6 ms·

Will be interesting to see how Intel recovers if at all. Actually, is there today (or since 1 or 2 years) any reason to go with Intel on desktop or server?

by jmakov 2y ago

ISV_Damocles 2y ago
I personally only use AMD (excepting one test machine), but Intel does have the best single-thread performance[1] so if you have some crufty code that you can't parallelize in any way, it'll work best with Intel. [1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html#section-single-threaded-cpu-benchmarks-rankings-2024 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html...
- Rohansi 2y ago
  Unless your workloads are not very cache optimized like most games, then AMD's 3D V-cache CPUs take the lead.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  The new Zen 5 has a much better single-thread performance than any available Intel CPU. For instance a slow 5.5 GHz Zen 5 matches or exceeds a 6.0 GHz Raptor Lake in single-thread performance. The faster Zen 5 models, which will be launched in a couple of days, will beat easily any Intel. Nevertheless, in a couple of months Intel will launch Arrow Lake S, which will have a very close single-thread performance to Zen 5, perhaps very slightly higher. Because Arrow Lake S will be completely made by TSMC, it will have a much better energy efficiency than the older Intel CPUs and also than AMD Zen 5, because it will use a superior TSMC "3 nm" process. On the other hand, it is expected to have the same maximum clock frequency as AMD Zen 5, so its single thread performance will no longer be helped by a higher clock frequency, like in Raptor Lake.
  - listic 2y ago
    > in a couple of months Intel will launch Arrow Lake S, which will have a very close single-thread performance to Zen 5 Will they? Intel Innovation event was postponed "until 2025"[1], so I assumed there is not going to be any big launch like that in 2024, anymore? Arrow Lake S was supposed to debut at Intel Innovation event in September [2] [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/on-event-series/innovation.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/on-event-seri... [2] https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-says-raptor-lake-microcode-update-will-not-affect-overclocking-and-performance-new-arrow-lake-battlemage-updates https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-says-raptor-lake-microcode...
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      The Intel Innovation event was canceled to save money. This has nothing to do with the actual launch of future products, which are expected to bring more money. Intel can make a cheap on-line product launch, like most such launches after COVID. Since the chips of Arrow Lake S are made at TSMC and Intel does only packaging and testing, like also for Lunar Lake, there will be no manufacturing problems. The only thing that could delay the Arrow Lake S launch would be a bug so severe that it would require a new set of masks. For now there is no information about something like this.
etempleton 2y ago
For some specific workloads. Many people in the Plex community will point to Quicksync as being superior for media encoding than anything that AMD offers. The next couple of years will be interesting. If Intel can pull off 18a they will very likely retake the lead, however if 18a underwhelms Intel will be in real trouble. There is also the possibility that AMD chooses Intel as a fab in the future, which would feel a bit like when Sonic showed up on a Nintendo console (for some reason it just feels wrong).
- darknavi 2y ago
  I was going to say Quicksync. I just spec'd and bought a new server build and the igpus on a few year old Intel chips is hard to beat for price and tdp.
- russelg 2y ago
  The quicksync preference seems mostly to be because up until the 7000 series, AMD didn't even include integrated graphics on their chips (meaning no video encoder) (barring the G variants). I would think the grounds are much more even now.
epolanski 2y ago
I think Intel still takes the crown when it comes to maximizing every single fps. Also, for a while, it was more competitive in the mid range than AMD's equivalent from a price/performance point of view.
- tracker1 2y ago
  This is where I think AMD really messed up on the current releases... If they'd called the 9600X a 9400 and the 9700X a 9600X, and charged like $100 less, I think the reception would have been much stronger. As it stands, it's more about wait and see. You can use PBO and get like 10-15% more performance at double the energy, but even then compared to the rest of the market, it just comes up short. The 9800X3D and 9950X(3D) options will really carry this cycle if they're good and the pricing adapts appropriately. I'm not holding my breath. I've been holding on with my 5950X since it's release and likely going to continue unless the 9950X(3D) is compelling enough. Not to mention the DDR5 memory issues with larger sizes or more sticks. 96gb is probably enough, but at what cost.