garbage?

Except AMD has beaten Intel on IPC and yet Intel has still not been able to
fix their garbage. So much so they're doing yet another 14nm line of laptop
SKUs (Comet Lake)

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Donald
>In a bid to maintain an intrigue, Intel did not disclose TDP of its new
product.

They basically released all the details but TDP. Very likely this sucker is a
steaming hot mess. Wonder what the stock cooler is like, or if it's even
possible to sustain these clock speeds on their stock cooler.

~~~
pingyong
Intel has stopped delivering stock coolers with K-series CPUs for a while now.
There is technically a sort of reference cooler but you'd have to buy that
separately and nobody does that. Every single person in the market for a CPU
like that was planning to use a "custom" cooling solution anyway. (Although
custom in this case could just mean to put a big air cooler or AIO on it.)

Tbh the TDP doesn't really matter. It's a binned 9900K. We already know how
those perform. It's literally just doing what siliconlottery does and getting
some publicity for it.

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sametmax
Great. Does it still come with an integrated hardware backdoor you cannot
disable ?

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js4ever
Tin foil hat on? Edited: typo

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slenk
Is it tinfoil hat worthy when Intel has such a poor track record?

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biggt
Any feature that sabotages the computer after 30 mins once disabled is not a
feature. Intel me is a backdoor.

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lathiat
Just don’t look under the stage for the chiller

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ajross
The snark in the thread is just out of control, guys. This is supposed to be a
technical forum.

In fact the part in question is shown at 8 cores, 5 GHz turbo, with a 95W TDP
(at $488), which shows somewhat better power efficiency than the equivalent
Ryzen 7 3800X (8/4.5GHz/105W/$399).

Now, that price differential may or may not be worth the moderate performance
and power advantages to you, or you might be more enthused by the bigger Ryzen
9 and Threadripper parts instead which compete in different segments. But this
certainly isn't an uncompetetive part from Intel.

~~~
cmsj
Intel TDPs are the base clock, not the boost clock. AMDs are the boost clock.

A 9900K might specify a 95W TDP, but at 5GHz it will actually use almost 170W.

See [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-
core-i9-9...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-
core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review/21)

~~~
ajross
Cite for the AMD convention of TDP at a consistent boost? That's genuinely the
first I've heard of it, and I'm almost certain that's wrong. TDPs have always
been considered to be sustained values, which is exactly what "boost" is not.

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makomk
The boost clocks generally are sustained values, at least if you have the
cooling and power provision to make them so. Most good motherboards for Intel
CPUs place no cap on boost duration although one is supported by the chipset.
All of the benchmarks of high-end Intel parts like this are done with uncapped
boost duration too. Yes, that does make Intel's TDP figures for this 5 GHz
all-core boost part effectively meaningless.

AMD's current TDP figures are based the maximum thermal output in what they
consider to be real-world applications with boost clocks enabled:
[https://www.techspot.com/article/1652-things-amd-needs-to-
fi...](https://www.techspot.com/article/1652-things-amd-needs-to-fix/) (Their
TDP used to be maximum thermal output full stop and the real-world figure used
to be called ACP, but they changed it because comparing their TDP with Intel's
made their CPUs look really hot.) They also have an actual guaranteed maximum
which is higher than, but tied to, their quoted TDP figure. So whilst it's not
actual TDP anymore it's still a lot more meaningful than Intel's numbers.

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zaarn
For all of 3 seconds, after which the CPU catches fire unless you have an
industrial chiller or clocks down to 2GHz to cool off.

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davnicwil
To be fair, it's 5GHz turbo frequency - not an expert but isn't the entire
point of the turbo mode to run in short bursts when necessary? Seems like for
occasional 100% usage short workloads like compiling code it'd be great to go
up to 5GHz even just for a few seconds and shave maybe a second or two off a
10s build. That's my understanding of what this could be useful for anyway.

~~~
zaarn
Intel has been moving to advertising the turbo clock more prominently than the
actual clock you get in typical use. Especially 10nm seems to be plagued.

Compared to a previous generation, it might boost higher for a few seconds but
then clocks lower so your build takes the same time or even longer.

On the flipside, AMD's advertised frequency is the frequency that it'll have
during typical use with a cooler rated for the advertised TDP. The boost clock
is what it can boost on that cooler for some time, if you cooler is better you
might get more.

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frou_dh
News is welcomed by humans and software alike. But a bit more so by humans,
since they enjoy a nice round number.

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randogogogo
This marketing feels a lot like the days of the Pentium 4 and the NetBurst
architecture.

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dis-sys
nothing exciting here - Intel is still pushing 8 cores as its flagship
consumer chip when AMD is releasing its 16 cores 3950x this month.

this is a very good reminder that for over a decade Intel tried everything
possible to convince people to stay on quad cores so it can maintain unfairly
high profit margin on its high core count Xeon processors.

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lunchables
Even if you hate AMD you have to be very thankful they are putting the screws
to Intel. We need competition to drive innovation.

And I'm just sitting here waiting for the 3950X announcement so I can upgrade.
Which, by the way, will drop right into my 2+ year old motherboard. Meanwhile,
in Intel land, there's a new socket every 6 months.

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cameldrv
Somewhat related: I'm looking to buy a new under-desk DL 4 GPU DL box. An AMD
CPU seems like the obvious choice at this point. I can't find a motherboard
that fits in a desktop case and has 4 GPU slots though. Does this exist for
AMD?

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NahJustDeadpool
You are going to need to look at a Threadripper CPU for this, the Ryzen lineup
doesn't have enough PCIe lanes to support 4 GPUs. If you look for Threadripper
CPUs you will certainly find EATX boards with 4 PCIe slots.

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Beltiras
This is such a yawn inducing product. I'm not too sure this will interest the
gaming segment much. Server farms will all be looking at the 4X return for
purchasing EPYC over Intel and the power savings are icing on the cake.

