Do you know, what advantages/improvements will the Rocket Lake has over the Comet Lake? Other than the PCIe 4.0 support.
The best overview I've seen is
here, but again much can change and nothing is 100% confirmed. PCIe 4.0, four extra PCIe Lanes (which is why some of the M.2 ports are labeled "CPU" on the Z490 boards, even though they don't go to the CPU with Comet Lake), Integrated Xe Graphics, double the DMI connection to chipset, and a few other niceties seem to be what's on offer. But Rocket Lake looks like it will
still only be a 14nm part! So the only real question is... will it be a
back-ported Willow Cove architecture, or will it just be another Skylake part? Some of the leaks say "New Processor Core Architecture" but that could just be marketing.
Even with a new micro architecture like Willow Cove, it will still be at a major deficit to AMD's parts in terms of power efficiency, which is why I'm assuming these boards have such enormous VRMs. An 8-core Willow Cove part on 14nm might be an enormous power hog, because cache sizes and other things will go up with the new core. Reports say that Rocket Lake will
only go up to 8 cores even though they will come later on the same socket as the 10-core Comet Lake parts. That will be an interesting challenge for Intel's marketing to sell to customers...
And, I wonder, as there is a big price hike from the Z390 to Z490 mobos, Z590 Rocket Lake stuff (or whatever name it will be called) will probably be even more expensive.
Who knows what
Z590 or Z495 or whatever small board refresh they call it would bring. Maybe USB4? Regardless it doesn't seem like there's much more to do with the LGA1200 socket until Rocket Lake comes out. Maybe things will be cheaper by then because of competitive pressure.
It is interesting that with stiff competition from AMD, Intel is not dropping prices but instead raises. Perhaps it is not Intel's wish but the price increase is due to various board manufacturers?
I don't see Intel raising pricing, in fact it seems to be the opposite. For the price of a 9700K you can get a 9900K equivalent (10700K). The top tier of chip has stayed the same price (9900K vs 10900K) but you get more cores and often the bonus of HyperThreading almost through the entire stack. The only place where this seems not to be true is in the i3 space, where i3s are more expensive than 8th and 9th gen parts, however you now have 7700K equivalent performance in an i3. That's pretty nuts.
However, that doesn't mean the 9th Gen chip will drop a lot in price. Part of the reason Intel changes sockets so often is so that they don't have competition from older chips like AMD has with AM4. When Zen 2 chips came out, Zen+ chips cratered in price. Intel chips don't seem to do that, because if you're on a Z390 motherboard, guess what? It's 9th (or 8th) gen or bust. No soup for you.
If we do see major discounts on 9th gen parts, it will clearly be the better deal. Motherboards will be $100 less, and you really aren't losing anything versus Comet Lake. It's only when Rocket Lake comes out that it might make sense, and by that time maybe you will want a Z590 board and buying Z490 to have an upgrade path later was foolish.
This, to me, seems like a stalling tactic by Intel. They need new stuff for them and their partners to push. They will drop prices on the new line of chips, and be marginally more competitive with AMD. But late this year if Rocket Lake comes out with only up to 8 cores, and AMD is pushing 12- and 16-core Zen 3 parts... it could be a bloodbath.