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    The 9600X and 9700X are not a useful upgrade for gamers, but they are excellent for anyone else. Their energy efficiency is much better that for any previous x86 CPUs and for those who use applications that benefit from AVX-512 the desktop Zen 5 brings an increase in throughput higher than for any new CPU of the last five years (the last time when a desktop CPU had a double throughput over its predecessors was in 2019, with Zen 2 over Coffee Lake Refresh). Also in the applications like Web browsers or MS Office, which prefer single-thread performance, they beat even the top Raptor Lake Refresh of 6.0 GHz, which is much more expensive and it consumes a power several times greater. Moreover, as shown by TechPowerUp, the performance of Zen 5 under Windows is suboptimal in comparison with Intel in the programs that use a small number of active threads, like the games, because the Windows scheduler uses a policy that favors power savings over performance, even if that is a bad choice for a desktop CPU. That means that the scheduler prefers to make both threads of a core active, while keeping idle the other cores, even if the right policy (which is used on Intel) is to begin to use the second threads of the cores only after all the cores have one active thread. This should be easy to correct in the Windows scheduler, which does the right thing for Intel, where first one thread is made active on each P-core, the all the E-cores are made active, and only if more active threads are required the second threads of the P-cores are made active too.
treprinum 2y ago
N100 & N305 have no competition in their own space IMO. For the rest I don't see any advantage outside momentum and "nobody is going to be fired for using IBM" approach.
- hangonhn 2y ago
  This is fine for Intel actually. What really matters for the fortunes of Intel is their foundry service now. Intel could very well make those chips for NVidia if they can figure out the foundry service.
foobiekr 2y ago
Strategically, in global terms from a US-centric point of view, it would be very good if Intel could recover, as having the entire world reliant on TSMC would be bad for everyone. Also there really isn't any other org like Intel at the moment in the broader sense in a few ways (mostly advanced research). That said, Intel really has nothing to fall back on. Internally, it is very much like many of the other big companies - run by executive whim papered over with justifications that are tissue thin. There are a lot of companies like this - Cisco, Intel, whatever the hell is left of IBM, Nokia, Lattice, NetApp, etc. - that will probably die this decade if they fail to reboot their executive and managerial cultures. I have a lot of friends who have been in the great parts of Intel (the CPU design teams and, believe it or not, fabrication) and the crap parts (everything else, especially networking and storage [what's left of it], except maybe the perenially suffering ICC team). Pat has failed to make things materially better because the system that is the body of Intel is resilient to disruptions of the sort he is trying. A massive replacement and flattening of culture is required there and he has not been able to execute on it. Turnover is coming for all the companies I list above. If I had to go out on a limb and suggest a longterm survivor from the list above, it might be Lattice. Otherwise everyone listed is driving hard straight to the ground internally, whether the market sees it or not.
- Miraste 2y ago
  IBM has been heading toward the ground for thirty years, and they never seem to hit it. Whatever problems they have, they are both diversified and deeply entrenched in all kinds of government and S&P 500 systems and processes, to the point that their performance barely matters. Intel doesn't have anything like that to paper over their deficiencies.
  - robotnikman 2y ago
    Plenty of places still running AS/400 on crazy high support contracts, and no plans of moving on.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      > crazy high Not high enough that it can't go higher. Maybe somebody should make a betting site around when the next order-of-magnitude increase on the rent of AS/400 hardware will come. With 6 months granularity. IMO, the people without a plan are crazy. But yeah, there's plenty of them.
llm_nerd 2y ago
At some price points and for some scenarios, or if a particular pre-built has everything you need for the right price and happens to have Intel, sure there are plenty of situations where Intel is the right choice. It is amazing to see how Intel has faltered. This was all laid in stone a decade ago when Intel was under delusions that its biggest competitor was itself, and the only thing it cared about was ensuring that their lower power and lower cost devices didn't compete with their cash-cow high end products. They optimized for the present and destroyed their future.
wmf 2y ago
Intel could come back once all their chips are on 3 nm later this year.

