Should AMD Be Afraid? - Intel Alder Lake
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,061 words · ~10 min read
0:00
- I've already seen what's in here. Intel's a bit of an underdog lately
0:04
and it feels great to be able to say that because they've been on top for so long
0:09
and honestly were (energetic rock music) more or less responsible
0:12
for stagnation in the CPU industry for so long
0:16
that it feels really fitting. Today, maybe that changes a little bit
0:20
because Alder Lake is unlike anything that has come before
0:24
from anyone. at least in terms of desktop processors.
0:28
I mean, Apple Silicon is technically similar,
0:32
but that's not x86 and it's not something you can go out
0:35
and buy for yourself unless you buy a Mac. So these CPU's are really special.
0:42
And as a result, Intel decided to send over this here press kit
0:47
to us in order to kind of drive home that specialness
0:51
that makes it special. So there's a little magnetic flap here
0:55
I mean, nobody's gonna have an unboxing experience like this outside of the press
0:58
so I'm not gonna talk too much about it. And,
1:04
that's real neat. That says here on the top,
1:07
built for the next generation of gaming in nice bronzeish coloring and copper.
1:13
And yeah, we've got this here,
1:17
CPU. So I guess these are the performance cores,
1:20
these eights cores around the middle here.
1:23
(playful music) These look like clusters of efficiency cores,
1:28
and I'll get into what those are, momentarily. That's really nice, what's on the back?
1:33
Oh, it's Alder Lake. That's cool.
1:37
So yeah, the big thing about Alder Lake,
1:41
it has two different kinds of cores. The performance cores,
1:44
these big boys here in the middle, and the efficiency cores,
1:48
these small guys that are in clusters of four
1:52
on the side here. What that means is that these performance cores
1:56
can handle your foreground tasks like your games or your 3D renders, that kind of thing.
2:02
While the efficiency cores can handle your background tasks, things like Windows update or a virus scan or even,
2:08
in some cases maybe like a code compile or something, if you don't really care that much about it.
2:14
So, that makes it very different from any other x86 processor
2:19
that has ever existed and very different from hyper-threading too,
2:24
which is something that we've had for a while. Hyper-threading is supported on these, performance cores,
2:30
but not on the small boys. It's got a little stand, I think.
2:35
Yeah. - [Jono] That's cool. - Yeah. See - [Jono] There's a reckon
2:39
to that. - You can show off Alder Lake or you can show off Alder lake.
2:45
But it's just us who can show off Alder Lake because nobody else is getting one of these.
2:48
This is actually like printed on metal. (metal clings)
2:52
It's quite nice. - [Jono] Can I have it? - Um,
2:55
no. No, that plank is cool, but there's more under here as well.
3:00
So, these,
3:03
are our new CPUs. Core i5-12600K.
3:08
And the core i9-12900K. Yeah.
3:12
So full disclosure.
3:15
There's nothing in this. It is,
3:21
in here. And the reason it's in here is because I'm already benchmarking it.
3:25
It's like, what is today? 22nd.
3:28
Right. And yup.
3:31
I'm on that, I'm already on it. Yeah, so let's take a look (small box falls)
3:34
at the core i5 and see what that looks like. It's a really different form factor.
3:38
Actually um, can you get me a Intel CPU?
3:42
- [Jono] Yeah. - That makes a lot of sense because the dye is just rectangular shaped,
3:48
and it's actually a lot longer than it normally is because of those extra cores on the end.
3:52
And presumably also because of the Intel Xe graphics
3:56
that's baked into it as well. Okay, this is a core i7-11700K.
4:01
(cheerful music) And, oh boy, that's actually quite a bit smaller.
4:07
Is it smaller width wise? No.
4:11
Just in terms of length. - [Jono] You're making everyone at home really uncomfortable
4:15
with you sliding the chip like that. - Why? This is not a (sighs).
4:21
(man laughing) (chips rubbing) - [Group Member] Anthony (man laughing)
4:26
(Anthony chuckles) - Okay, so the IHS doesn't look
4:31
significantly thicker, but it is a different shape
4:35
that makes it look kind of thicker. So like it's pretty much the same height, I think.
4:40
I think the fact that the IHS has so be so much bigger because it's a bigger chip.
4:45
It just looks kind of more imposing. So normally on an Intel processor,
4:50
you'd have these little notches on the left and right
4:54
when you put it down to kind of lock it into position.
4:59
Alder Lake, doesn't have that on the left and right, it has it on the top and bottom.
5:03
So as you're sliding it into the socket, the top and bottom is whats kind of aligns it.
5:08
Rocket Lake and Comet Lake only had them on the front
5:13
and on the left and right. That's interesting.
5:17
I was wondering why it was a little bit easier for me to kind of home this into the socket
5:22
when I built up this bench here.
5:25
I guess I'll have to show the socket soon too, huh? Well, let's get this cooler off and take a look.
5:31
Yeah, that socket looks weird, doesn't it? Okay, let's take these nuts off.
5:36
What we've got here there are actually two holes on each of these sides.
5:40
That is because ASUS decided to support the previous arrangement.
5:45
However, the official spacing is
5:50
(playful music) quite a bit wider. It is that outer bit.
5:54
Also you'll note on the back, the shape of this is actually different
5:59
from the shape of a previous LGA socket, obviously,
6:02
but there's no like little knock down here.
6:05
It's actually very similar to,
6:10
what is it similar to? I don't know. Unlike previous LGA is the socket itself.
6:15
Yes, it's like that. Like the ARM has to be so long,
6:19
um, but it doesn't pop up automatically.
