I do not think they need 500 extra pins for power delivery. Would CPU with this configuration have use for 3 memory channels? I guess so. Would it be possible to squeeze few more PCIe lanes or direct SATA/USB like Zen has? Sure. While I see good reason to bash intel for new socket with every generation, this time new socket may be justified by benefits it provides.

While i hope to reuse my current MB for an zen3 chip, for the generic market, like 99% of people, a motherboard and a cpu last long. When is time to upgrade, whatever cpu is compatible with a long lasting motherboard is likely too slow. If you bought a ryzen first gen, when that is an old platform, it will also be the 3x00 series. The new socket is a problem is a topic that is valid just for the people that like to jump at every small perf increase, likely a very few that do not justify any kind of attention from intel. I like to bash them too, but i realize is not really important.

Would be nice if this was 7nm and supported DDR5 RAM and PCI-E 4.0

asturur:

While i hope to reuse my current MB for an zen3 chip, for the generic market, like 99% of people, a motherboard and a cpu last long. When is time to upgrade, whatever cpu is compatible with a long lasting motherboard is likely too slow. If you bought a ryzen first gen, when that is an old platform, it will also be the 3x00 series. The new socket is a problem is a topic that is valid just for the people that like to jump at every small perf increase, likely a very few that do not justify any kind of attention from intel. I like to bash them too, but i realize is not really important.

That's a pretty superficial analysis. There are many benefits for inter-compatibility of CPUs and MOBOs: - Same socket for longer means if your MB breaks, you can still buy a replacement brand new and maybe even with better features, for longer - Upgrade path: not everyone buys the best CPUs right off the bat - you could buy a 4 core processor now and then upgrade later while maybe even getting better deals due to waiting and/or going used market - check sandy bridge, it was viable until a few years ago, even though it's almost a decade old, and it was quiet cheap and easy to setup. So no, not the majority of people just buy a new CPU and MOBO - many people look for upgrades or replacement parts, and depending on the platform that may be easy or a complete nightmare.

Maybe this is simply how Intel is labeling the CPU's going forward? So 8 cores, 8 threads plus one GPU? The big little concept seems a bit weird in these power envelopes since we know from AMD you can fit 16 cores in a 105w TDP. Thats only going to get better on the new nodes. I am very skeptical of big little in anything over 45 watts.

So many sockets...:\ Why can´t Intel simplify things like AMD is doing with a socket for mainstream CPUs and another for "server" ones...

big little for desktop? sounds like they are realistically planning ahead to work around their current situation if it were to last for longer than what they would hope by that i mean a 10900k-type fire hazard bundled with a more reasonable laptop chip so they can avoid looking like AMD with its 5ghz FX thingy that came with a water cooling unit that way they can maybe keep claiming best gaming cpu while not burning up your rig on idling browser tabs, having a chip that runs at desktop-like perf while also capable of running for 10 hours on a laptop(4900hs) is what true progress looks like tho

EspHack:

big little for desktop? sounds like they are realistically planning ahead to work around their current situation if it were to last for longer than what they would hope by that i mean a 10900k-type fire hazard bundled with a more reasonable laptop chip so they can avoid looking like AMD with its 5ghz FX thingy that came with a water cooling unit that way they can maybe keep claiming best gaming cpu while not burning up your rig on idling browser tabs, having a chip that runs at desktop-like perf while also capable of running for 10 hours on a laptop(4900hs) is what true progress looks like tho

If that is true AMD will slaughter them on anything that doesn't run off a battery. Which is why I tend to think if this is true the reported TDP's and uses are limited to laptops and smaller portables if any of it is even true at all.

ToxicTaZ:

I would wait for second generation H6 LGA 1700 socket PCIe 5.0 with DDR5 and USB-4 16 cores Intel Meteor Lake (13th gen) is 7nm+ ......"Intel Alder Lake Refresh" Just like Rocket Lake gave PCIe 4.0 to H5 LGA 1200 socket PCIe 4.0 board. Intel Meteor Lake will bring PCIe 5.0 to the H6 LGA 1700 socket PCIe 5.0 with DDR5 and USB-4.

I'm still curious ho the LGA 1200 board with 16 pci lanes from the comete lake cpu will support the rocket-lake that has 20 lanes. Using the `gave` here seems premature. Let's see what happen.

