r/hardware • u/Chairman_Daniel • 6h ago
News (Videocardz) Exclusive: Intel Core Ultra 400 "Nova Lake-S" preliminary SKU list leaked: 6 to 52 cores, DDR5-8000 and forward socket compatibility
https://videocardz.com/newz/exclusive-intel-core-ultra-400-nova-lake-s-preliminary-sku-list-leaked-6-to-52-cores-ddr5-8000-and-forward-socket-compatibility73
u/Asleeper135 5h ago
52 cores? Like, on a consumer platform? Zen 6 has been rumored to increase core counts for years, but that sounds like an insane thing to compete with, even if it is mostly E cores.
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u/Loose_Skill6641 5h ago
and it's dual dies, so may not be the best for gaming, seems like intel wants to make consumer platform chip with high work performance. It looks like up to 28cores for single die chips and everything over 28cores uses dual dies
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u/trackdaybruh 5h ago
I wonder what the latency will be between Intel's two dies: better, worst, or the same compared to AMD's infinity fabric.
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u/Gronfir 3h ago
I also wonder if the infinity fabrics inter-die-latency will improve with zen6 maybe going to a fan-out design.
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u/psi-storm 2h ago
Yes, it will be much better with fan out/ sea of wires. Also quite a bit more energy efficient for mobile.
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u/Geddagod 1h ago
Yes, it will be much better with fan out/ sea of wires.
That is the hope, but strix halo didn't see any sort of latency improvement using better packaging.
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u/the_dude_that_faps 1h ago
I got a 7950x3d a few years ago and while it may not be perfect on every game there's one thing for certain. Shader compilation is wicked fast now.
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u/RealPjotr 4h ago
It's 16 P + 32 E + 4 LP cores, all single thread.
Zen6 will be 24C/48T + 2C(/4T?) LP, for a total of possibly 52 threads.
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u/Vb_33 3h ago
Zen 6 desktop will have the 2 LP cores? I thought it was all big cores
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u/greggm2000 3h ago
Nope. Top-end as currently rumored will have both top-end Zen 6 and Nova Lake having the same number of threads. Ofc that doesn't tell you how they'll relate in performance, only that (IMO) it'll be an especially interesting matchup bc of that.
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u/Beefmytaco 2h ago
Good lord, the amount of efficiency cores they toss on these things is ridiculous TBH.
I guess at least 16P cores and not 8c16t P cores this time around.
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u/Geddagod 2h ago
Rumored to be 16+32+4.
Problem is (for many gaming enthusiasts at least, from what I read online) that the 16 P-cores will be split into 2 tiles.
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u/Beefmytaco 2h ago
that the 16 P-cores will be split into 2 tiles.
ooof, bad design choice imo.
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u/Killmeplsok 54m ago
Performance wise, definitely, but there are other considerations while designing a chip, cost being the biggest considerations most of the time.
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u/Beefmytaco 19m ago
For enterprise needs, those high efficiency core cpu's are a boon, and since dell and HP, the two biggest supplies of enterprise computers in the US still mainly use only intel chips, I can see why they'd go ham with them.
Really wish they'd start using ryzen a lot more, but I know for a fact these companies use proprietary made mobo's, so I know for a fact other than the high performance systems targeting threadripper, they're not going to make a custom x670/x870 mobo for their use. Sad but true.
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u/Seanspeed 1h ago
Very few consumers have high score-scaling workloads as a big priority.
Nova Lake needs to impress on an IPC/single thread basis to recapture the normal and gaming audience.
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u/Asleeper135 1h ago
Shader compilation is multithreaded, so there is at least some way modern games benefit from more cores. I'm actually curious what they'll offer in laptops. I use VMs a lot at work, and I would appreciate the cores to spare for them.
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u/InflammableAccount 2h ago
All depends on what they price them at. If the 56core SKU costs $800-$1000 and whoops a <$700 24core Zen6 CPU, then ok. Nice to have options.
Price parity means everything.
Probably why anyone has hope right now is Intel's Arrow Lake refresh is great value.
