Intel leaks show that next i7 may drop hyperthreading

[Greg S]

Rumor mill: Intel may be opting to drop Hyperthreading on future Core-i7 models and leaving the feature available only on its Core-i9 series. Although this move may not greatly impact performance, it is a slight to customers that have utilized the feature over the past several generations of processors.

As the launch of Intel's next generation of processors grows nearer, leaks are revealing more possible information quickly. The latest news comes from Chinese forum Coolaler that has been responsible for some of Intel's previous leaks. Although this information cannot be independently verified for obvious reasons, it at least seems believable.

First off, the Core i9-9900K is shown to have eight cores and 16 threads that can boost up to 4.7 GHz on all cores. For two cores, the i9-9900K may reach up to 5 GHz. Additionally, it could have 16 MB of L3 cache with a TDP of 95W. As noted in Things Intel Needs to Fix, the TDP rating may be a worthless statistic from Intel.

In translation, the first column of the table shows core count, thread count, stock clock speed, maximum boost clock, L3 cache, the boost frequency on a certain number of cores, and TDP.

Moving down into more affordable territory, the Core i7-9700K is expected to have eight cores but also only eight threads. If this turns out to be true, there will be some interesting comparisons between the six core i7-8700K with 12 threads and the 8C/8T next generation CPU. Physical cores are still worth more than Hyperthreading, but performance differences will be heavily workload dependent.

Intel is not really pushing anything too ridiculous by keeping the boost speed of the i7-9700K to 4.6 GHz on all cores and 4.9 GHz on only a single core. According to the leak, it is expected that Intel will keep the same 12 MB of cache as the i7-8700K despite gaining two more physical cores.

Lastly, the Core i5-9600K is expected to ship with six cores and six threads and badged with the same 95W TDP. A base clock of 3.7 GHz boosts up to 4.6 GHz on all cores. Cache remains at 9 MB, the same as the previous generation.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/75636-intel-leaks-show-next-i7-may-drop-hyperthreading.html

 

[Nima304]

If true, this is a bad move at a bad time given the new competition provided by AMD.

 

[ZackL04]

I dunno, makes sense to me. 8 cores at 5ghz will smash any second gen Ryzen in games.

I think Intel is letting AMD kinda take the threading market for now until they can compete gaming wise. Everyone knows intel is still gaming and enthusiest king

 

[BrianMontanye]

If true, this is a bad move at a bad time given the new competition provided by AMD.

Totally agree. That would be enough to lure me away from Intel.

 

[Peter Farkas]

Steve the Benchmark King will bring us the graphs. I won't say anything about this alleged leak until then...
))

 

[wiyosaya]

The only reason they are contemplating this is because of TLBleed. They have no silicon fix yet on the table, and do not plan to fix it, so the cheapest path forward is to turn it off instead of fix it. Yet another instance of sIntel sitting on its laurels and milking its customers.

https://hothardware.com/news/intel-no-plans-patch-tlbleed-hyper-threading-cpu-exploit

 

[ShagnWagn]

Techspot - article idea. It would be nice to see how much of a loss in performance there is in hyperthreading vs not hyperthreading.

I haven't used hyperthreading since they started releasing 4 cores. Unless you are running multiple VMs, it's pointless. For apps that only run on a single core you are losing performance. This also doesn't count for the extra calculations to split workloads between hyperthreads.

 

[hahahanoobs]

If true, this is a bad move at a bad time given the new competition provided by AMD.

Totally agree. That would be enough to lure me away from Intel.

Except Ryzen struggles to dominate over the i5 8600K in games. You also on occasion lose performance with HT.

Intel is STILL more than enough for 80% of consumers, and 80% of those people STILL don't need more than 4 cores, and Ryzen does not even come close to pressuring Intel in that market. Slower clocks, remember?

 

[kvorshk]

I dunno, makes sense to me. 8 cores at 5ghz will smash any second gen Ryzen in games.

I think Intel is letting AMD kinda take the threading market for now until they can compete gaming wise. Everyone knows intel is still gaming and enthusiest king

Man I hate to break this to you, but most pc users dont game and only game. Most of us that have 1400 dollar computers use them for something other than wasting time. No offense, but for as many games that I play its still a waste of time. Those threads they might be killing will kill Intel chips as a choice for productivity. Intel chips are having a real hard time keeping up with Ryzen for anything other than a game. They will lose hardcore in productivity now.

 

[kvorshk]

The only reason they are contemplating this is because of TLBleed. They have no silicon fix yet on the table, and do not plan to fix it, so the cheapest path forward is to turn it off instead of fix it. Yet another instance of sIntel sitting on its laurels and milking its customers.

https://hothardware.com/news/intel-no-plans-patch-tlbleed-hyper-threading-cpu-exploit

Great catch thanks for the link!!!!