Ricardo:

That's a pretty superficial analysis. There are many benefits for inter-compatibility of CPUs and MOBOs: - Same socket for longer means if your MB breaks, you can still buy a replacement brand new and maybe even with better features, for longer - Upgrade path: not everyone buys the best CPUs right off the bat - you could buy a 4 core processor now and then upgrade later while maybe even getting better deals due to waiting and/or going used market - check sandy bridge, it was viable until a few years ago, even though it's almost a decade old, and it was quiet cheap and easy to setup. So no, not the majority of people just buy a new CPU and MOBO - many people look for upgrades or replacement parts, and depending on the platform that may be easy or a complete nightmare.

People that look for replacement parts or look for a deal in used parts are few compared to the majority that just buy a whole ne desktop/laptop. That is true. The motherboard swap problem does not hit their market, at most it barely scratch it. I'm not saying i'm not happy for my long lasting AM4 motherboard, after my long lasting x58 platform. I'm saying that from a selling point of view, the people that gets angry for this are very few. Enthusiast will change anyway, uneducated consumers will change everything anyway. Making long lasting motherboards for them is an effort with very low returns.

Finally! I've been wanting something like big-LITTLE for x86 for years. This isn't exactly the approach I'd have wanted (I'd rather have a set of high-frequency with short pipelines, and a set of low-frequency with long pipelines) but this is a good step in the right direction. Whether there really needs to be 8 cores for low power tasks though.... I'm not so sure. That seems a bit overkill. Even ARM doesn't do 8 low-power cores, and their low power cores are computationally inferior. This is one of the few cases where I'd give Intel a pass for a new socket. This is an architecturally different approach. Socket 1200 is total crap though and completely unnecessary.

schmidtbag:

Finally! I've been wanting something like big-LITTLE for x86 for years. .

I just don't get the point of big.LITTLE for desktops. Laptops yes, but desktops? All that extra silicon and complexity to save a few watts? Current CPUs already clock down pretty aggressively in low power tasks.

Stairmand:

I just don't get the point of big.LITTLE for desktops. Laptops yes, but desktops? All that extra silicon and complexity to save a few watts? Current CPUs already clock down pretty aggressively in low power tasks.

Well that's why I said I don't like their approach. I agree that having efficient cores and power-hungry cores for desktop is kinda pointless, but, I think the idea of 2 sets of cores with different capabilities (but otherwise similar power consumption) would make for a much better overall CPU. Servers, workstations, and PCs dedicated to gaming (and nothing else) wouldn't need such a thing; they're better off having all cores be exactly the same. But for home, office, and general-purpose PCs, having 2 sets of cores would be very beneficial to maximizing performance and efficiency.

ToxicTaZ:

AMD AM4 is end of life.... AMD Zen 3 (4000 series) is the last AM4 support. AMD AM5 is PCIe 5.0 with DDR5 USB4 to vs Intel Alder Lake H6 LGA 1700 socket. It's basically battle of the Sockets that's coming!!!... AMD AM5 socket vs Intel H6 LGA 1700 socket

A little presumptive, we dont really know if amd is going to do a clean switch, am2-am3+ were electrically compatible for the most part, which led to some odd boards that could support athlon64 x2 all the way to bulldozer , provided you have the correct memory installed (ddr2 or ddr3)

schmidtbag:

Well that's why I said I don't like their approach. I agree that having efficient cores and power-hungry cores for desktop is kinda pointless, but, I think the idea of 2 sets of cores with different capabilities (but otherwise similar power consumption) would make for a much better overall CPU. Servers, workstations, and PCs dedicated to gaming (and nothing else) wouldn't need such a thing; they're better off having all cores be exactly the same. But for home, office, and general-purpose PCs, having 2 sets of cores would be very beneficial to maximizing performance and efficiency.

