kougarIntel will have to respond to Zen 3's launch in some fashion, so new SKUs in the works wouldn't surprise me.
lehpronThat's what Rocket Lake is for, especially if it turns out it has Willow Cove cores instead of the long rumored Sunny Cove cores. Sunny Cove and Zen 3 would have had about the same IPC, it would have made AMD look good and Intel look bad if that's all Intel could muster. Willow Cove ought to boost ahead by around 7% IPC along with frequency gains of their 14nm++ process. It could give them some breathing room before Zen 4 arrives to raise the core counts again, and then bring Alder Lake.
sparetimepcI bet you will see a pcie 4.0 chip from intel before the end of the year to go along with the Z490 boards.
HogglesparetimepcI bet you will see a pcie 4.0 chip from intel before the end of the year to go along with the Z490 boards. I would think Intel would go right to PCIe-5.0 and skip 4.0 personally. The window between 4.0 and 5.0 was really short and if Intel's goal is to beat AMD they would be better off trying to push out 5.0 rather then try to catch up to AMD on 4.0.
kougarIt's very unlikely Intel would launch two desktop generations within six months, let alone the same year. When is the last time they have ever done so?
lehpron2017, first Kaby Lake (7700K) then Coffee Lake (8700K).