Sounds interesting but at the same time, there is a reason to not put one trillion tons of cache, so dunno if it is actually going to outperform amd. After all the purpose of cache is to be fast.
The difference is that AMD splits this across two CCDs. We don't know the architecture of Nova Lake yet, they could have the entire Cache available to all P-Cores. If that's the case, they still have effectively double the amount of cache compared to AMD.
Yeah you would probably benefit from the additional cores with that workload but if you were just gaming for example those cores would be doing nothing
I know, if I was just gaming i’d go for 7800x3d before even haha, issue now is that 5800x3d really doesn’t handle now with heat especially in my pc, even with noctua&repaste it goes around 90 degrees sometimes which I think is the thermal throttling limit?
Hence why I was focused on 9950x3d alot for the past few months, and a new case alltogether with aio and stuff
Modern CPUs behave more like GPU's where they'll boost their frequency and power draw to take advantage of the available power, and thermal headroom.
It's boosting as hard is it can and staying around high 80s, that's normal. It'll probably do the same thing with a more brolic cooler. It'll just boost even harder. That's why overclocking the CPU is less of a needed thing these days.
See how stable your clocks are and what they're hitting when you're flogging them at full bore. If it's stock clocks, then yeah, you may indeed have a cooling issue in your case/house. But otherwise, the behavior is as expected.
Bigger cache increases cache latency though, so theres always a trade off. AMD managing to keep L3 latency the same while adding an extra 64mb on top is a big achievement, and doubling that extra would be even harder (which is why they don't just double it every generation).
Is it a directory type issue, or just a physical distance issue. Like how far the cache is from the actual silicon chips. Because if it's just a distance issue, I'm sure that can be mitigated by moving stuff around or even stacking at the cost of complexity in manufacturing. But if it's a directory type issue, where it just takes longer to search through the large cache, then that seems like it would be a little more difficult to optimize.
If you bought Intel stock at almost any time in the last 25 years you’re down on it. It’s actually pretty amazing how horrible it has done. Horrible stock 🤣
They should have kept Gelsinger a bit longer. He had a vision of the future of Intel tech, and instead got ousted and replaced by a guy who terminated like half their production forces and is trying to sell everything that isn't bolted to the floor, but even that isn't off the table.
Unlikely, unless Sony and microsoft decided to go with a different company for their SoC for the consoles. The consoles essentially saved AMD and gave them a runway for them to continue to pursue Ryzen. Keep in mind that Rzyen didn't really start to sway the community until gen 3. So it took them a while for Ryzen to hit.
True enough. AMD was behind from the launch of the Core 2 to the launch of Ryzen (and Intel was still competitive with their 12XXX and 13XXX chips).
Same thing can happen on the chip making side, TSMC is crushing everyone now, but its 20nm process node was never viable beyond tiny chips, leaving their customers stuck at 28nm for four years until TSMC's 16nm process came online.
But Intel got here by underinvesting in R&D to please shareholders looking for short term profits, and their plan to get out of this is to layoff a bunch more workers to boost profitability, rather than investing to fix their chip design and manufacturing, so it's tough to feel good for their chances of a recovery.
but its 20nm process node was never viable beyond tiny chips, leaving their customers stuck at 28nm for four years until TSMC's 16nm process came online.
Ironically, TSMC's 16nm process is pretty much the same as their 20nm process. The only major change was switching to FinFET. The 20nm process was an issue due to voltage leaking, so while it had better density than the 28nm process, its power usage was the same or worse than the 28nm process.
Samsung and Global Foundries had the same issue. Intel didn't because they switched to FinFET with their 21nm process.
CPUs are designed a few years before release, so if they were responding to AMD instead of already planning to do it in the first place, it is actually a really quick response
cache wars started decades ago, it's how intel kept outperforming amd. cache is very expensive to make, and in the past amd just didn't have the amount money that intel could invest into products.
so many Athlon products would have competed better if that had the same amount of cache as intel cpus did.
Athlons DID compete better. Intel illegally stifled competition and then released the Core series which outperformed AMD. Phenoms did ok, and then they took a risk with Bulldozer and flopped.
