Should AMD be worried? Intel’s new Skymont E-cores are CRAZY strong
Intel’s new Skymont E-cores are “on-par” with their Raptor Lake P-cores!
I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect much when Intel revealed their new Skymont E-Core for Lunar Lake. After all, it is the P-Cores where all of the performance is at. To say the least, I was wrong. Intel’s new E-cores are strong, especially on desktop platforms.
Below, we can see that Intel rates the IPC of their new E-cores as being “on par” with Raptor Cove. In fact, they are 2% ahead on average. For context, Raptor Cove is Intel’s P-core architecture for Raptor Lake. Yes, Intel’s new E-cores are better than their current-generation Desktop P-cores.
In reality, Intel’s Raptor Cove P-Cores can scale to higher performance levels than their Skymont E-cores. However, they do require a lot more power to do so. Even then, they don’t get that far ahead. At most power levels, Intel’s new E-cores can deliver much more performance than Raptor Cove. That sets up Intel’s next-generation Arrow Lake CPUs to have a lot of E-core performance to tap into.
With Intel’s new E-cores, Arrow Lake should deliver a huge boost in multi-threaded CPU performance for Intel. After all, their new E-cores are on-par with today’s P-cores in many aspects. That sets up Intel for success with Arrow Lake, which is due to launch in Q4 2024.
At optimal parts of the power performance curve, Intel can deliver 1.2x the performance of Raptor Cove with the same power, or the same performance with 60% of the power. That sets up Intel’s next generation of desktop CPUs to be more performant and power efficient than their predecessors.
With Skymont, Intel E-cores can no longer be considered “weak cores”. This makes us wonder if Intel has plans for any all-E-core processors for the lower end of the desktop CPU market. It also makes us wonder what the multi-threaded capabilities of Arrow Lake will be. After all, it’s E-cores are on part with last-gen P-cores, and their new P-cores will be stronger.
You can join the discussion on Intel’s new Skymont E-cores on the OC3D Forums.