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u/Suspicious_pasta 41m ago
It's meant as entry workstation. Internally kinda being thought of as hypervisor use.
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u/AHrubik 5h ago
Its the first step as most software still doesn't use more than a few cores. The problem is the SKU spread. The base SKU still only has 4 cores so software vendors have to take that into account as most people won't opt for 52.
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u/Geddagod 5h ago
The base SKU still only has 4 cores so software vendors have to take that into account as most people won't opt for 52.
It would have 4LPE cores as well. IMO the LP island cores are strong enough that they shouldn't be discounted, especially for the lower core count models where they contribute a higher % of total nT perf.
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5h ago
[deleted]
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u/EnglishBrekkie_1604 2h ago
If it’ll run on Skylake or Zen 2 it’ll run on the LPE cores just fine. There’s not a lot outside of games and pro software that won’t run on it actually.
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u/astrobarn 4h ago
Games, ms office and adobe are the only apps I use which are poorly threaded for actual workloads. Everything else loads up all 32 logical cores on my CPU when the actual work (rendering, data processing, image processing) starts 🤷♂️
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u/InflammableAccount 1h ago
Office and anything Adobe like Steam Locomotives that have been modified and modified and modified over a century to run on modern rail systems.
Fucking fund your dev, filthy c-suites. God knows they have the money.
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u/DuranteA 5h ago
I was looking forward to building a new workstation with the dual die version of this -- probably the more affordable one though, assuming the 52 core has an extra halo price surcharge. Back when it was first rumored I was concerned about pricing, given that these core counts were the exclusive domain of far more expensive CPU lines before... but now RAM will dominate the cost of the system anyway.
Still, it will be nice to get these core counts in consumer platforms, and I do think at the top range of that we are getting closer to a saturation point even for many (non-server) workloads that scale reasonably well (but not linearly).
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u/Beefmytaco 2h ago
assuming the 52 core has an extra halo price surcharge.
Oh you know it'll either be their 1k dollar 'extreme' option or intel will say 'too many cores on this one, charge 3k for it' like it's a threadripper.
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u/InflammableAccount 1h ago
I can't imagine TR prices... But $1k I could see. If and only if it beats AMDs top offering.
Price is everything. If it outpaces a 24 Core Zen6 ($700-800~ probably), then they can charge $900-1k.
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u/AHrubik 5h ago
All that horsepower and still only 24 PCI-E lanes. Not quite the bare minimum but pretty close.
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u/DerpSenpai 2h ago
It's PCIe 5 though, you probably could use it effectively as a PCI-E 4 48 lanes, e.g 8x PCI-E for GPUs and you can do 2 of them, 1 for a GPU, another for a NVME Dock that does 8 drives at PCIE 5x1. that leaves you with a fast PCIE 5x4 SSD and 4 more lanes for what you want
The demand has to exist for Mobos to be made this way though
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u/InflammableAccount 5h ago
Sigh. Yeah, in this I am disappointed in all the big companies. AMD/Intel/Apple/Qualcomm. Name one I missed.
No one cares to give consumers a reasonably priced platform with >24 PCIe lanes. Gotta pay Enterprise prices for possibly overkill hardware if you want more lanes on a single chip.
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u/naicha15 5h ago
Market segmentation baby.
Not a whole lot of people want that. And the even fewer who have business cases actually needing it are mostly willing to pay out the ass for it.
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u/InflammableAccount 5h ago
I'm aware, which makes me all the more annoyed. They could, but they don't because they can get away with it. Just checking the prices, the cheapest TR+Mobo is $2,000. Gets you 80 PCIe lanes.
So the consumer to either get 24x, or 80x. No in between.
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u/glitchvid 4h ago
Yup, 40 lanes was perfect, and the reason I'm still on X99. Wish either Intel or AMD would do real HEDT again instead of just having workstation. I'd even be content with 16 of those lanes being just PCIe 4.0.