6:22
It's locking it down this way. So the lever here
6:27
comes out towards the bottom of the motherboard rather than coming up from the top with the ARM.
6:32
The ARM just locks that down in the position. Okay, this is a much bigger box.
6:38
Um, as you can imagine, I've already been into it,
6:41
but I haven't opened it properly. So let me open it properly.
6:45
(kit tearing) Oh.
6:50
Really? - [Brandon] Go from the other side.
6:54
- Yeah, the other side kind of already ripped
6:57
so I can just like stick my finger in there and, (kit tearing)
7:05
This is an imposing box.
7:08
and what's under?
7:12
Ah, it's not a maximus number anymore.
7:16
It's now a Maximus Z690, which honestly that's a lot easier to keep track of,
7:21
thank you, ASUS. (grunting) Let's put this outta here.
7:26
Oh, but wait, there's more, look inside.
7:30
(kit rubbing) Um.
7:34
Full disclosure, I'm not sure if this hasn't been modified,
7:38
but as far as I know, this is standard
7:42
and there's a little card in here. I don't think there's anything else in this section box,
7:49
but there's another section of the box, which contains (grunts)
7:55
an ROG Ryujin II 360 with LGA 1700 compatibility.
8:01
Unfortunately we're not gonna be using that, we're gonna be using our NH-D15
8:04
because we have more of those and they're the same,
8:08
but this is really nice to have. Yeah, this is an update
8:11
there are kind of three and a half inch full color LCD on this thing.
8:14
With a 7th gen ASUS tech pump, interesting. I'm not sure what that means.
8:18
Noctua industrial PPC fan. Okay, I'm starting to regret not using this.
8:23
- [Jono] Oh! - Well, it's not too late,
8:27
but the thing is I would need more Ryujin II 360s for the rest of our testing platforms
8:31
so I'm not going to be using it, sorry ASUS. But, this is gonna make for
8:35
some pretty sick builds later on. But it's a 360 millimeter radiator with 120 millimeter fans,
8:42
and it's got a six year warranty, which is a half of what our sponsor
8:45
Seasonic can offer you. Seasonic's Prime Ultra Titanium,
8:48
PC power supply feature ultra high efficiency with their 80+ titanium rating.
8:52
They're fully modular and they feature hybrid fan control that control overall fan noise
8:56
with their fluid dynamic bearing fans. They offer up to a 50,000 hour life expectancy
9:00
along with a 12 year warranty. Check them out at the link below.
9:04
"Thank you for reviewing the awesome ASUS Z690 motherboard.
9:08
Please leave an awesome review. ASUS NA marketing."
9:11
(energetic music) How generic.
9:14
It is handwritten and sharpie. - [Jono] Okay. - So, you know somebody actually took their time,
9:19
the time out of their day to write that. One of the cool things with Alder Lake is the ability for to use a DDR5 memory.
9:25
And that happens to be what I have right here.
9:29
This Corsair Vengeance. We also have G.SKILL and this HyperX Fury RAM as well.
9:34
This stuff here is rated for 5,200 megahertz
9:38
or mega transfers per second, it says megahertz. So, sorry Dr. Katress
9:42
with 38, 38, 38, 84 timings,
9:47
which, that's a very different from DDR4,
9:50
like very different. DDR4 is like in the teens for the first three of those
9:55
and then in the 30s, maybe for the last one. But there's a lot of interesting things
9:59
that DDR5 can do. First of all, it takes the power management interface
10:04
from the motherboard and puts it on each of these modules.
10:07
What that lets you do is each of these modules
10:10
can control its own voltage and that can be baked into the XMP profile.
10:15
So you can get that overclock dialed in with more voltage on this dim
10:20
and not so much on this one because it doesn't need it.
10:23
Let's see, what else do we have here? Right, PCI express 5.
10:28
Not a thing we can test right now. There's no such thing as a PCI express 5 video card
10:32
or really any card that I'm aware of, but the slot is there.
10:36
And the CPU has a bunch of PCI express Gen 4 lanes
10:39
as well to the chip set and to the storage.
10:44
So overall IO is going to be a big thing
10:47
for Alder Lake here. So Alder Lake already exists for sale, apparently.
10:56
It was listed on Micro Center briefly,
10:59
and apparently it was sold at a German retailer. So there are actual 12900Ks in people's hands right now.
11:05
In fact, I wish I had the retail packaging because it looks pretty cool,
11:09
even as cool as this looks.
11:12
I would like to have it, but we're gonna have to buy it for that. In order to buy it,
11:15
we're gonna have to shell out $619
11:18
or 669, depending on where you look. - [Jono] Nice.
11:21
- Nice, which is dangerously close to the 5950X.
11:27
The 12900K is gonna have a total of 16 cores, eight and eight.
11:31
So eight performance, eight efficiency along with hyper-threading cores for the eight performance cores.
11:35
It's gonna be an interesting time. I think AMD is gonna be coming out
11:38
with something similar in terms of, well, not necessarily IO,
11:43
but a kind of a lateral thinking kind of thing with their V-Cache
11:48
their vertically stacked cash on top of their cores in the next little while.
11:52
For now, we'll just have to wait for the review to see if any of this makes any sense.
11:57
And you can wait around here for a little bit. Maybe watch some more unboxings
12:01
that may or may not be more technical. Get subscribed, so you don't miss any in the future.
12:05
- [Jono] Watch the retro tech stuff. - Retro time!
12:10
I can't do it, it's retro time because it's not retro time right now,
12:13
but when it's retro time you'll know.