Originally Posted by
Condottiere 40K
Advanced Micro Devices has incredible momentum, and apparently already has the next generation ready for production, which would remain on the AM4 socket, and unlikely to increase the number of cores, theoretically available for sale by the fourth quarter of this year.
Whether or not they'll bother doing so remains up in the air, since for the next three years Intel won't even be in competition; the Wuhan virus is also likely to push back any technological schedules by a season. The real driver for gaming performances will be the new consoles by Sony and Microsoft, whose innards are basically going to eight core/sixteen thread Ryzens and Navi graphic cores, which means any new games are likely going to be optimized for mid range Ryzen Fives, which would be the general answer to any question regarding as to how many cores you're likely to need for the next five years or so.
I doubt that new Ryzen generations are going to be cheaper nor budget orientated, since with sixteen core desktop and sixty four core Threadripper high end, Advance Micro Devices clearly enjoy the lead in halo products. Anyone interested in budget variants can purchase previous generation Ryzens, that are clearly more than capable of fulfilling most user requirements, and there already is a production line to upscale previous fourteen nanometre Sixteen Hundreds to twelve nanometres, so as each process becomes superceded, could use that now spare capacity to manufacture last year's models more efficiently and cheaper.
Long term, the real prize is the server market, that the increasingly insecure Intel architecture will eventually force wholesale defections from their loyal customer base.
Right now, the battle ground is going to be for the lucrative laptop space, as the current iterations of low power Ryzens are now within spitting distance of Intel performance, and combined with better pricing and Intel production crunch, leaves a large gap to be exploited; if the Ryzen chips hit five nanometres (presumably end of next year) before Intel can retool to seven nanometres (scheduled Twenty Twenty Two, knock on wood), they could easily lose half the market.
As has been said before, no purchasing manager will lose his job for buying Intel, but that's because very few members of a company board or chief executives understand this technology.
There's no point future proofing your personal computers, since Advanced Micro Systems have the bit between their teeth and will push their current technological advantage for all it's worth, giving priority to the Epyc server chips, and with Ryzen Four, move on to socket AM5, that will allow a greater number of cores on the desktop, presumable thirty two, DDR5, USB 4.0, and maybe PCIe 5.0 beginning Twenty Twenty Three.
Intel is far from out, since if all else fails, they have more than enough money to buy out every start up technological firm in existence, and hope that with this new portfolio, they'll find something to catch up.
Or, like IBM, move on to greener pastures.