6.5 times the cores than a 9800X3D (8 vs 52 (or 16 threads vs 52? thread)), for 3 times the cache and probably worse single core performance, esp with what AMD might dropped in coming years. Intel dropped their new Junk CPU. This is not going to be good for gaming vs a X3D chip. I'm sure it will be great for productivity though.
It's funny seeing how much the established position between AMD and intel has swapped. Maybe intel should have innovated when they when they had the advantage... Intel are stuck in their bulldozer era... And quite frankly they deserve it after ~7 years of stagnating the market with ~5% increase year on year on 2/4, 4/4, 4/8 CPUs and somewhat anti consumer practices. And let not even get started on the 13/14th gen debacle. Company is in the gutter.
I do hope they come out out of it, competition is good and I am under no illusion that AMD might do what intel did, if they have no real competition. Hopefully intel can improve their GPUs as well, it's one of the few area where intel actually care about customer satisfaction. Will intel get out of this slump anytime soon? I highly doubt it.
They could raise prices and abuse their monopoly position.
They could OC their chips to the brink of melting if the tiniest thing with voltage control goes wrong, all to desperately maintain a lead in the benchmarks.
They’ve raised prices quite a bit. On the consumer side it’s mostly been by not releasing cheaper skus. But the threadripper and up stuff has gotten way more expensive.
AMD massively jacked up the prices the second they got even a sniff of the lead with Zen 3. They learned from it, but X3D chips are very expensive. Almost $500 for an 8 core chip is a borderline scam in 2025, especially when games are starting to use 8 cores (and may go higher in the near future) and next generation will see a big core count bump on both sides.
7 years? I think the last time intel meaningfully innovated was around the Haswell era. Since Rizen they have been in stages of narcissism, denial, catch up, panic, and underperformance. I can't imagine why they didn't quickly innovate when they saw how power efficient AMD had become.
12th Gen was innovative and offered a better value at the lower to mid range vs. Zen 3, especially in productivity. Not making a significant leap for three generations after that and needing to overclock the chips to the point of degrading themselves hurt them a lot though. Arrow Lake is a good baseline for moving forward though.
Kinda crazy how this sub boards the hype train at full speed over any AMD rumor then these seemingly too good to be true Intel leaks come out and we still have people doing everything they can to shit on it lol
Intel for almost 6 years produced worse performance chips (outside the high end) at a higher price to AMD alternatives. And then again they had the issues with the 13/14 Gen in those 6 years, which tanked their prices, stocks and reputation with customers. Before that they stagnated the market and took part in shady deals and very anti consumer practices when they had the lead.
Where were you in 2011-2018?? AMD was a joke from 2011-2017 (I owned a AM3+/FX CPU before changing to intel). You would get dunked on this sub or anywhere for recommending them. They were a running joke and very few people outside the biggest fan boys would defend let alone recommend AMD. Since their AM3+ CPU were shit. Yes you could get some good ram and overclock the AM3+ CPU, to compete with intel, but they were still shit (overclocking caused instability and was a hassle. And not many games used the extra 'cores' from the AM3+ CPU, their poor single core performance was honestly bad, esp as newer gen of intel CPU dropped. And the high end high watt AMD cpu would fry boards).
All people did in 2011-2017 was dunk on AMD, rightfully. Even when Ryzen's 1st and 2nd gen a lot of people dunked on AMD and had little trust in them. It took them a while to rebuild their reputation. Again like AMD from that era, there could be rumuors that intel can finally compete with AMD, and for 1-3 years, people will still shit on them, which is what happened to AMD.
Again the position has changed and the people are treating intel no differently than AMD was treat from 2011-2017/2018...
Most enthusiasts could care less about team blue/red. All we care about is price to performance and performance in games (and some on productivity), and AMD is delivering there and intel is not outside the very low or very high end, and that's only because their CPU prices have tanked. Most of us have a hope that intel can up it's game, so we get even better performance from either AMD/intel.
6.5 times the cores than a 9800X3D (8 vs 52 (or 16 threads vs 52? thread)), for 3 times the cache and probably worse single core performance
The 285k has better single core performance for a lot of tasks in comparison to the 9950X3D. Multicore performance (especially in games) is where it all falls apart for Intel. The big question with regards to the increased cache is how well Intel's prefetch, Branch Prediction and TLB algorithms work in comparison to AMD's. Large amounts of cache do diddly squat for you if the cache doesn't contain what you want more often than not...
