Intel is back it's not quite the way we all expected
when ryzen first hit the scene back in 2017 but i don't think we could have
hoped for a better outcome than this not just for the consumer but for the entire
industry 12th gen core code named alder lake is like nothing we've ever seen on
the pc to date and i'm getting some serious ryzen
or maybe bulldozer vibes from the lateral thinking it took to put it all
together so let's talk about the who the what the why and how this return to
competition is so good for everybody
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Intel's performance claims for alderlake are mostly comparing against their own
last gen product but make no mistake they are still coming out swinging
against AMD in gaming they say alder light gets equal or up to 30
better performance than ryzen 5000 depending on the game and up to 50
better than 11th gen core processors this is
huge although there are some concerns about their methodology Intel's
graphs mention running Windows 11 for all of their testing and that's a
problem because if you've been keeping up with the news you'll know that
Windows 11's new scheduler had a little problem with AMD processors that took a
big toll on performance it's patched now
but when they tested it definitely wasn't which means that all of these
numbers need to be taken with a veritable pillar of salt and that's not
even considering the potential impacts that this new hybrid architecture is
going to have on older drm or anti-cheat
technologies that use CPU detection while providers for these technologies
have already begun to roll out fixes older games and apps may never receive
any breaking compatibility but what makes it so different that drm and even
Windows 11 scheduler might break it's more like apple's m1 processors
with dedicated performance and efficiency cores p and e cores for short
those allow for tasks to be intelligently delegated between the
cores that best suit them this has fueled suspicions that Windows 11's
problematic new scheduler was developed specifically for alder lake and i can
see why Intel claims that each cluster of four of the e-cores fit in the same
space as a single 6th gen skylake core
but each are more capable per watt and i should point out despite their age
skylight cores are very capable and usable to this day so that's saying a
lot still that ultimately means that if all the p cores are full sending a task
to the simplified e cores might actually be faster than using
brute force hyper threading to split the p cores on that note hyper threading is
only available on the p cores so we'll have to see for ourselves what that
means for heavily threaded tasks like rendering or code compilation my guess
is each ecore cluster will roughly equal one or two additional p cores if not
more depending on the task but how do you even use these new cores enter
thread director which detects what kind of work an app is doing and provides
feedback to the operating system telling it which course those apps are best
suited for it works kind of like speed shift or preferred core does except it's
got the CPU directly talking to the operating system no extra drivers
required Windows 11 already has support baked in for thread director but this
should also work with Linux and if microsoft were to grace us with an
update to Windows 10 it would work there too not that i'm holding my breath on the
platforms that do support thread director it's going to be a pretty big
deal background tasks like say a virus scan or a Windows update are going to be
pushed onto the efficiency course which not only reduces the impact on
foreground tasks like gaming or content creation but can also reduce power
consumption and heat output while those tasks are running which on future mobile
chips will mean better laptop battery life we don't have any info on those
products right now but what we do know is that the k series desktop i5s i7s and
i9s will all have a TDP of 125 watts in
this generation which sounds ridiculously confusing because
how can a core i5 have the same TDP
as a core i9 but what Intel is doing here is such a breath of fresh air
compared to previous releases what used to be called TDP is now processor base
power or pbp and this is how much power the CPU is assured to have available to
it in sustained workloads and now Intel is also advertising the maximum turbo
power or mtp which is how much the CPU can use during boost with that
information being disclosed now you can finally make informed decisions about
your cooling setup not only that but k-series cpus are shipping with a
sustained boost mode where pbp equals
mtp effectively turning on multi-core enhancement by default and letting the
CPU boost forever so now there's finally
a reason to buy a k-series CPU i mean
aside from overclocking which hey may actually be a thing again
Intel wouldn't say how much headroom there is but their new extreme tuning
utility is shipping with a one-click overclock function that adds a fixed 100
megahertz across all cores so while that's a mild oc it definitely shows a
lot of confidence in their silicon and they may have good reason to be
confident not only does 12th gen core have a larger footprint in the updated
lga 1700 socket it's also built on
Intel's long-awaited 10 nanometer superfin process now called Intel 7
because thanks to marketing nanometers have lost all meaning in ship making ice
lake was the first to use this process but suffered from frequency issues that
tiger lake largely resolved can i just say that it's
really fitting that it would be under Intel's new ceo pat gelsinger that the
new process would finally be ready for the desktop he was the chief technology
officer back in 2008 when Intel first spoke about 10 nanometer like it's it's
like they kept the seat warm for him but six generations of 14 nanometer chips
they could have you know just used a water bottle from ltdstore.com would
have been a lot cheaper for sure right the new v2 ones even have an Intel
inspired design there's more to the platform than just
nanometers and cores though Intel is shipping the first consumer CPU to use
pci express gen 5 which
feels really soon after gen 4 doesn't it
although it was kind of like this with gen 1 through 3 it just took a long time
for gen 4 to come around to the consumer market the benefits of pci express gen 5
though aren't super clear just yet but
as with gen 4 it doubles the bandwidth over its predecessor and once cards are
available to take advantage of it it could allow for far more flexible lane
arrangements for things like bifurcation because here's the thing eight lanes of
gen 5 is equivalent to 16 lanes of gen 4
or even 32 lanes of gen 3.
