Just What does Intel Have up Its Sleeve in Response to Ryzen?

Intel has enough deep contracts and business connections to keep them fine for a decade even if they sold CPUs that gave you herpes....at issue is how much this harms Intel's growth and how much AMD can gain. I mean even when AMD was selling a FAR superior product they only barely sniffed at 50% consumer market share, and usually have hovered at 25% even in the good times. So Intel will be fine regardless. .

I agree. Intel will survive even if they don't have anything for 10 years. They have the massive warchest. But even a 5% loss of market is enough to send your stocks PLUMMETING.
 
It's not quite that simple....AMD licenses x64 back to Intel....so unless Intel wants to try fielding Itanium chips as a consumer product they're between a rock and a hard place when it comes to whether they void the agreement. On the surface there are challenges but contracts can be drawn up that can get around the details of the licensing agreement. Intel lost this battle before when they sued over AMD spinning off Global Foundries.

One of the reasons AMD has a x86 licensing agreement is because the US military doesn't want 1 company to be the sole source of their major components. It's a security risk and Intel really wanted to sell more. Some say it was IBM's mandate. But IBM's mandate came from the gov't as well as itself.
 
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Any competition at this point is nothing but positive for us (the consumers). Intel has to step up its game and price it competitively or its going to lose alot more than a small market share. I for one am glad to see AMD come out swinging. I won't be dropping my current rig just because AMD has a better chip now but i can say that im going to be watching for the price drop for old gen chips to see if i like it enough to pull the trigger on a new CPU.
 
Interesting thing to me....Intel is essentially still using the same architecture from the Pentium Pro....they haven't really had to go back to the drawing board in over a decade. Their attempts at new designs like Netburst and Itanium were either mediocre or pretty much failures. There is a distinct possibility that Intel may not really have anything truly new in the pipe, they haven't really had to innovate from the ground up in a very long time. If Ryzen really rocks the boat and presents a scalable design, there's a distinct possibility that Intel -can't- return fire in the traditional sense.
 
I understand that. And I know settlements like those are a cost of doing business for Intel, when the true damages to their competitors are many times greater. I just wouldn't want to have to defend doing the same thing, to the same company again in court. Chances are that would piss off the judge, resulting in a much bigger penalty than last time.


But we all have to face up to something here. We are not in the same position compute wise as we were back when Thunderbird hit the scene. Back then we all were looking for a faster horse every month.

Today, I wouldn't know what to do with a faster horse if I had one. I have no need for a faster processor. I'm not tapping what I have now, why would I even think about an upgrade in the face of that fact?
 
But we all have to face up to something here. We are not in the same position compute wise as we were back when Thunderbird hit the scene. Back then we all were looking for a faster horse every month.

Today, I wouldn't know what to do with a faster horse if I had one. I have no need for a faster processor. I'm not tapping what I have now, why would I even think about an upgrade in the face of that fact?

So, when you say "faster horse", do you mean you upgraded from Thunderbird to Thoroughbred? :D

Mainstream software isn't keeping pace with hardware. Games seem to benefit more from a GPU upgrade than a CPU upgrade with modern CPU's (Sandybridge and up). Video encoding seems to benefit from newer CPU's, but that's still niche.

Most people don't see the big jumps like we did back in the day. Back then, we could overclock a CPU and see very noticeable differences. Now, we can see them on benchmarks mostly. It's just not a massive of a jump like it was back then. And that's what I'm expecting. It may be a thing of the past.... We lived through the "good ol' days!".
 
But we all have to face up to something here. We are not in the same position compute wise as we were back when Thunderbird hit the scene. Back then we all were looking for a faster horse every month.

Today, I wouldn't know what to do with a faster horse if I had one. I have no need for a faster processor. I'm not tapping what I have now, why would I even think about an upgrade in the face of that fact?


Well, it's also a catch 22. Applications that take advantage of faster CPU's will arrive once people have faster CPU's, but people won't buy faster CPU's until they see a reason to buy faster CPU's...
 
It doesn't have to be better, it only has to be equal but at a lower price.


This isn't entirely true.

Today is not yesterday and although this works for laptops and it works for home desktops, last time around AMD made a strong move for the server crown and although they didn't get it, they still have a piece of the pie today. That's more then they had going into the K7 days. But this also impacts the virtualization world and some of you may not know that VMs that are created to run on AMD eSXI hosts many times will not run on Intel eSXI hosts. The platform architecture matters and so cheaper is not enough all on it's own if you have large complex infrastructure on a platform that is fundamentally different. The price savings do not equate to being worth the risks and costs of making a switch.
 