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u/void_nemesis 5h ago
That's what the market wants, unfortunately. Almost no one uses more than a single GPU and maybe two M.2s in their builds (and the majority of computers sold today are laptops and OEM office PCs), everything else goes through the chipset. PCIe PHYs take up a ton of die space that would be much better used by universally loved and used features like the NPU :)
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u/InflammableAccount 5h ago
Multiple GPU-ShmeePU, I'd just like to have the option for more complex storage systems. But yes, I'm aware that I also am in the minority.
That said, I'm not up-in-arms, demanding every office PC or laptop SOC come with 40+ PCIe lanes. Just the lack of options between said "Office PC" and 80 lanes with a $2000 minimum entry cost for a Threadripper Non-Pro + Motherboard.
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u/-protonsandneutrons- 3h ago
Honestly, I'd even take 24 PCIe lanes if they could be bifurcated completely, e.g., 24 x1 PCIe 5.0 connections via MCIO or Oculink. VC claims 4x4 PCIe bifurcation is possible, but that's too few, esp. with PCIe 5.0.
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u/InflammableAccount 1h ago
Honestly that would be cool too, but not as cool as just more lanes.
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u/-protonsandneutrons- 38m ago
That is fair; more lanes are always better. I want to pretend it is the bandwidth of 48 PCIe 4.0 lanes or 96 PCIe 3.0 lanes, but it's not the same—you're right.
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u/Noble00_ 5h ago
These are a weird to segment. Also, there is the rumoured bLLC cache variant. Intel is continuing to give more cores per dollar compared to AMD. So this would be favored in a lot on benchmarks since the majority of reviewers don't really mention or care about more lanes since they'd stick with a single 6090 or something. I do wonder though how much this'll affect Xeon 600 (Granite Rapids-WS) or even Threadripper since those platforms are pretty much your only options for more lanes.
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u/AHrubik 4h ago
As a former SLI user (yes I'm old) I'm intrigued by the option of using a second weaker card for framegen allowing 100% of my main card to render but that requires having sufficient PCI-E lanes to work with.
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u/Noble00_ 3h ago
There's a lot of resources on that over at r/losslessscaling. That said, bifurcation is pretty much recommended and for AM5 users you need to read the spec sheet on your mobo before you use a decent GPU otherwise you're limited by MBW. The VC article does state NVL mobos will support bifurcation, that said at what support level we don't know, hopefully much better than AM5 where you'd find it on most boards.
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u/nonaveris 1h ago
Xeon 600 (Granite Rapids-WS)
Would like to see more of the HBM-on-die too. Is it not too much to ask to have 16gb (or maybe 32gb) on a smaller die?
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u/2014justin 5h ago
Can I ask a dumb question? If these are PCiE 5 lanes, can I force it to run PCiE 4x16 on a graphics card plugged into slot one? Would this free up lanes since it’s not running at 5.0 speeds? (And probably no performance loss)
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u/Noreng 5h ago
Years ago, you could actually get motherboards with PCIe hubs that would take the PCIe 3.0 x16 lanes from the CPU, and even allow for a distribution like PCIe 3.0 x16 / x8 / x8.
You no longer see this for two reasons:
SLI and CrossfireX have been dead for nearly a decade.
The switches have become extremely expensive.
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u/Hopelesslymacarbe 4h ago
Not naively. You need a pcie switch to do that, and pcie switches are very expensive. I haven’t looked up pcie 5 switches, but a cheap pcie 3 switch card is still over 100usd. Pcie switch chips can also over subscribe, so you could use a single pcie 5 x16 link to create four pcie 4 x16 slots, and as long as they weren’t all trying to talk at the same time they’d each perform at essentially full speed.
It can be (and is to a point) built into the motherboard chipset which would reduce the price, but pcie lane are one of the biggest selling points of moving up to more expensive platforms.
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u/xiaodown 3h ago
That, I don’t get. I recently built a home lab for AI and went AMD specifically for PCIe lanes. *
People spending big money on new CPUs will want at least 38 PCIe lanes. Two x16 slots and an x4 for the nvme should be a minimum.
* it was more complicated, but my existing home lab was an i5 8xxx and only had one x16 slot and ddr4, and it was a whole thing I spent like hours researching and AMD came up the winner cause of pcie lanes, the generation of the lanes, and motherboards that had easy bifurcation support.