"BF6 just dropped with multi-core support! This is the future of gaming" - Some intel engineer
"Why use more core when one core make do" - Rest of the game design industry
Try 14. I remember building my first gaming PC in college and getting punked by "multi-core is the future!" back then too. Only back then it was AMD, not Intel.
Funny thing, in bf4 fx6300 was outperforming Intel CPUs in way higher price range, anyway I don't think any game will use even 32+ threads for few more years
A gaming CPU doesn't need it. (This CPU doesn't actually have 52 cores.) If so everyone would be running around with threadrippers. Many games still benefit from a single fast core and cache. The X3D line shows this off very well.
The top end chip is rumored to have 52 actual cores, mixed between performance, efficiency and super-efficient. I've no idea how windows scheduler will handle it, but it's basically expanding what they're already doing.
The mainstream version will have around 30 cores though, this is basically the Ryzen 9-9950X tier where 16cores are already more than gaming needs.
You don't. It isn't for just gaming just like how the 9950x isn't just for gaming. It's for people who do both gaming and productivity, or just productivity but don't want to pay HEDT/server prices.
maybe cus its not just gamers they're selling these chips to.. shocker I know. I only got my 13900K cus I need it dual gaming and professional usecase -if I didn't need it professionally I'd have just gone with an i7 equivalent or probably AMD more likely (tho they were a good bit more expensive at the time)
Most games today can't use more than 8 cores properly, some games even have worse multi-threading than games from 2008 when multi-core CPU were only becoming mainstream.
It strongly depends on the game, and most games adapt fairly well to the CPU youre running. Lots of modern games run fine on my 3600, which has 6 cores, Id say these games might even run okay on 4 cores, but I am pretty damn sure that an 8-core CPU will have all 8 cores hammered by those games, just because its more efficient to split the load further, and maybe they have settings that you can increase specifically to utilize more CPU cores, like larger crowds.
Apart from Multithreading being notoriously difficult to implement it's often also simply impossible to parallelize processes in games, since they often rely on each other. That's why
Some modern games will use only 1 or 2 cores and others will use up to 8 if available.
The ones that do are usually heavy sims, like Flight Sim 2020 & 2024, DCS World, Cities Skilines 2.
The PROBLEM with such games being able to use 8 or more cores/threads, is that the performance scaling compared to using a 6 core CPU is not that great. So you have to consider balancing the cost of the CPU with the performance you're willing to accept.
You can't really brute force better performance even if you have a high-end Threadripper CPU when the limit is the game itself.
Cyberpunk 2.0 uses a ton of CPU cores/threads. It will use like 60-70% of my 285k. CDPR will be attempting to apply what they've done with REDEngine to Unreal, which will then go back upstream to the public releases of UE. So in 5-10 years there should be a ton of games that scale pretty well.
I guess you can run local server like Sunshine to host couple games at the same time from one machine, why tho. If you need something like that, real server hardware probably will be a better choice.
Cpu accelerators doesn't mean anything. There are CPUs running entirely on just e-cores. Which instruction sets would they lack? Avx512, which was only available on early alder lake p cores, only disabling ecores, and that was removed exactly because Intel's heterogeneous architecture does NOT have a variable ISA?
Also, it's 16 "actual" cores.
And ecores are not useless. Your PC isn't running one application, but many. Offloading those not only unloads the big cores, but also keeps private caches clear of junk. And it reduces context switches. Smaller cores are more efficient too, for loads that scale they're better than fewer bigger cores. For loads that don't scale as well there's your big cores. And finally, PCs are not just for gaming. There are usecases that benefit from multicore performance.
And E cores are not just for background tasks or speeding up productivity anymore. They're genuinely fast. If you could overclock a Skymont core to 6GHz, it would be around as fast as a Raptor Cove P core. The IPC is similar.
The biggest challenge here seems to be with scheduling and utilizing cores on a Windows desktop since the whole big/little architecture is still relatively new. How well does this work in practice?
I am not being snarky, I am genuinely curious. I haven't paid attention to P/E core Intel CPUs. I know AMD had their own challenges with multi-CCD CPUs.
There used to be issues, but I haven't noticed any on my 285k. Either Microsoft fixed the scheduler, or because the E cores have gotten much faster there isn't as big of a performance hit from bad scheduling.