No one can buy AMD due to license restrictions with x86 and Intel. If AMD ever loses control they lose the x86 license as I understand it.

I don't think it is as simple as that. Remember that AMD owns the x86-64 license. If Intel chooses to revoke the x86-64 license in the event of a sale, AMD could do the same. So any company that purchases AMD has some leverage.
 
AMD needs to put out something to compete with Pentium and i3. I know this [H], but I think that penny pinchers are an important segment. And AMD had years of budget CPUs which were garbage. They need to come back from that.
 
Well, it's also a catch 22. Applications that take advantage of faster CPU's will arrive once people have faster CPU's, but people won't buy faster CPU's until they see a reason to buy faster CPU's...


I agree in principle, but at least for me, I'm not tapping what I have and no software that I use is pushing that boundary.

I know there must be some people out there who want a faster processor, or a cheaper one. But unless I need a new motherboard for some reason, I don't see a draw. ATM, I don't need it, and I don't really even want it.

But that is just me, everyone else has to answer for themselves.

And wants always trump needs, no one knows better than people like us :D
 
But we all have to face up to something here. We are not in the same position compute wise as we were back when Thunderbird hit the scene. Back then we all were looking for a faster horse every month.

Today, I wouldn't know what to do with a faster horse if I had one. I have no need for a faster processor. I'm not tapping what I have now, why would I even think about an upgrade in the face of that fact?


Well, some of that has to be due to the fact that at the consumer level, 4 core/8 thread has been the high end for close to a decade now, and the mainstream has been limited to 2/4 or 4/4. So software designers haven't really had more horses in the stable to run....my attempt at an analogy....
 
Clearly Intel needs to dredge up more functionality that only Kaby's single digit performance increase can handle. What else can they do in addition to locking everyone else out of 4K netflix, Ultra HD Blu-ray and Optane? Perhaps they can convince Nvidia only Kaby is capable of hosting a 1080Ti and lock that out too?
 
AMD needs to put out something to compete with Pentium and i3. I know this [H], but I think that penny pinchers are an important segment. And AMD had years of budget CPUs which were garbage. They need to come back from that.

And that's where the R3 line should be. The bottom of the stack for R3 was supposed to be 4C, no SMT. If IPC is pretty close to skylake (which it looks like it is) and all Ryzens are OC enabled, that 4 physical core chip for $130 will pretty much wreck nearly anything i3 or Pentium. It would have about he same effect as Intel saying they're dropping the i5-6400 price to $130. There just wouldn't be a reason for the i3 or Pentium lineup to exist.
 
Well, some of that has to be due to the fact that at the consumer level, 4 core/8 thread has been the high end for close to a decade now, and the mainstream has been limited to 2/4 or 4/4. So software designers haven't really had more horses in the stable to run....my attempt at an analogy....


You really are saying that people have been running their machines with their CPUs tapped out and processor power has been holding back software developers?

I don't think this argument has a leg to stand on for the main stream user. Sure there are exceptions, but I think they are far from the norm.
 
I don't think this argument has a leg to stand on for the main stream user.

Mainstream users are totally different these days. It's been a huge regression. We have everyone so broke from buying an $800+ phone (plus service) and replacing it every time they drop it in the shitter or bounce it off the driveway concrete they are too tapped out to consider anything but the cheapest laptop or desktop if they even consider one at all.
 
I doubt Coffe Lake, Skylake-X, and Kaby Lake-X will have much if any launch delays....
 
Admittingly for 90% of the market, all those extra cores are worthless.

But here are some things that benefit from more than 4 physical processors:

Distributed Apps: folding at home (Although a capable GPU would be much better)
Compression / Decompression: 7 zip
Archiving/incremental Archiving : Most Backup Software
Heuristic analysis : Virus scanning
Multi client: VM machines/Web servers/Databases
Audio/Video Compression/Transcoding: Plex server & handbrake
Special effects & movie production: Maya, etc
Engineering: Solid works
Matrix reduction apps: Artificial Intelligence - Training phase
Compilers: Visual Studio
 
I just want a really kick ass CPU that will last me another 5-6 years and still be considered more than good enough.

So, Intel needs to deliver

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Admittingly for 90% of the market, all those extra cores are worthless.

