Intel Core i5-11600K

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But it's all a bit late to the party....
I know you're trying to make a case here but Intel has sucked for a bit, AMD has supply issues and even with Intel arguably having the better product it's being ignored by many. I got an email this morning the US is seeing sales on these cpu's already - especially the i9's. Intel is offering discounts already to shift them. Meanwhile AMD is selling as many as it can make and prices are rising due to supply issues and demand. Short term I can see Intel selling well, but long term I'm not so sure. Even with this launch I'm hearing it hasn't dented peoples wishes to buy AMD for their next systems

Of course - those on a budget and those needing a system now might still choose Intel at moment...

If you look worldwide Intel still sells more systems overall. The issue is even in many DIY markets such as Asia,etc AMD is less available and not even many times price competitive. Just look at the Lowspecgamers channel and he points out such well known value CPUs such as the Ryzen 5 1600AF were not available in the markets which needed them most or not even price competitive. AMD mostly seems to target some parts of Western Europe and the US,but it gives a distorted view of actual product availability. So if you think the shortages of Ryzen 9 CPUs are bad here,then think how bad it is in many other parts of the world.

Then there is the bigger problem - most buyers of PCs don't care about keeping upto date. For them an AMD or Intel CPU does not mean much as they have no clue. Even if they read one is "better" than other,if they go to buy a laptop or desktop,then its what ever is available at the time.

It gets even worse with laptops - the availability of Zen3 based Ryzen 5000 series APUs is dire,and many of the decent laptop ranges don't have even Ryzen 4000 options,and even then they seemed to be specced worse than the Intel equivalents. Even when I tried to look for laptops for my mate,the ones which fitted their requirements seemed to be mostly using Intel CPUs. Despite me saying its a shame they don't have a Ryzen 4000 CPU,their attitude summed it up for most,mostly along the lines their laptop was so old,ANYTHING would be an upgrade,which is kind of true.

Also the Core i9 models are the ones which arguably are very overpriced even compared to the overpriced Ryzen 7 5800X so its not surprising. But the issue is I think you are ignoring the fact the CML Core i5,Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs are now also cheaper. The fact is even when Zen3 launched,Zen2 and Zen+ simply were selling more units.

The thing is also AMD "selling out" and Intel "not selling out" does not mean much if AMD has very much less stock and Intel has 10X the stock. It only really indicates AMD is severely understocked and that can be seen with the 12NM APUs being nowhere to be found.

This is starting to cause problems for AMD,as they are loosing marketshare worldwide in 2021.

Even with substrate shortages potentially Intel has enough financial clout to push the issue,whereas AMD does not. This is a bigger problem during the next year or so and I am somewhat concerned for AMD. This is one of the problems of not having your own fabs - yes you can be more agile and shift to newer nodes without the financial burden. OTH,it also means you are at the mercy of every other competitor who wants that capacity.

If you do find one (I did have the chance to buy one recently and even as a sane price) there is the glaring problem that they are not supported by 500 series motherboards which is enough to put me off.

Fingers crossed AMD have some new budget APUs in the works.

In the meantime, if I really need an old APU I shall grab the 2200G out of my daughter's PC and get her an upgrade. The 3600 is getting back down to sane prices, or I get a 5800X and she gets my 3700X as a hand-me-down.

How is a budget APU going to work out on 7NM? AMD is selling CPUs with 70MM2 to 80MM2 chiplets,and can't get enough supply. You can't even get a full yielding Zen2 chiplet based CPU for under £240~£250 because AMD wants its higher margins now they are in the big leagues. The APUs are 150MM2 of 7NM silicon at least IIRC. Yields are going to be worse and you get less chips per wafer. Its quite clear AMD doesn't care anymore for its DIY buyers and gamers,as it will gladly eat margins supplying larger 7NM APUs to MS,Sony and OEMs. What we are getting is basically overpriced dregs!

The sad thing is until AMD actually has a Zen3 SKU for £150~£200 with similar core count to whatever Intel has,I have stopped recommending any of the AMD mainstream CPUs in most cases now. The Zen2 CPUs are slower in gaming,worse in PS,worse in audio benchmarks,etc. Even the platform upgrade is pointless as I know many who never change out CPUs,and even if they were, if you are looking at a sub £200 CPU,I am uncertain whether many I know would suddenly spend £300~£400 on a CPU,when its better spent on the GPU.The people who want £300~£400 CPUs in my experience tend to buy them upfront.