Will be interesting to see how Intel recovers if at all. Actually, is there today (or since 1 or 2 years) any reason to go with Intel on desktop or server?

by jmakov 2y ago

Will be interesting to see how Intel recovers if at all. Actually, is there today (or since 1 or 2 years) any reason to go with Intel on desktop or server?

ISV_Damocles 2y ago

I personally only use AMD (excepting one test machine), but Intel does have the best single-thread performance[1] so if you have some crufty code that you can't parallelize in any way, it'll work best with Intel. [1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html#section-single-threaded-cpu-benchmarks-rankings-2024 https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html...

Rohansi 2y ago
Unless your workloads are not very cache optimized like most games, then AMD's 3D V-cache CPUs take the lead.
adrian_b 2y ago
The new Zen 5 has a much better single-thread performance than any available Intel CPU. For instance a slow 5.5 GHz Zen 5 matches or exceeds a 6.0 GHz Raptor Lake in single-thread performance. The faster Zen 5 models, which will be launched in a couple of days, will beat easily any Intel. Nevertheless, in a couple of months Intel will launch Arrow Lake S, which will have a very close single-thread performance to Zen 5, perhaps very slightly higher. Because Arrow Lake S will be completely made by TSMC, it will have a much better energy efficiency than the older Intel CPUs and also than AMD Zen 5, because it will use a superior TSMC "3 nm" process. On the other hand, it is expected to have the same maximum clock frequency as AMD Zen 5, so its single thread performance will no longer be helped by a higher clock frequency, like in Raptor Lake.
- listic 2y ago
  > in a couple of months Intel will launch Arrow Lake S, which will have a very close single-thread performance to Zen 5 Will they? Intel Innovation event was postponed "until 2025"[1], so I assumed there is not going to be any big launch like that in 2024, anymore? Arrow Lake S was supposed to debut at Intel Innovation event in September [2] [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/on-event-series/innovation.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/events/on-event-seri... [2] https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-says-raptor-lake-microcode-update-will-not-affect-overclocking-and-performance-new-arrow-lake-battlemage-updates https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-says-raptor-lake-microcode...
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    The Intel Innovation event was canceled to save money. This has nothing to do with the actual launch of future products, which are expected to bring more money. Intel can make a cheap on-line product launch, like most such launches after COVID. Since the chips of Arrow Lake S are made at TSMC and Intel does only packaging and testing, like also for Lunar Lake, there will be no manufacturing problems. The only thing that could delay the Arrow Lake S launch would be a bug so severe that it would require a new set of masks. For now there is no information about something like this.

etempleton 2y ago

For some specific workloads. Many people in the Plex community will point to Quicksync as being superior for media encoding than anything that AMD offers. The next couple of years will be interesting. If Intel can pull off 18a they will very likely retake the lead, however if 18a underwhelms Intel will be in real trouble. There is also the possibility that AMD chooses Intel as a fab in the future, which would feel a bit like when Sonic showed up on a Nintendo console (for some reason it just feels wrong).

darknavi 2y ago
I was going to say Quicksync. I just spec'd and bought a new server build and the igpus on a few year old Intel chips is hard to beat for price and tdp.
russelg 2y ago
The quicksync preference seems mostly to be because up until the 7000 series, AMD didn't even include integrated graphics on their chips (meaning no video encoder) (barring the G variants). I would think the grounds are much more even now.

epolanski 2y ago

I think Intel still takes the crown when it comes to maximizing every single fps. Also, for a while, it was more competitive in the mid range than AMD's equivalent from a price/performance point of view.