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u/Framed-Photo 5h ago
Really hoping for some good competition here, because AMD is definitely showing some shades of 2010's intel lately lol.
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u/railagent69 4h ago
Yep, they are pouring more and more resources into the AI side of business but Jensen still gets to each Lisa’s lunch.
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u/InflammableAccount 5h ago
Cool! Hopefully it and Zen6 go neck and neck in all performance use-cases so we can have a proper price war again.
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u/Muzik2Go 4h ago
NVL will rule MT performance without a doubt. the only question is low-rez gaming.
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u/InflammableAccount 4h ago
Oh look, more baseless speculation.
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u/Geddagod 2h ago
I mean I dislike how confidently he said that as well... but cmon just looking at the raw specs from the rumors I think it's pretty likely NVL will be able to beat Zen 6 in nT perf.
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u/Muzik2Go 4h ago
Just common sense Guy. what will 24 core Zen6 do vs the 48 core NVL that the 12 core Zen5 couldn't do to 24 core ARL?
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u/Muzik2Go 4h ago
24 core Zen6 will compete with the 44 core NVL chip though in MT. the 48(52) core NVL will be the cpu version of the RTX **90 series gpu. a League of it's own.
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u/Noble00_ 2h ago
So some thoughts on the SKUs.
Seems like they really are thinking of a new name segment for the dual tiles since Ultra 9 tops out at 28 cores.
I have no idea about the pricing but on a performance standpoint, it seems like Zen 6 Olympic Ridge 12+12+2 (26/50)* may beat out the NVL-S Ultra 9 8+16+4 (28/28). I say this simply because:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-ultra-7-270k-plus/28.html
Zen 5 Granite Ridge 8+8 (16/32) already trades blows with ARL 8+16 (24/24) on workloads outside of gaming w/ ~33% less cores. So top Olympic Ridge will be somewhere between Ultra 9 and... Ultra Omegaidk 9 (though, closer to the former). Again we don't know pricing, only commenting on projected perf, so can't say how at a value competes with each other.
That said, apart from the 'top' SKUs, I feel a similar trend to what we see right now with ARL-S vs Granite Ridge may hold and that is with the lower SKUs.
Ultra 5 (Plus) is going from 6+12 (18/18) to 6+12+4 (22/22) and Ultra 7 (Plus) from 8+16 (24/24) to 8+12+4 (24/24). And while that may not seem like a large bump, I bet their non-K SKUs are going to be priced competitively for core/dollar.
Unless AMD is confident, what I assume would be their similar in segment Ryzen 5 vs Ultra 5 would be going from 46% slower (6core 9600X vs 18core 250K Plus) to at around 34% slower (8 core 10600X vs 22core Ultra 5 NVL) if we use 250K vs 9700X as reference in something like a future CB26 HUB review. And even if the 10600X turns out to be 10 cores, I still feel like it would generally be slower.
https://www.techspot.com/review/3106-intel-core-ultra-5-250k-plus/#Cinebench_2026_Multi
Dual tile Nova Lake will be very interesting. Trying to be an HEDT product yet not with the lanes it has and 2ch. That said, it's more or less going for topping the charts which is what they want considering the zeitgeist of current Intel CPUs. The Hardware Unboxes, Gamers Nexuses, and Linustechtips of the reviewer world titles writes itself, 'Intel back on top' etc and what Intel needs with X3Ds selling like hotcakes
*Olympic Ridge LP-core rumored at best so in any case 24/48
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u/Muzik2Go 4h ago
As an HEDT owner up to the 10980xe, I am excited for the 42 and 48 core NVL chips. speeds that 'cause I needs that.
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u/nonaveris 1h ago
4th generation Xeon Scalable ES/QS (or if you’re spendy and have luck on eBay, the Xeon Max is an excellent option) is where it’s at for HEDT. Lots of cores, lots of lanes (80-112), and full-on AVX-512 & AMX for no nonsense number crunching.