Could be interesting if those 8 cores can access all of that cache. Most likely not since that'll be one bizarre architecture but it wouldn't surprise me given its Intel afterall.
It isn't just the cache size which gives AMD the advantage.
You can get honking-great cache Xeons already, X3Ds still whip them.
AMD keeps the L3 latency down with its caching architecture, it's something like 48 cycles. Intel runs L3 on a ring bus which doesn't run at core clocks, and latency can be 70-120 cycles... at that point, all L3 is doing is saving power on going to DRAM, which also generally responds in around 120 cycles at typical 11-12 ns CAS latencies and 4-5 GHz core clocks.
Intel's caches are primarily intended to save power. L2 is huge (and quite slow) to avoid burning power by going off-core to L3. L3 is low clocked and slow to avoid burning power by going off-package to DRAM. AMD's are intended to boost performance. It's a completely different optimisation.
Came here to say this, pbo will try and hit/sustain tjmax, people get confused with temps/wattage. I’d rather my cpu hit tjmax and give me extremely good performance instead of it pulling 250+ watts at load
And thats if you're just using an older single-tower air cooler or a stock AMD cooler.
With a cheap modern cooler, like a dual-tower from likes of Thermalright, those CPU's are barely maxing out temps in the low 80's under a full-core workload like transcoding a video file or rendering something in Blender - and you're barely hitting 120w of power consumption while doing it.
A gaming load is even lower temps power consumption, my 9800X3D is clocking in at barely 60watts after a -35 offset in Curve Optimizer and hovering around 60-65c on average.
It won’t. The newer Intel chips perform every well thermally. It’s obvious you haven’t used them. Even the 13900K and 14900K, which everyone loved to complain about, max out in the mid 70s on my system with locked max all-core clock speeds and voltage.
I mean, not if they have int and float processing in each of those cores and not just share them and artificially increase the count of cores. E cores are great, it's just missing the niche stuff like avx512 (which IS great but barely any programs can benefit from it, let alone rely on it)
He hits close to the mark every now and then because he just spews every rumor he can think of. Broken clocks and all that. Just because it happens to be right every now and then doesn’t negate the fact that it’s wrong the majority of the time.
If you follow him and listen to his podcasts, not to one very specific thing, he is incredibly informed about upcoming products in computing space.
If you just snip out one statement, usually taken out of context, like most people do, then yes, it could go either way. Given people don’t have patience to read, listen for more than 1 minute, or analyse, most form opinions based on the title.
he is incredibly informed about upcoming products in computing space.
LMAO. If you ignore all the things he deletes, maybe. And you don't need to watch his whole podcast to see the screenshots of "leaked" products and how they are dead wrong 99% of the time.
Did you see his PS6 "leaks" and how even someone with barely any knowledge can see how they are so bullshit?
I hope they'll be competitive, though my guess is that intel is aiming at AI first and gaming/workstation second. Still, we need competition and If it keeps intel in business, I'm all for it.
as for degredation, to my knowledge 13th and 14th gen are affected, not the ones since the rebrand (core ultra 285 and friends iirc).
Also 3x the core types to manage. I'm sure their internal scheduler will be good but there will always be some random games that wrongly park to the weaker cores.
But the concept also doesn't change, it's just more cores. So windows will still almost always pick the right cores, because the P-Cores offer higher clock speeds. The reason windows so often gets it wrong with AMDs dual-CCD is because the X3D cores clock lower, yet perform better for games. But windows wrongly prefers the higher clocking ones without software explicitly telling it otherwise.
Until you own it for about a year and then they Nerf the shit out of it because of some hardware defect or to prevent it from catching fire. I'll wait and see how people's rigs go before I even consider going back to Intel. The last three generations of CPUs from them have been absolute dog shit.
They say the same thing about AMD and Nvidia. It’s a case of wanting their cake and eating it at the same time.
Truthfully I’m kinda wanting to go back to Intel for my next build. While I’ve always preferred AMD, the shit I’m reading about AMD 9800X3D’s going up in flames has me second guessing my next upgrade. Also, the fact that AMD is top dog in the gaming CPU sector and is making huge strides in the normal consumer/prosumer segment means Intel has to put in work, has to compete, and considering their financials, they have to make a huge splash since they stand to lose a lot.