AFAIK there is no real reason for that BIOS block,but AMD did the same with PCI-E 4.0 with the 400 series motherboards,when the rebadged B450 OEM motherboards,ie,B550A were fine. The Ryzen 5 3600 isn't worth it especially for a entry level/mainstream gaming PC. When it launched it had 2X the threads of the Intel competition and was cheaper,but lost in gaming,latency dependent and lightly threaded benchmarks. Intel CPUs needed Z series motherboards to tweak RAM. Now the market has changed and AMD offers no single threaded advantage,no thread count advantage,no PCI-E 4.0 advantage,and no RAM tweaking or overclocking advantage anymore on cheaper motherboards.

Even having an IGP actually helps Intel especially since GPU shortages mean many people are using older and older GPUs. At least the Intel system will sort of functional GPU if it goes,but with the AMD system it does become an issue.

Even power consumption isn't a slam dunk especially for mainstream CML. For example I was surprised to look at the power consumption of the Core i5 10400(The Core i5 11400 is more but Zen+ levels AFAIK). The Gamersnexus review had it similar to a Ryzen 5 3600. I can confirm this with my example - even when it's set to short term TDP boost of 80W,but sustained at 65W,with a Alpenfohn Black Ridge low profile cooler,in a 5L mini-ITX Velka 5 case it seems mostly fine.

My Ryzen 7 3700X can be beaten by a Core i5 11400 in a number of games,and so can a tweaked Core i5 10400. The issue is that many games are still optimised for Intel CPUs,and the latency penalties due to the dual CCX design still reduces performance overall in games,audio stuff,etc.

[3dcandy]

I won't quote that in full - but yes right now Intel have a lead. But 12 months of the thing that can't be named has placed the ball firmly in Intels corner...
Again - it's taken them years to get back and they've done it by firmly cutting prices, not really innovating but getting parity and the conditions for everyone else have meant they could do it. I'll say it again - when did Intel have to discount a new product to get it to sell?
Yes they may sell loads more, yes they have a product available but I doubt that will bother AMD much. The know now that Intel has to discount to counter them. Short term fix at best. AMD are executing on what they want to, with demand outstripping supply mainly due to issues outside of their control and I doubt that they will worry. Prices being a tad higher won't hurt them much at all. Intel are basically doing what AMD used to have to do to sell products - which is a massive turn around.

[DanceswithUnix]

The APUs are 150MM2 of 7NM silicon at least IIRC.

Dali (used in Athlon 3050 etc) is 149mm^2 on a 14nm GF process, a 30% reduction on the die size of the quad core Raven Ridge for things like Chromebooks where every penny counts.

They could do a similar scaling on 7nm to make a 110mm^2 4 core chip, or just stick with making cheap stuff at GF given no-one really cares about performance at this end of the scale anyway.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The issue is AMD is really capacity limited - they can't even get enough of their own GPUs out either. People were laughing at Nvidia using Samsung but it seems to have been a savvy move,as Nvidia have sold far more Ampere based GPUs. So unless AMD can find more capacity then it doesn't matter if they beat Intel and Nvidia,if they simply can't supply enough products and streetprices go up. Enthusiasts need to appreciate this basic fact.

This is how Intel managed to stave off the Athlon 64 - Intel simply used its greater supply capacity and deep pockets,and that was a 7 year period of Intel mostly being bested. AMD only convincingly beat Intel on all metrics since late last year,and only really started applying pressure since around the middle of 2019 in server markets,etc. In the laptop market its only been since last year AMD have been really competitive - the Zen+ APUs didn't even compete on core count.

The issue with all this is that despite enthusiasts thinking Intel is doomed,sadly AMD is still a minor player in sheer volumes and the poorly timed console contracts,etc have made their greatest victory,into giving Intel more breathing space. There should be no way Intel can compete in the under £300 market,let alone laptops and prebuilt systems with the Zen3 release - except it is. This is nowhere near what happened with the Athlon 64 when Intel felt the effects far more quickly.

The same should go with the RX6000 series. AMD has more efficient and smaller GPUs,and Nvidia can only really compete with RT,etc on. Outside that RDNA2 is simply better suited for laptops and prebuilt systems. Having a narrower and more cost effective GDDR6 bus really is useful in these scenarios. But again,Nvidia with its less efficient and larger Ampere uarch based GPUs is getting most of the OEM wins. That is on a worse process node.