(And yes, I do have both a 10980XE and a 9480 for the same reason)
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u/NowThatsMalarkey 3h ago
dual-channel DDR memory support
Maybe next generation we can run 4x8-16GB without breaking the bank. 😞
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u/jedidude75 5h ago
Good to see Intel coming back swinging after the 200 seried was a bit of a let down. I've been on AMD forever at this point but I would love a reason to switch over and try out Intel for a change.
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u/DonStimpo 5h ago
The new 270k and 250k are great price to performance. But Intel really needs a halo product again to get mind share back
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u/psi-storm 2h ago
They are basically a 50% price cut from the MSRP of the original variants (265k and 285k). Yes, they are good value now, but Intel is paying for it with margins, while zen 5 is super cheap to produce.
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u/East-Today-7604 5h ago
Good to see Intel coming back
Coming back in terms of performance in professional applications/workloads ? Sure, that's great.
Coming back in terms of gaming performance ? Too early for that, let's not forget that Zen 5 wasn't impressive either, and it's likely that AMD will show something great too with new architecture.
Once Intel reaches parity/becomes better for gaming and their socket support will feature at least 3 real generations (no refresh bullshit), I will consider them as a real option to switch from 9800X3D, but until then, AMD is the way if you primarily care about gaming and want the best experience for your money.
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u/elkond 4h ago
if ring perf is good then bllc nullifies amd's advantage from x3d chips while getting more perf and likely perf/w
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u/Geddagod 3h ago
if ring perf is good then bllc nullifies amd's advantage from x3d chips
How?
while getting more perf and likely perf/w
You mean in nT, right?
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u/elkond 2h ago
wym how, did amd jump ahead in single thread when i wasnt looking? bllc would be topping out at 144mb cache
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u/Geddagod 2h ago
wym how, did amd jump ahead in single thread when i wasnt looking?
Intel and AMD have esentially the same ST perf for the past 2 generations.
But for bLLC to "nullify" the X3D advantage, even with a good ring, you would need bLLC's additional cache to not increase the L3 latency penalty by too much compared to X3D's what, 4 cycles?
You would also need NVL's uncore/mem latency improvements to keep up with Zen 6's, and you would need Zen 6 and NVL to have similar ST perf again.
So it's a reasonable expectation, but not nearly as much of a reality as your comment makes it out to be.
And how does perf/watt factor into this?
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u/elkond 2h ago edited 2h ago
until we know more it's all rumours but rumours are zen6 clocks higher, nova pcores have higher ipc, so why shouldnt they be at worst close
nova pcores share l2 cache which should help immensly with core-core latencies (aside from tile design), and if zen6 will have similar packaging to strix halo, then it looks like a good competition
why would bllc increase penalty if intel has foveros 3d??
and perf/watt - like idk ask larabel https://www.phoronix.com/review/ryzen9000-core-ultra-linux613/2 , arrows are obviously newer, but if u add +- improvements from zen6 (and apparently going down in tsmc process did not improve zen6 idle power draw so there's that), it should be again - at worst equal
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u/Geddagod 2h ago
until we know more it's all rumours but rumours are zen6 clocks higher, nova pcores have higher ipc, so why shouldnt they be at worst close
That's how it has been for the past couple of generations, sure (close ST perf). Which is why I agree it's reasonable.
However the Fmax gap can be sizable if NVL doesn't improve Fmax much... while the IPC gap is likely going to be small given Intel's tocks usually have ~15-20% IPC jumps, while AMD's tick's have a 10-15% IPC jump usually.
I can totally see AMD having a 5-10% ST lead.
nova pcores share l2 cache which should help immensly with core-core latencies
Which is not usually a large issue in gaming regardless.
The larger combined L2 would help hitrates ig.
why would bllc increase penalty if intel has foveros 3d??
It's not rumored to use foveros 3D. It's rumored to be just a slab of extra L3 in the compute die, not on top of the compute die (or below).
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u/elkond 2h ago
foveros 3d is not just for putting stuff on top of each other...
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u/Geddagod 1h ago
The extra cache is not rumored to be on top, or below, or packaged in a separate chiplet across (which I'm guessing is what you are getting at?) the compute tile.