But here are some things that benefit from more than 4 physical processors:

Distributed Apps: folding at home (Although a capable GPU would be much better)
Compression / Decompression: 7 zip
Archiving/incremental Archiving : Most Backup Software
Heuristic analysis : Virus scanning
Multi client: VM machines/Web servers/Databases
Audio/Video Compression/Transcoding: Plex server & handbrake
Special effects & movie production: Maya, etc
Engineering: Solid works
Matrix reduction apps: Artificial Intelligence - Training phase
Compilers: Visual Studio

I use a couple of those. VM's especially could use the upgrade. But, "Build it and they will come". Yes, if Intel comes out with that excellent mainstream (non-Extreme) CPU for $500 or less, I'd buy it.
 
You know what would be a nice response from Intel? Allow the Motherboard vendors to provide a BIOS that allows BCLK overclocking on Non-K chips (making the entire range of processors attractive to enthusiasts and it has been proven that with a Z170 board and Skylake processors the chips are pretty overclockable with the BCLK) and bring prices down a bit. Also with X299, don't make it as premium platform and price it along the lines of the Z270 line and offer a 4-core/8-thread processor as an entry to the platform with options to 6, 8 and 10 core processors.
 
Lot of interesting replies that fall under either "wish-fulfillment", "fear-mongering" or both.

What I mean is, I see a lot of either "why bother, Intel will crush them anyway" posts, which frankly is suspect in terms of people's motivations for posting those (does intel have paid shills to post comments in forums? I wouldn't accuse any one individual of it, but if they have as much money as people say, I wouldn't bet against it either, as this seems to be a common practice nowadays, especially if AMD has them concerned about losing market share).

And perhaps Intel could do it all again in screwing AMD, and just get another slap on the wrist while ruining AMD again. World is fucked up, so it could indeed happen.

However, I don't think it is likely and I think it is Intel's hubris that allows AMD to make inroads. A company never takes out a larger rival with a "why bother" pussy attitude. Intel will NOT be able to this time successfully pressure major brands from not carrying AMD (motherboard makers are already invested, and this was one of the first HUGE hurdles that happened when AMD launched the Athlon). AMD might not have the marketshare that intel has, but overall it is a larger market, and by the numbers there are enough AMD fans out there that any attempt to pressure brands to drop AMD will result in disappointing results for Intel, not to mention the Internet Effect, as such practices would be put on BLAST and travel quick - in this era of consumer activists boycotting quickly, Intel can't afford a negative anticompetitive streak to get out and confirmed in the net - because its one thing when it is enthusiasts like us who will always go for the better chip - the rank and file who do not build their computers and don't give a damn would possibly boycott Intel and buy AMD systems - and that is something Intel needs to think about. It's the ultimate chip in AMD's bag.

Shit, we already see shit like that with politics - Starbucks says they will employ 10,000 illegals, and their shares crater. Kellogs slams the President, and now because of a nationwide boycott they are having to perform layoffs and close plants. Unknown singer wears a "Make America Great Again" dress to the Grammys - mediocre album shoots from obscurity to #2 on ITunes.

People are fickle and weird - and Intel fanbois and shills can hate that all they want and bitch about it - but if Intel tries what they did in the past again, they risk a boycott on intel products that, while not outright killing them since their major $$$ are in the business market, could seriously fuck them up long term as consumer pressure could not only remove a significant cash flow, it could bleed into some businesses where if certain people either got caught up in the public enthusiasm for boycott or else don't want to risk public ire decide to go with AMD or another platform just to avoid any negativity about their own company.

That eventually could kill the giant. Not like immediately, but like an MMO where, some people still use it, its technically still active, but not as many people play it anymore and for the most part it is an afterthought in the public groupthink.

That's a very real possibility, and it is only hubris (intel's or their supporters) that would make someone think "Oh come on, that will never happen."

Tell that to Kellogs and Starbucks.
 
Keep in mind that AMD has APU's coming with Zen cores and their Radeon IGP stack coming.... I think replacement for Bristol Ridge. I get a little giddy thinking about what the $500 and under laptop market is going to look like soon.... my i5 Dell with crappo IGP will be on ebay soon I think.
 
CPU's are mostly irrelevant now so Intel doesn't really need to do anything drastic...I think Intels best move would be big price cuts...
 
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CPU's are mostly irrelevant now so Intel doesn't really to do anything drastic...I think Intels best move would be big price cuts...
Not going to happen, They will release their next product as schedule and spend money on heavier marketing and product placement with influencers. I do not see big price cuts.
 