tracker1 2y ago
This is where I think AMD really messed up on the current releases... If they'd called the 9600X a 9400 and the 9700X a 9600X, and charged like $100 less, I think the reception would have been much stronger. As it stands, it's more about wait and see. You can use PBO and get like 10-15% more performance at double the energy, but even then compared to the rest of the market, it just comes up short. The 9800X3D and 9950X(3D) options will really carry this cycle if they're good and the pricing adapts appropriately. I'm not holding my breath. I've been holding on with my 5950X since it's release and likely going to continue unless the 9950X(3D) is compelling enough. Not to mention the DDR5 memory issues with larger sizes or more sticks. 96gb is probably enough, but at what cost.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  The 9600X and 9700X are not a useful upgrade for gamers, but they are excellent for anyone else. Their energy efficiency is much better that for any previous x86 CPUs and for those who use applications that benefit from AVX-512 the desktop Zen 5 brings an increase in throughput higher than for any new CPU of the last five years (the last time when a desktop CPU had a double throughput over its predecessors was in 2019, with Zen 2 over Coffee Lake Refresh). Also in the applications like Web browsers or MS Office, which prefer single-thread performance, they beat even the top Raptor Lake Refresh of 6.0 GHz, which is much more expensive and it consumes a power several times greater. Moreover, as shown by TechPowerUp, the performance of Zen 5 under Windows is suboptimal in comparison with Intel in the programs that use a small number of active threads, like the games, because the Windows scheduler uses a policy that favors power savings over performance, even if that is a bad choice for a desktop CPU. That means that the scheduler prefers to make both threads of a core active, while keeping idle the other cores, even if the right policy (which is used on Intel) is to begin to use the second threads of the cores only after all the cores have one active thread. This should be easy to correct in the Windows scheduler, which does the right thing for Intel, where first one thread is made active on each P-core, the all the E-cores are made active, and only if more active threads are required the second threads of the P-cores are made active too.

treprinum 2y ago

N100 & N305 have no competition in their own space IMO. For the rest I don't see any advantage outside momentum and "nobody is going to be fired for using IBM" approach.

hangonhn 2y ago
This is fine for Intel actually. What really matters for the fortunes of Intel is their foundry service now. Intel could very well make those chips for NVidia if they can figure out the foundry service.

foobiekr 2y ago

Strategically, in global terms from a US-centric point of view, it would be very good if Intel could recover, as having the entire world reliant on TSMC would be bad for everyone. Also there really isn't any other org like Intel at the moment in the broader sense in a few ways (mostly advanced research). That said, Intel really has nothing to fall back on. Internally, it is very much like many of the other big companies - run by executive whim papered over with justifications that are tissue thin. There are a lot of companies like this - Cisco, Intel, whatever the hell is left of IBM, Nokia, Lattice, NetApp, etc. - that will probably die this decade if they fail to reboot their executive and managerial cultures. I have a lot of friends who have been in the great parts of Intel (the CPU design teams and, believe it or not, fabrication) and the crap parts (everything else, especially networking and storage [what's left of it], except maybe the perenially suffering ICC team). Pat has failed to make things materially better because the system that is the body of Intel is resilient to disruptions of the sort he is trying. A massive replacement and flattening of culture is required there and he has not been able to execute on it. Turnover is coming for all the companies I list above. If I had to go out on a limb and suggest a longterm survivor from the list above, it might be Lattice. Otherwise everyone listed is driving hard straight to the ground internally, whether the market sees it or not.

Miraste 2y ago
IBM has been heading toward the ground for thirty years, and they never seem to hit it. Whatever problems they have, they are both diversified and deeply entrenched in all kinds of government and S&P 500 systems and processes, to the point that their performance barely matters. Intel doesn't have anything like that to paper over their deficiencies.
- robotnikman 2y ago
  Plenty of places still running AS/400 on crazy high support contracts, and no plans of moving on.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > crazy high Not high enough that it can't go higher. Maybe somebody should make a betting site around when the next order-of-magnitude increase on the rent of AS/400 hardware will come. With 6 months granularity. IMO, the people without a plan are crazy. But yeah, there's plenty of them.

llm_nerd 2y ago

At some price points and for some scenarios, or if a particular pre-built has everything you need for the right price and happens to have Intel, sure there are plenty of situations where Intel is the right choice. It is amazing to see how Intel has faltered. This was all laid in stone a decade ago when Intel was under delusions that its biggest competitor was itself, and the only thing it cared about was ensuring that their lower power and lower cost devices didn't compete with their cash-cow high end products. They optimized for the present and destroyed their future.

wmf 2y ago

Intel could come back once all their chips are on 3 nm later this year.