 

[kvorshk]

If true, this is a bad move at a bad time given the new competition provided by AMD.

Totally agree. That would be enough to lure me away from Intel.

Except Ryzen struggles to dominate over the i5 8600K in games. You also on occasion lose performance with HT.

Intel is STILL more than enough for 80% of consumers, and 80% of those people STILL don't need more than 4 cores, and Ryzen does not even come close to pressuring Intel in that market. Slower clocks, remember?

Um you're falling behind in knowledge there. The sweet spot appears to be 6 cores and 12 threads for games right now. That is looking at multiple benchmark comparisons. And once again, gaming is far from the only reason to buy a PC. There are less PC gamers than PC users. You would do well to remember gaming does not drive the majority of PC sales.

 

[pcnthuziast]

Intel loosing ground with every release. I predict AMD is going to dominate 2019.

 

[Vulcanproject]

4.7GHz on all 8 cores boost speed is.....a lot. Presumably with decent cooling.

2700X can do what, 4.2 on a quality water loop?

9900k would be very fast with those boost speeds. Also very expensive no doubt.

 

[seeprime]

I dunno, makes sense to me. 8 cores at 5ghz will smash any second gen Ryzen in games.

I think Intel is letting AMD kinda take the threading market for now until they can compete gaming wise. Everyone knows intel is still gaming and enthusiest king

Man I hate to break this to you, but most pc users dont game and only game. Most of us that have 1400 dollar computers use them for something other than wasting time. No offense, but for as many games that I play its still a waste of time. Those threads they might be killing will kill Intel chips as a choice for productivity. Intel chips are having a real hard time keeping up with Ryzen for anything other than a game. They will lose hardcore in productivity now.

Intel may lose in actual performance. Consumers that are not computer enthusiasts, most of them, will continue to want a Core I-something, just because they're used to it. Most non-gamer consumers stay with Windows for the same reason. They're used to it, even if they complain about Windows 10. Even when showing them Linux Mint, which they think is Windows, they stay with it. Creatures of habit don't easily change.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Most non-gamer consumers stay with Windows for the same reason. They're used to it, even if they complain about Windows 10.

Yes we do.

 

[DelJo63]

I haven't used hyperthreading since they started releasing 4 cores. Unless you are running multiple VMs, it's pointless. For apps that only run on a single core you are losing performance. This also doesn't count for the extra calculations to split workloads between hyperthreads.

Hate to break it to you, but the USER doesn't control threading which is a prerequisite to hyper-T. An application does/doesn't implement threading and hyper-threading occurs when one thread waits and another is available to run.

 

[ZackL04]

Man I hate to break this to you, but most pc users dont game and only game. Most of us that have 1400 dollar computers use them for something other than wasting time. No offense, but for as many games that I play its still a waste of time. Those threads they might be killing will kill Intel chips as a choice for productivity. Intel chips are having a real hard time keeping up with Ryzen for anything other than a game. They will lose hardcore in productivity now.

Im not a gamer either. But I know that what they want is Intel

 

[ShagnWagn]

Hate to break it to you, but the USER doesn't control threading which is a prerequisite to hyper-T. An application does/doesn't implement threading and hyper-threading occurs when one thread waits and another is available to run.

To break to me that you don't quite know? Hyper-threading IS controlled by the user. It's enabled/disabled on each computer in the BIOS. You can also restrict apps to which thread to run on. You can see this in Task Manager by right-clicking the process and clicking Set Affinity.

 

[HardReset]

Those turbo clock speeds are probably either fake or apply to single unit only because https://www.extremetech.com/computi...quencies-making-motherboard-tuning-impossible

TDP is totally crap. Two cores more and higher clocks but same TDP? Well, perhaps TDP is same but power consumption is surely not.

4.7GHz on all 8 cores boost speed is.....a lot. Presumably with decent cooling.

2700X can do what, 4.2 on a quality water loop?

9900k would be very fast with those boost speeds. Also very expensive no doubt.

That 4,7 GHz is for very light loads only.

Ryzen has problem with crappy manufacturing tech, Zen2 resolves that problem.

 

[DelJo63]

To break to me that you don't quite know? Hyper-threading IS controlled by the user. It's enabled/disabled on each computer in the BIOS. You can also restrict apps to which thread to run on. You can see this in Task Manager by right-clicking the process and clicking Set Affinity.

AFFINITY says which core that task is to strictly execute on. If an application has implemented threading, and the user were able to enable/disable it, the application would not run properly. That's coding 101.