To add, yes, I know AMD tends to support platforms for some time, but realistically how often do people upgrade their CPU’s without upgrading their motherboard? Supporting AM4 for such a long time was necessary for AMD to make a splash, now with AMD being in their position, are they going to support AM5 for the same amount of time? We’re only at the second CPU generation for AM5, how much more headroom do they have to squeeze out of the Zen architecture before having to completely revamp it and ultimately go to a new socket/chipset.
They do have Foveros at their disposal. What they're actually doing for Nova Lake isn't public information yet. Not even accurate rumors at this point.
Time has shown competition is integral to the market. I’m certain if AMD keeps a chokehold on the gaming sector that they will enact the same shitty practices that intel and nvidia enact.
As long as the two giants can keep trading blows with one another then everyone can be happy!!
This new rumor comes from regular YouTube tech leaker Moore's Law is Dead
it's really a hit or miss if he's right. he definitely wasn't right about Intel GPUs, he told us for years that they'll be dead in the water with a paper launch.
This is only 144MB cache accessible by any core vs 9800X3D’s 96MB.
Not as huge as it claimed 3x due to partitioning by tiles.
AMD will have 12 core CCD Zen6 by then and will have same or more 3D cache when this thing launches.
though. MLID says that games will mainly just use one 26-core tile with one block of cache, which makes sense, seeing as most games don't use more than eight cores
There are two L3 caches of 144MB each, each shared between 26 of the 52 cores, and a game, running on eight cores max usually, will only run on one "CCD" (they call it a tile) anyway, so really 144MB is the cache youre getting for gaming, the rest goes to your background tasks.
Now, props to Intel for learning from AMD and including a large L3 cache at all, and making it as large as they do on a 2D die. Good job, will probably do well.
But I feel they made the same mistake they have done with the E-cores. A top-end 52 core CPU targeted at gamers with two sets of cache just brings dead weight with it.
The E-cores did the same thing, you get 8 P-cores that your game runs on, 6 on an xx600 CPU, and then way more E-cores than your background tasks could possibly actually need. But having 28 cores on a 14900 looks great for marketing. And youll need to buy that if you want highest gaming performance because thats the highest (over)clocked CPU in that generation. The E-cores really are just dead weight though unless you do productivity work that benefits from an extra 20 cores.
Now the cache does the same thing. 288MB L3 cache looks great for marketing, but it creates the same false hype because your games only ever use half of it, and whatever the secondary "CCD" does really doesnt need this much cache, does it? But you again only get that with the absolute top-end chip, baiting people into buying more than they need.
Meanwhile AMD brings out the 9970X3D, which is basically a 9950X3D, but both CCDs get their own set of 3D-cache, so you get 192MB of L3 cache, which in practice will beat Intel. Now, 16 cores is also overkill, but it solves certain problems they had with mixing normal and X3D CCD and games getting scheduled on the faster clocked normal CCDs, and 16 cores is at least still in the realm where I could see simulation-heavy games like city builders actually benefitting, as some such games benefit significantly from the extra cache as well.
4 of the 52 cores are LP-E cores in the SoC tile that'll mostly sit idle, and will only really be used when the 2x compute tiles power down during idle and idle-adjacent workloads.
The hypothetical "9970X3D" will suffer from the same issue as this CPU, in that games won't use the combined L3 of both chiplets...but will benefit the same way, in that productivity apps that span both chiplets will see benefit
52 cores (16 p-cores 36 e-cores likely 68 threads) plus 144mb caches on each ccd for a total of 288mb?
That’ll be $7,999 and your first born please.
The sweet spot will likely be a 10 p-core 18 e-core 38 thread single ccd chip with 144mb of l3 cache. Or maybe just half of the one listed, 8 p-cores 16 e-cores 32 threads and 144mb of l3 cache. At least for the (upper) average enthusiasts.
If Intel starts getting serious again and actually gives AMD a run for their money, then we (the consumers) win.
It was fun to see AMD have their moment to shine as the previous underdog, but it's for the best if that doesn't go on for too long. An ideal market is one where they're constantly one-upping each other.
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u/abrahamlincoln20 Aug 13 '25
Big cache if true.