Today. Efficient vs. Power Hungry is function of clock. Intel's chips are still power efficient at around 3.5GHz, but they are thermal nightmare at 5GHz. AMD has chips which have good Power efficiency even at 4GHz, start to be bad at 4,3GHz and 4,5GHz is just pointless waste of energy. (And require quite some unseemly voltage to get there.) And since we are in situation where 10% performance sacrifice (lower clock) can result in half power consumption, some extra power efficient cores are not needed. And from overclocking perspective, they are even obstruction. As there is good chance they will need separate power delivery and voltage control. BIOS complexity and number of values to check and tune will be unpleasantly high as every such value can be source of instability. Then again, My experience with Atoms is sufficient to dislike intel's small, low IPC, low clock cores. Sure, they had ability to idle at 2,5W. But 2,26GHz under full load on 4 cores equaled to 11W and performance was still mediocre at best. What do I need extra weak cores on desktop when I have SMT/HT available which prevents OS being choked by game? If we have not had very affordable 8C/16T chips, I could see benefit. But wait time for data processing in SMT/HT will be shorter than on fully free weak core. And then comes the caching. Like L1 architecture = easy, it just works (nVidia TM style). But what about L2, L3? When data have to go from slow core to fast, will it take longer than switching from one fast core to another? Or will they have linux-like ability to keep threads on same core instead of them being switched around like crazy? (Windows needed that behavior long time ago.) If we went to make list of all that can go wrong for gaming PC or latency sensitive applications, we would surely conclude that we do not want those weak cores at all.

asturur:

While i hope to reuse my current MB for an zen3 chip, for the generic market, like 99% of people, a motherboard and a cpu last long. When is time to upgrade, whatever cpu is compatible with a long lasting motherboard is likely too slow. If you bought a ryzen first gen, when that is an old platform, it will also be the 3x00 series. The new socket is a problem is a topic that is valid just for the people that like to jump at every small perf increase, likely a very few that do not justify any kind of attention from intel. I like to bash them too, but i realize is not really important.

Small performance increase? I manage to more than double my computing power from my 1800X to my 3950X - double the core count as well as a substantial IPC increase. This isn't like the old days, when a 1% improvement was enough for a new generation of Lake chips.

@Fox2232 Did you not read the post you quoted? Pretty much everything you said there is why I'm saying I don't want low-power cores in a desktop, but rather, equally powerful cores but at different types of tasks. I agree with pretty much everything you're saying but I think you're misinterpreting me. Though, I do think a traditional big.LITTLE design would be good for mobile devices (and again, home, office, or general-purpose PCs).

schmidtbag:

@Fox2232 Did you not read the post you quoted? Pretty much everything you said there is why I'm saying I don't want low-power cores in a desktop, but rather, equally powerful cores but at different types of tasks. I agree with pretty much everything you're saying but I think you're misinterpreting me. Though, I do think a traditional big.LITTLE design would be good for mobile devices (and again, home, office, or general-purpose PCs).

Even if Intel manages do to big.LITTLE correctly, MS will just screw it up anyway..... Modifying the scheduler to send the correct threads to the correct cores is not something I think MS is capable of doing... They're already having a hard enough time releasing an update for Windows 10 that doesn't cause major issues.... Why give them something else to botch???

I feel that by the time this socket 1700 is released AMD will be capable of offering 16 equally powerful Zen 4 cores as a "Ryzen 5", while having 24-32 on the "Ryzen 7-9", all these on mainstream platform. And each one of them will be 30% faster than existing Zen 2 cores, all running on 5nm TSMC, no "little" ones, while Zen 4 Threadripper will have 64, 96 or 128 of the same powerful cores. Intel might be slightly faster in some "gaming scenario", running everything on low on RTX 3080 Ti in a 3 year old game, while obviously losing hard in everything else. It will be nice to watch Intel being the loser for a few years ;-) Perhaps they finally wake up... I still remember the Athlon 64 days and how it roflstomped all over Pentium 4. Can't wait to see that happen once again. But ... I'll be much older when it does.

ToxicTaZ:

I guess you got your wish with Intel H5 LGA 1200 socket platform with broken PCIe 4.0 (Comet Lake and Rocket Lake) fill in for bad yields on 10nm Ice Lake desktop. Unfortunately for you Intel is getting ready in the background with the H6 LGA 1700 socket (10nm++ Alder Lake and 7nm+ Meteor Lake) on brand new architecture like you remember what huge leaps "Intel Core 2" was!....that's what Intel Alder Lake is all about!.... Sure Zen4 5000 series AMD AM5 PCIe 5.0 with DDR5 USB4 WiFi-6E goodness on 5nm....is coming....but not enough to take on Intel new next generation Golden Cove cores will double Sky Lake IPC and Ultra high yielding 10nm++ & 7nm+ I'm personally waiting for i9 Intel "Meteor Lake" for my next RIG build 😎

I've read twilight fan fiction that's more believable than this.