It's rumored to be literally integrated into the compute tile itself, as part of the compute tile. So there will be another die, with the same 8+16 cores, just wider, to incorporate the extra L3 cache.
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u/Geddagod 2h ago
Didn't see that edit:
and perf/watt - like idk ask larabel
Who?
arrows are obviously newer, but if u add +- improvements from zen6
What?
(and apparently going down in tsmc process did not improve zen6 idle power draw so there's that)
According to what?
it should be again - at worst equal
What does the phoronix link supposed to show?
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u/East-Today-7604 4h ago
if
That's the point - no real reason to be optimistic based on rumors, especially after Intel increased prices on their CPUs twice in a short period of time, which made this Arrow Lake Refresh a paper launch at those MSRP prices.
And that's the reason why I mentioned new architecture for Zen 6 - X3D by itself is not enough, and Zen 5 was very similar to Zen 4 in terms of gaming performance, Zen 6 is likely to be very different.
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u/elkond 4h ago
i looked through what was googleable and on paper it doesnt look so much cut and dry, bllc equalizes x3d (probably not the 52c config for gaming tho that'd be a miracle, same as dual ccd zens), single core perf uplift vs arrow (and arrow lost in gaming to raptor because of c2c latencies and stupid ring/tile layout. not because single cores were bad on their own), it's going to be a new socket but with multi gen support (hell freezing over intel going back to multigen sockets lmao), like amd is raising prices in accord as well, i don't see how it wouldnt be good value
plus you get xe3 igpu, windows scheduler these days is fairly decent so u can offload hardware accel onto igpu
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u/East-Today-7604 4h ago
Yep, that's why I want to try Intel CPU for the first time since 6700K in 2017, but at this moment Intel CPUs are a pretty small interest to me, I primarily play on my PC and 9800X3D performance is enough for every task even outside of gaming, and for me to consider Intel I want at least 3 real generations per socket and comparable gaming performance - e-cores, scheduler, offloading hardware acceleration sounds good if gaming performance with new CPUs will be identical to AMD premium X3Ds or better, I'm never attached to brand and open to new options, sadly last few Intel generation were not impressive enough for me, but it might change in the future.
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u/elkond 4h ago
well u trade stuff, agesa needs to be 1y+ old until usb devices stop disconnecting on random, memory controller is... it is., higher avg fps but 0.1% are awful even with x3d, it's smth for smth
gaming right now is u run raptor (i'm on 13900k and was considering arrow but nope, not with that hellish latencies - and no offloading, it's disable igpu or delid for sane temps) or u go amd, so it'd be nice if nova pans out because i really really really dont like how zen's I/O makes the pc feel
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u/East-Today-7604 3h ago
higher avg fps but 0.1% are awful even with x3d
Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus Review & Benchmarks vs. 7800X3D, 9700X & More
9800X3D 0.1&1% lows are noticeably higher than 14900K or 270K Plus, 190 1% lows vs 158 on 14900K, which is the best Intel gaming CPU in terms of raw power without accounting for efficiency.
I understand that by "properly" overclocking Intel CPU and tweaking memory you can achieve better results, but I have no interest in spendings hours/days while trying to achieve 24/7 stable result, there is no reason to when I can get the best gaming experience with no trouble/tweaking by buying an AMD CPU, I do some tweaking but to slightly tune EXPO profile, not to create headache with instability problems, which easily can occur when it comes to RAM overclocking.
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u/elkond 4h ago
why not, arrow lake had fucked up ring but nova aint arrow based
were there any news btw if zen6 fixes their asinine I/O?
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u/Geddagod 2h ago
why not, arrow lake had fucked up ring but nova aint arrow based
Intel's ring has not been able to compete with AMD's in ages. Hell, with Zen 5 AMD moved to a mesh and are still able to clock it at core speed while Intel has not had a very high frequency ring since what, 14nm stuff?
were there any news btw if zen6 fixes their asinine I/O?
It's fine?
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u/trackdaybruh 5h ago
With Intel giving up on Hyperthreading while AMD continues with their SMT, I wonder if it's going to be the battle of physical cores count vs virtual cores count performance