At this point, it's still largely a non-issue for Intel for a couple of reasons:

1) The Ryzen chips atm compete against Intel's Extreme Edition chips, which are not in any stretch of the imagination, mainstream chips. Effectively both are being marketed to enthusiasts.
2) The cheapest Ryzen chip is cost competitive with the most expensive mainstream chip (i7-7700k), but outside of the Cinebench score (multithread), we're not sure (and based on clock speeds and the other i7-68/69xx chips it's unlikely) that on applications utilizing less than 8 threads (which is pretty much everything outside of rendering applications and a small handful of video apps) the Ryzen chip will not be speed competitive with the Intel chip. You can argue that in just a few years time we'll have apps that can use the extra cores, but I have a nearly 10 year old quad core Q6600 that says otherwise. I still have trouble finding mainstream apps, even ones that 'could' benefit from additional cores, using them. In just a few years time the market could be very different, so the future really doesn't matter.
3) Amd never left the retail market. They have been steadily been marketed in low/mid range machines right along.
4) There are currently no Extreme Edition chips from any of the major three (HP, Dell, Lenovo) OEMs in any of their machines. It's either a 4C i7 or a higher core Xeon chip. You'll only find the EE chips in boutique builders. Clearly not a focus for Intel.
5) Finally, the big one, AMD is going to have 1 million chips available for sale on the 2nd of March and at this point may of the major retailers are beginning to report being sold out. So, while it's going to be hard launch (probably), the bigger question is when is the resupply going to happen.

Personally, I really hope that AMD has a solid chip on their hands and can offer some real competition to Intel with it. The reality is probably going to be something else though, based on the nature of this release, their past history, where they are pricing them, and Intel's reaction so far. (Seriously? You don't think Intel doesn't have a handful of these chips and MB's already?)

A few more days and we'll see where the chips fall. :)

I couldn't agree more with your point #2. The expectation for more apps using more cores has been ongoing for so long (well, a long time in computer time I should say) that it's hard to believe the hype. Sure, 8 cores is super sexy to say.... I just know this, the Ryzen cores better be at or near the top of Tom's CPU Hierarchy chart to get my $$ (sorry Lisa Su).
 
if ryzen 1700 can run 8 cores at 65w, how much power would be needed to run 4 cores? 35w?
That would be a nice laptop cpu.

I'd love to see the market flooded with amd computers, and falling prices.
 
if ryzen 1700 can run 8 cores at 65w, how much power would be needed to run 4 cores? 35w?
That would be a nice laptop cpu.

I'd love to see the market flooded with amd computers, and falling prices.
Power does not scale linearly, plus a laptop CPU would likely be an APU. You won't see laptops with no integrated graphics. So far the 4 core CPU are rated at 65w as well.
 
People say that they don't care what happens because whatever happens, it will be good for customers. Are you even serious? That is true only in the short term. The rubbish tactics Intel used screwed everybody for more ten years. Intel is evil and even say that they used questionable legal practices is putting it lightly. They used illegal practices, otherwise the courts would not have found them guilty and their CEO even said that he was not sorry and would do it again. The fine was not even a slap on the wrist for Intel. They effectively killed AMD and even now it is questionable if AMD can still survive, especially if Intel is going to repeat what they did. They want AMD to just survive, barely breathing, keeping monopoly laws at bay.

They actually are glad AMD came up with a bit of spunk. They are not one bit scared. They have so much money that they can kill AMD in a second, but they will just suffocate them a little bit. They'll let AMD make a bit of money to recover a bit from bankruptcy.

I've read many people say that it was not Intel's bad practices that killed AMD, but their excellent technology. It is only true in a sense. People that say that have never run their own businesses. They do not even understand the word morale. I remember how I struggled to get customers Athlon motherboards and that was even before Athlon 64. Intel squeezed manufacturers with discounts and forbade them to manufacture motherboards. I bought Asus motherboards, but they came in white boxes, with zero logos on the box or the motherboard. Asus made these under the table. Intel's tactic worked and AMD did not make enough money to spend on RND etc. Not only that, they killed the morale at AMD and finished them off with Conroe. After Conroe, AMD lost confidence and enthusiasm. Now people say that AMD just did not have the technology. How absolutely ignorant of them.

Intel will not let AMD win this battle. This is sad, a sad state this whole stinking planet is in. People just do not know the evil these companies are capable of. People are generally evil and to think Intel will play nice, is just a fable.

Intel has sown a lot of evil and one day hopefully they will reap it. I really hope AMD survives this round though. They have produced a really great CPU.


Sounds like you consider them evil because you hedged a bet towards another company and lost.
 
Power does not scale linearly, plus a laptop CPU would likely be an APU. You won't see laptops with no integrated graphics. So far the 4 core CPU are rated at 65w as well.
Maybe maybe not
With stacked transistors power decreases very nicely with slightly smaller clocks and voltage.