man we are firing on all cylinders now it's kind of like the innovation that we
missed out on in the 2010s is all just hitting us at once now this is great
12th gen core cpus are going to ship with a combination of pci express gen 5
and gen 4. perhaps the most useful improvement for right now though is the
upgraded gen 4 link to the new 600 series chipsets which is double the
bandwidth of both the outgoing 500 series and AMD's x570 platform not only
that but the chipset now supports up to 28 gen 4 lanes taken together
this should make it a lot easier for z690s new integrated wi-fi 6e and
standard 2.5 gig Ethernet to coexist with things like 10 gig Ethernet and 20
gig usb ports additional storage and more also
it's not common but Intel is curiously supporting a dedicated clock generator
for more reliable base clock overclocking wouldn't expect to see
these outside of enthusiast boards though because who actually does that
alder lake is also the first x86 CPU to ship with support for ddr5 now like many
transition chips the memory controller on alder lake is compatible with both
ddr5 and last generation ddr4 but it should
be noted that you can't run both at the same time ddr5 could end up being one of
the most interesting things about alder lake because it is a huge departure from
just about everything we know about computer memory i've got a full deep
dive on what is different about it it went up yesterday you guys are going to
want to check that out the tl dr though is that internal bottlenecks have been
removed the power management has been moved on to each dim and it provides
much more granular overclocking control Intel's xmp3 memory overclocking spec
also allows manufacturers to include up to three separate profiles now and
includes two user-specified profile blocks with descriptive names for things
like high bandwidth mode or low latency
mode including per module voltage
control each of the profiles are crc checksum so if anything should happen to
corrupt one the system will actually know about it instead of happily moving
that decimal point and letting up the magic smoke as for the hardware vendors
self-certification is free of charge which should speed up adoption of xmp3
perhaps even among lower-end memory kits that's not all Intel's doing with memory
though where 11th gen core brought the ability to toggle xmp manually after the
pc has been booted dynamic memory boost is a new feature that can automatically
toggle it based on load it's something like turbo boost but for RAM this means
that you can save on power and thermal output while retaining the benefits of
high speed memory when you need it which might not be a big deal for desktops but
for laptops this is going to be huge there's no
software operating system support needed for it either it's entirely handled by
the CPU and the BIOS so even something esoteric like temple os can use it Intel
says that it's also usable with ddr4 so you don't even need to buy in on
expensive ddr5 right away to use it either this will depend on BIOS support
though and Intel says it'll be rolling out shortly after release
which will be november 4th when we'll be validating Intel's performance claims
and checking out the rest of the platform the core 9 12 900k is going to
be priced at an eye watering 589
that's a fair bit less than the leak suggested but it is still 50 dollars
more than the 11900k and 40 dollars more
than a ryzen 9 5900x a CPU that has no
efficiency cores just performance course and
50 more of them there's going to be some spicy
benchmarks coming your way next week like i've been getting goosebumps
thinking about all the innovations that AMD and Intel are going to have to make
over the coming years now that they are at each other's throats again properly
and we've finally got an engineer back in charge at Intel
AMD for their part are expecting their next gen Ryzen processors with v cash
to get up to a 25 gaming improvement and
a 15 improvement overall if that is true
Intel and AMD may end up neck and neck in terms of gaming performance by the
end of the year and it'll be AMD's turn once again to pull off a little magic
trick don't you love that CPU leapfrog that's my favorite dance
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Linus and then use code minus go check out our recent first look at ddr5 for a
more technical deep dive on what that means for the industry and your next pc
going forward thanks for watching
indeed