AMD lost GPU marketshare after the RX6000 launch:
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/3...omed-out-in-q4

In the end people will get what is easier to buy - its why even though AMD Renoir and the Zen3 based APUs beat Intel in most metrics,but it means diddly squat since most laptops are Intel based,and especially many of the better engineered ones. The same goes with most gaming laptops not using RDNA2 based GPUs which should be ideal for laptops. Ultimately its not just having a decent product,but having one you can buy. If its the difference between finding a system or getting one which is better but you can't find easily,the former is always going to sell more. Apparently Intel might get affected by substrate issues too - but the issue is they can literally outbid most other competitors(outside of companies such as Apple) to get their way.

What concerns me more is Intel is now buying up TSMC capacity too,and what happens if they start bidding more for the capacity AMD needs?? Its going to be a double whammy of issues for them. AMD really should have had a backup strategy but they learnt nothing from what happened,when their WSA forced them to single source from GF. When GF didn't deliver it was a disaster for both their CPU and GPU divisions. I am utterly surprised they didn't even make sure they had sufficient 12NM/14NM production in place for their APUs. They are literally giving Intel and Nvidia free sales.

Dali (used in Athlon 3050 etc) is 149mm^2 on a 14nm GF process, a 30% reduction on the die size of the quad core Raven Ridge for things like Chromebooks where every penny counts.

They could do a similar scaling on 7nm to make a 110mm^2 4 core chip, or just stick with making cheap stuff at GF given no-one really cares about performance at this end of the scale anyway.

AMD won't even sell you a fully enabled 70MM2 chiplet bundled with an el-cheapo 12NM/14NM I/O die for under £250 nowadays. The Zen3 chiplet is around 80MM2 and essentially you got a 50~100% price increase with the Ryzen 5 5600X over the Ryzen 5 3600. AMD is entering the big leagues now - remember the Athlon 64 era?? Well expect them to push for top tier pricing on everything,and you will see that as their net margins have generally increased over the last year. So I don't fully buy all these price increases are all to do with supply chain price increases. Remember the time when HDD prices went up due to the floods? Well can you remember them going down that much after that - I don't.

So are they really going to want to sell a larger 7NM SOC - a lower yielding and more expensive to make chip for less money?? Remember,the chiplets we get for desktops are bottom of the barrel stuff,which didn't make it to server,and didn't make it to Threadripper. With an APU you don't even have that! Its why I laugh at the comparisons of the Core i9 11900K and Ryzen 9 5900X/5950X since its basically the battle of CPUs you can't actually find easily. I was reading on forums,people have been waiting since last year for some of the Ryzen 9 CPUs they ordered and have ended up cancelling them and getting a lower end Zen3 CPU instead.

The only real way forward is if AMD makes a chiplet based IGP which is on the other side of the package to the I/O die. Then they can use GF or someone else to make the IGP chiplet. If not that is 7NM silicon they can use towards Threadripper or Eypc which is wasted.

So in my case as a person who has always valued price/performance more than E-PEEN performance,I really don't care if AMD wins the £250+ CPU wars. Guess what?? I didn't even care two hoots when Intel won those wars,because that is not where most of the systems I build,or help build have CPUs at. The issue is the same with the GPUs,Nvidia at least for brief periods had GPUs nearish RRP,but AMD is worse even at launch,so are worse value for me too. So at this rate my next GPU might end up being Nvidia too,and its 5 years since I have owned my last AMD GPU. I am also slowly seeing those shifts elsewhere,as AMD goes up in price and does not have availability I see more renewed interest in Nvidia/Intel from less techy people.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wonder what AMD is going to fill with the sub £280 market? Zen2 is increasingly looking uncompetitive in that price range. Its coming upto 2 years old now! I really don't understand why with both chiplets being almost the same size,why they are not moving entirely to Zen3? Surely having two sets of packaging lines for Zen2 and Zen3 CPUs isn't economic? Or is there something else in play?? I would think simplifying the product stack,especially for retailers would make things easier.

I am surprised AMD does not have enough defective Zen3 higher VID dies,to sell a Ryzen 5 5600 with half the enabled cache. They can also cap the clockspeed to the same range as the Ryzen 5 3600. That way it should do enough to compete with the Core i5 10600KF,etc but still have enough of a difference between it and the Ryzen 5 5600X. They can even put the TDP up a bit if required - its not like the A520/B550 motherboards can't handle it.