So 4 cores might be 35 watts on an API. But that's a guessing game until product ships. So pontificating is useless
 
3 years? Try 5 years, my i7 3770K is still going strong and I don't feel the need to upgrade yet. Though those new AMD Ryzen do look nice.

4.2GHz 2600k reporting in.

This gen WILL be my upgrade gen--just waiting to see how Ryzen shakes the tree.

I'm a performance fanboy, so whoever wins that game (within reason--if it's 10% more performance for 50% more dollars forget it) generally has my ear.

If, however, Intel wins with only a tiny margin, I'll go AMD for the sake of promoting competition since I don't consider a 5% framerate drop to be a deal-killer.
 
I really want to upgrade. I'm waiting for a chip that makes me really want to buy it so I can see some big improvement. Without using the extra chipset features and going by raw CPU performance with my games and other things - my overclocked 2600K is handling itself just fine. If Ryzen gets Intel to up it's game a bit and release a faster, more core, CPU - then I'm all for it. If I could get a 8700K (or whatever) that can hit 5GHz with 6-8 cores (12-16 with HT), without the $1000 premium, I'd buy it. In a heartbeat. I'd be pulling out my wallet right now. I just don't want to pay $1000 for the CPU privilege (even then, I'd get the cores but not the speed). If AMD can bring the Intel Extreme CPU's to the mainstream market, then I'll take that as a win.

I just upgraded off an Ivy Bridge i5 to a i7 7700k, so I'm set for now. The extra cores would be lovely, so long as it can meet the performance of higher clocked quad. My daily use doesn't require more than 4 cores, but I will definitely go with a 6 core for my next upgrade. Probably 2+ years down the road. Whether it'll be Intel or AMD, who knows.

But ya, the prices of Intel's 6-10 core procs is way too much. It'd be great for them to drop in price and I can definitely see that happening. Just don't know if Intel will actually drop them a huge amount or if they'll just phase it out for the Skylake/Kabylake X procs.

I agree in principle, but at least for me, I'm not tapping what I have and no software that I use is pushing that boundary.

I know there must be some people out there who want a faster processor, or a cheaper one. But unless I need a new motherboard for some reason, I don't see a draw. ATM, I don't need it, and I don't really even want it.

But that is just me, everyone else has to answer for themselves.

And wants always trump needs, no one knows better than people like us :D

That's pretty much where I sit. I was fine on my Ivy Bridge i5 3570, but upgraded since my mobo was dying. I wasn't overclocked, so the move to a 7700K was a substantial upgrade. I don't notice performance increase, except the few times I reencode videos. That's like once a month kind of thing. Biggest things for me was more usb ports, move from msata to m2, and more SATA ports.

I can see myself going for 6 cores, since I feel they'll be in that $300 price point that I always aim at for a CPU.
 
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I don't think it is as simple as that. Remember that AMD owns the x86-64 license. If Intel chooses to revoke the x86-64 license in the event of a sale, AMD could do the same. So any company that purchases AMD has some leverage.

AMD64 is a subset of x86. It's true that the world runs on AMD64 but that doesn't mean shit when the contract is written in such a way that if it is punitive if broken. It'd be more akin to entering an impasse russian roulette style. AMD has said they are working around the restriction but obviously AMD has as much chance of making that a reality as Intel would allow a bigger fish to buy their lil pet project. Like they will ever allow that. lol
 
A KABILLIION dollar cpu company pushing storage is clearly lacking a timely response to AMD. This isn't a quick fix scenario. This is YEARS OF R/D AND PLANNING that they have not invested into keeping their product significantly better than a floundering competitor. Really no excuse why they don't have a significantly faster product, other than greed, and capitalism.
 
I'm still running my 2009 PC build. A AMD 1100t. No real reason to change it since it does everything I need to do. Runs windows 10 very well with a SSD and 970 gtx I can play everything I want to play when it comes to gaming. I would definitely throw some money to AMD for a new build though but I'll wait for a few months.

I'm still running my 2500k and a 680, but I think your cpu came out at practically the same time (Jan 2011 for me, I think the 1100T was the month before.).

It is really too bad they couldn't get their act together enough to have Vega come out at the same time. I really need to upgrade but am not sure if I want to wait until 2Q to make a decision to go AMD or Intel. Have to spend my tax refund before the rest of my family gets to it!
 
It is really too bad they couldn't get their act together enough to have Vega come out at the same time.

Ugh, not gonna harp on this but why is it that you convey this in a negative way? Like do you expect Intel to produce a top end gpu while simultaneously producing a top cpu as well (ignoring the fact that they cannot produce a decent gpu)? At 1/50th the R&D budget? Like wtf man that's asking a bit much.
 
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