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Intel announces a bunch of new CPUs
For gaming, the highlight is probably Rocket Lake. Take Ice Lake cores and Xe graphics and backport the architectures to 14 nm. As compared to Comet Lake, you have to decrease the core count from 10 to 8, and still have runaway power consumption. But that's Intel's effort at getting the highest single-threaded performance that they can. They've claimed that it beats a Ryzen 9 5900X in several gaming benchmarks. Barely, and by margins that make you wonder if the benchmarks were mostly GPU limited. The new CPUs are due to launch in the first quarter of this year.
They're also launching a new 8-core version of Tiger Lake for laptops. They're bumping the TDP up to 35-45 W, so if you want to play games on a laptop, this will be the fastest CPU you can buy. At least if you can buy it before Zen 3 comes to laptops, which may not be the case. Given AMD's large advantage in energy efficiency, I'd bet on a Zen 3-based APU being a far better buy once it's available. These will at least nominally launch in the first quarter of this year, though you likely won't be able to buy laptops that use them until sometime later.
Intel is also claiming that they launched Ice Lake Xeon last year. But no one noticed and you still can't buy them, nor will you be able to anytime soon. Oh, and they're also going to be really expensive and not remotely competitive with EPYC Milan. But still, they're kind of launched, for some sufficiently arcane definition of launched.
Finally, there's Jasper Lake for Chromebooks, using Tremont Atom cores. Intel claims this is the fastest CPUs for Chromebooks. Considering that AMD is pushing old Excavator cores for Chromebooks, using an architecture that they launched way back in 2015, Intel might be right about that, at least if you want x86.
They're also launching a new 8-core version of Tiger Lake for laptops. They're bumping the TDP up to 35-45 W, so if you want to play games on a laptop, this will be the fastest CPU you can buy. At least if you can buy it before Zen 3 comes to laptops, which may not be the case. Given AMD's large advantage in energy efficiency, I'd bet on a Zen 3-based APU being a far better buy once it's available. These will at least nominally launch in the first quarter of this year, though you likely won't be able to buy laptops that use them until sometime later.
Intel is also claiming that they launched Ice Lake Xeon last year. But no one noticed and you still can't buy them, nor will you be able to anytime soon. Oh, and they're also going to be really expensive and not remotely competitive with EPYC Milan. But still, they're kind of launched, for some sufficiently arcane definition of launched.
Finally, there's Jasper Lake for Chromebooks, using Tremont Atom cores. Intel claims this is the fastest CPUs for Chromebooks. Considering that AMD is pushing old Excavator cores for Chromebooks, using an architecture that they launched way back in 2015, Intel might be right about that, at least if you want x86.
Comments
I had hoped to hear more about AMD's GPU roadmap. The fact that they haven't really said anything is concerning. The best we've got so far is just "wait until April" from both camps really... but I guess that's just symptomatic of the entire silicon industry right now - consoles have been in perpetual non-supply, automotive makers are having trouble getting ICs as well, and I'm sure there are other industries and markets that are being impacted that aren't as high profile.
Well, at least we are starting to see OLED monitors for real now - it only took 20 years.
That's a quote from AMD's CEO.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16409/amd-ceo-dr-lisa-su-interview-on-2021-demand-supply-tariffs-xilinx-and-epyc
I'm not sure if that means that she thinks that we'll have widespread availability at MSRP starting around the middle of 2021, or if she has no clue what demand will be like for the latter half of 2021.
Then again, if we're talking about GPUs, then predicting availability depends heavily on predicting the price of Ethereum. And if you could do that reliably, you'd abandon hardware manufacturing and trade Ethereum instead.