[3dcandy]

I think you are also forgetting the Brexit issues too. I know a lot of kit that has risen massively because of that. I know in other countries availability is much better than we have across the board. I have plenty of mates who have seen their companies sale down to approx 10% of what they were as the costs have risen tremendously. One guy I know (imports garden furniture) said his shipping costs have trebled and the lead time is now 10 times what it was...
The only guys remotely in the electronics business said he was down to 20% of what it was 3 months ago because brexit had decimated his ability to get goods in a timely manner and the prices had doubled overnight. I do a lot of consulting and help on livestreams and webcams are still not back to pre-covid supply amounts with added huge increases in costs, a double whammy for many. We can see that with the 5000 series cpu and gpu's yet Intel are discounting heavily. Go figure - they can do that they have spare capacity and have had for ages now. TSMC no spare capacity and no real spare capacity anywhere other than Intel, who as you quite rightly pointed out are attempting to get TSMC capacity, which proves how bad their foundries really are! I'll say it again - it's short term gain for Intel and short term pain for AMD. Intel dropping prices heavily only hurts them. You also rightly point out people don't really care they'll get what they can, but again... that can change easily

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

As I told AMD mostly targets the US and Western Europe. Just look at the Lowspecgamers channel,and even my experience abroad has been AMD is not as easy to get as you think in a lot of markets. This is again indicative of AMD even at is height being limited by fab constraints,and why Intel could do what it did 15 years ago. The bigger issue it doesn't matter if Intel have crapper nodes,if AMD can't even get a product like the Ryzen 4000/5000 APUs into mass market systems. That is an 8 core SOC that can get into slim and light laptops. Its not even Brexit related - its more the case companies are simply not making as many AMD designs,and even at times they put better screens,more RAM,etc into the Intel systems.

The issue here is Intel is most likely going to get US government support "to bring back more fabs to US soil" especially because of these shortages. TSMC is still Taiwanese,GF is owned by Abu Dhabi ,Samsung is South Korean,etc. They are basically the last US owned fab operation.

Don't you think its convenient timing they said they were spending $20 billion on new fabs,the moment Biden has indicated more support for such stuff as part of their stimulus? Pat Gelsinger was head of the Digital Enterprise Group when Intel did all its crap to stop AMD gaining a foothold with the Athlon 64,so the issue it wouldn't surprise me one bit Intel is up to something. The issue is with the new fabs TSMC hopes to build on US soil,who is going to get priority?? If Intel can push forward things such as natsec or simply puts more money on the table,that alone is enough to limit AMD.

AMD keeps making the same mistakes again and again. When they signed the WSA it eventually meant they had to single source both CPUs and GPUs from GF which was a disaster. Now they are essentially single sourcing from TSMC. The thing is Intel has many options,and some of their stacking technology with different chips is indicative of where they are going. The worst thing is AMD Jaguar was designed to be process node portable,so I am surprised AMD hasn't tried to use this to their advantage after this!

In fact Dr Ian Cutress of Anandtech had an interesting take on RKL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaB1WuFUAtw





Even if RKL itself is hit and miss,the whole concept of being able to backport(or as he calls it retrofit) itself is a massive shift in how Intel intends to design stuff. Its worth watching the video itself - Intel is now delinking design teams,so that they can now develop the same core for multiple nodes,and this will also mean the same for their GPUs. This is somewhat worrying IMHO. That means they can end up making the same core at different fabs(a bit like ARM). Basically as Ian Cutress calls it "co-design". The issue here is if they then try and buy capacity away from AMD with future nodes.

[RandallFlagg]

Testing this chip at DDR4-3200 Gear 2 is pretty useless. No one in their right mind is going to do that, it's the equivalent of running a Zen chip with the infinity fabric out of sync, and destroys its performance in gaming. The actually MC bus speed in that config is only 800Mhz. It would actually perform a lot better at DDR4-2933 Gear 1, and probably DDR4-2666 Gear 1, than the way you set it up.

[ik9000]

Testing this chip at DDR4-3200 Gear 2 is pretty useless. No one in their right mind is going to do that, it's the equivalent of running a Zen chip with the infinity fabric out of sync, and destroys its performance in gaming. The actually MC bus speed in that config is only 800Mhz. It would actually perform a lot better at DDR4-2933 Gear 1, and probably DDR4-2666 Gear 1, than the way you set it up.

Did I miss something? I read they tested both and there wasn't much difference?

[bae85]

So to sum up - a pointless CPU from intel offering little to no improvement over the previous generation and consumes more power.

The key line I took was this - 'One can easily make it run at an all-core 4.6GHz by a few presses in the BIOS. Doing so elevates long-term TDP from 125W to 180W.' Just goes to show how Intel's TDP levels are absolute tosh and how bad their power performance really is - a 6C/12T chip that needs 180 watts of power to do 4.6GHz, and I'm sat here with my 8C/16T Ryzen mobile chip that can do 4.2GHz with 35 watts.