 

[ShagnWagn]

AFFINITY says which core that task is to strictly execute on. If an application has implemented threading, and the user were able to enable/disable it, the application would not run properly. That's coding 101.

Well if I have a 4 core CPU and have HT on, it shows 8 "cores" in windows. Hence I can pick and choose which Thread it should run on - not core. I have never had an application "not run properly" doing this, whatever you mean by that. Do you have any examples?

 

[HardReset]

Well if I have a 4 core CPU and have HT on, it shows 8 "cores" in windows. Hence I can pick and choose which Thread it should run on - not core. I have never had an application "not run properly" doing this, whatever you mean by that. Do you have any examples?

You can choose what core it runs. Basically process needs at least one physical core to run. It does not run on only logical cores.

Problem is to identify which cores are physical and which are logical. Windows 10 seems to treat logical and physical cores as equal.

 

[DelJo63]

Applications run on a core. When that application has threads, then they get dispatched on a core. Hyperthreads are an extension that allows the thread concept to extend into the kernel mode. One can have threading w/o HT. The task mgr is woefully inadequate to show threading. The Process Explorer by sysinternals
(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer) has a tab showing thread details.
attached is a stack from my email reader Thunderbird showing MANY threads (the TID column is Thread ID numbers)

 

[ShagnWagn]

Applications run on a core. When that application has threads, then they get dispatched on a core. Hyperthreads are an extension that allows the thread concept to extend into the kernel mode. One can have threading w/o HT. The task mgr is woefully inadequate to show threading. The Process Explorer by sysinternals
(https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer) has a tab showing thread details.
attached is a stack from my email reader Thunderbird showing MANY threads (the TID column is Thread ID numbers)
View attachment 84589

Of course everything runs on a core, otherwise it would be running on thin air. What I meant is you can limit it to a specific Hyperthread, not a generic "thread". My wording seems to be off compared to what you are referring to.

If Techspot would build an article and provide performance metrics that would be great.

 

[Evernessince]

Techspot - article idea. It would be nice to see how much of a loss in performance there is in hyperthreading vs not hyperthreading.

I haven't used hyperthreading since they started releasing 4 cores. Unless you are running multiple VMs, it's pointless. For apps that only run on a single core you are losing performance. This also doesn't count for the extra calculations to split workloads between hyperthreads.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hyper-threading-core-i7-980x,2584-8.html

The loss in performance for multi-threaded apps is significant. In essence, if you thought you were going to do video editing with those i7s, think again.

If true, this is a bad move at a bad time given the new competition provided by AMD.

Totally agree. That would be enough to lure me away from Intel.

Except Ryzen struggles to dominate over the i5 8600K in games. You also on occasion lose performance with HT.

Intel is STILL more than enough for 80% of consumers, and 80% of those people STILL don't need more than 4 cores, and Ryzen does not even come close to pressuring Intel in that market. Slower clocks, remember?

The i5 8600K is 4% slower than the 8700K in gaming as well so ryzen trading blows with it in gaming isn't bad at all. Suffice it to say, loosing in gaming by a small margin but winning in everything else is most certainly not bad. You are looking at an average of a 30% performance loss without hyperthreading, meaning the new i7s will be garbage for anything but gaming.

4.7GHz on all 8 cores boost speed is.....a lot. Presumably with decent cooling.

2700X can do what, 4.2 on a quality water loop?

9900k would be very fast with those boost speeds. Also very expensive no doubt.

All this assuming Intel is still using it's ringbus architecture for the 8 core processor. Intel has yet to make a single 8 core processor that uses ringbus precisely because it doesn't work well with increasing core counts. If Intel swaps to mesh, it's gaming performance won't beat Ryzen.

Those turbo clock speeds are probably either fake or apply to single unit only because https://www.extremetech.com/computi...quencies-making-motherboard-tuning-impossible

TDP is totally crap. Two cores more and higher clocks but same TDP? Well, perhaps TDP is same but power consumption is surely not.

4.7GHz on all 8 cores boost speed is.....a lot. Presumably with decent cooling.

2700X can do what, 4.2 on a quality water loop?

9900k would be very fast with those boost speeds. Also very expensive no doubt.

That 4,7 GHz is for very light loads only.

Ryzen has problem with crappy manufacturing tech, Zen2 resolves that problem.

Yeah something is going on with the TDP, as these processors are still coffee lake. You can't add two cores and up the clocks and not add power consumption and by extension, heat (TDP) on the exact same architecture. Even if Intel bases it off the base clocks only, the two extra cores should add another 20w. The 8086K got slightly better power consumption at the same clocks as the 8700K but that's the top of the line binned chips.