Intel Core i9-11900(k) + i7-11700(k/kf) 8c16t Rocket Lake Desktop CPU Benchmarks and Pricing Leaked: (Update #8)

[Bombastinator]

25 minutes ago, Medicate said:

Almost every Core-i 1100 chip seems to be better value than any AMD chip now, unless Rocket lake has some extreme performance issues. Also Intel should have better availability which is atm the most important factor in real world pricing.

I provisionally agree.  Supply and demand is in fact a thing. And demand is up while supply is down. It’s a pretty effective 1 2 punch.  I’m not so sure about the value thing.  A lot of it has to do with where you’re at pricing level wise.  Is anything 4/8 going to be capable of gaming at all?  No one knows afaik. This makes even 6/12 chips a possibly iffy prospect at higher price points.  The only stuff that is more or less guaranteed to work is 8/16 or more. And the only things that do that on the intel 11 series list are the i9s. Is a $600 8/16 11900 going to be more game capable than a $360 3700x?  It will run its 8/16 faster for sure, but is it speed you can really use?  AMD retail chip prices have been shooting through the roof though.  3700xes are thin on the ground these days and they don’t sell for $360 anymore even though they clearly could. 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This makes even 6/12 chips a possibly iffy prospect at higher price points.  The only stuff that is more or less guaranteed to work is 8/16 or more.

That is simply not true. No game on the market right now has any problems running on a 6c/12t CPU. Plenty of reviewers pointed out at the time of the 5600x and 5800x release that there is no point at all in getting the 5800x for gaming as there were zero benefits. Even a 4c/8t Cpu on a modern architecture and/or high clock speeds is still a very good gaming CPU. There is nothing "iffy" about them.

[porina]

32 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Is anything 4/8 going to be capable of gaming at all?

For sure it will, for years to come. Now, if you want high end performance, that is another matter, but someone with a quad core wouldn't be going for that.

 

Also look at the Zen 3 reviews when it came out. Hardly any difference between 6 and 8 cores. Maybe more future games will start to make better use of 8 core+ models but I don't see 6 core being insufficient for high (not necessarily top end) performance for at least another couple years, probably much longer.

 

Turning it around, when did dual cores drop out of fashion? The performance difference between dual core and quad core, is much bigger than going from quad to 6. 

[tim0901]

4 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The number I’m seeing given the data sheet that had VAT included was closer to or above €700 not €600. The VAT excluded numbers are a good deal lower.  Below €500 fairly often.  I don’t know what percentage VAT is.  The implication is VAT is near or over 20% which seems high to me.  The take home seems to me to be that the chip is going to be extremely expensive retail compared to other 8core chips by either manufacturer, which used to retail well below $500.  Assuming a 10% tax, a $500 item would be effectively $550. For it to be $700 the tax would be 30%. That’s a lot of sales tax.  Something doesnt look right to me.  We will know what we will know when they actually get sold I guess. 

20% is the VAT rate in the UK, and it's a simlilar rate in the rest of Europe (17-27% depending on the country). We have a high tax rate compared to the US.

 

But another common occurance is for companies to simply translate prices in USD directly into GBP/Euro, so your $1300 product (pre-tax) is often sold in the UK as a £1300 product (inc-tax).

 

But of course those prices don't work out as being remotely equal. Going by today's exchange rate, £1300 is roughly $1776, which is equivalent to a 36% increase over a $1300 price tag - not the 20% you would expect to see from tax. So not only do we get a big tax rate, but we also get a significant mark-up on the products themselves. This is why some products make far more sense to buy in the US than in Europe, because we just get fucked over big time by the pricing. (All of this has been a thing for years and isn't Brexit/covid releated.)

 

So all that taken into account: these prices don't look far off, but you can't use EU prices to determine US prices. I can't see Intel raising prices as they just aren't in the position that they can afford to do so without hemorrhaging even more marketshare. At worst I think they'll stay put, or potentially shuffle a few skus in the middle by $10 or so. Justifying a price increase at the same time as a decrease in core count isn't something that I can see Intel wanting to try. My guess is that they'll give a price reduction for the SKUs losing some cores (11900K etc) but leave the rest more or less alone.

 

I agree though that the value proposition looks better than AMD's at the moment - the 11600KF especially looks to be in a position to kill off the 5600X. Intel's touted 19% IPC uplift should push it past the 5600X in performance (5600X is ~15% faster than the 10600K) but even a 10% uplift would be enough that AMD's chip - costing ~35% more than Intel's here in the UK - would lose most (if not all) of its appeal. Provided of course that the prices dont change at all - if prices do go down then AMD's in real trouble.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, Medicate said:

That is simply not true. No game on the market right now has any problems running on a 6c/12t CPU. Plenty of reviewers pointed out at the time of the 5600x and 5800x release that there is no point at all in getting the 5800x for gaming as there were zero benefits. Even a 4c/8t Cpu on a modern architecture and/or high clock speeds is still a very good gaming CPU. There is nothing "iffy" about them.

No game on the market has any trouble running on 4/8 either.  It’s all totally speculative.  3/6 would probably work well too as games out now were written to run on jaguar2 and it was what is now quite slow 6/6. 6/12 could very possibly be fine. It’s got a much better shot I think than 4/8.  It might wind up having some of the same issues as fast 4/4 does now though.   A 9100f is technically a much faster chip than an OCed 3770k, but there is some newer stuff that will still run on an OCed 3770k that a 9100f has trouble with. 
 

I want to see personally how badly my current box will run Cyberpunk 2077.  The way I hear it jaguar2 is basically inadequate for it.  I’ve got a 4770k@4.0ghz which should be just about a 4790(no k) which I hear tell will do 1080p low at usable if unimpressive framerates.  

Edited January 20, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Loote]

20 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

No game on the market has any trouble running on 4/8 either. 

Nah, I think I've seen examples of 4/8 doing decent framerates but with micro stutters, or even 6/6 and 8/8. Here is a recent vid from Hardware Unboxed that shows couple 6/12 CPUs and 10900k next to them, basically proves your theory that 6/12 is currently capable of running anything. I will add that imo 8/16 is the way to go for the future, but that means maybe couple games that work much better on 8 cores in 3 years.