Intel's Alder Lake CPU

[cm2]

Read the stuff on it from Pcmag and PCworld and VideoCardz. DDR5 and PCIe 5 combo nice :

https://twitter.com/x/status/1373252933253525506

Over the weekend, VideoCardz said it had obtained a leaked Alder Lake presentation, which promises that Alder Lake will offer 20 percent more performance in single-threaded applications, and more than double the performance in multi-threaded workloads. In part, that’s because Alder Lake will be manufactured on a 10nm manufacturing node, Intel’s most advanced.

The same slide depicts the chip’s heterogeneous architecture, which Intel has previously alluded to. Alder Lake will be built around eight high-performance Golden Cove cores, alongside eight less powerful, but more energy-efficient Gracemont cores, for a total of 16 cores.

The leaked presentation offers insufficient context for interpreting the performance claims. Videocardz suggested that Intel could be comparing Alder Lake against Rocket Lake, or Intel’s 11th-gen Tiger Lake parts. However, Intel could conceivably be comparing Alder Lake to the anemic Lakefield—in which case, the bar is set much lower.

Intel itself has indicated that Alder Lake is being designed with performance in mind. “We are advancing our hybrid architecture significantly with a focus on performance,” Raja Koduri, senior vice president, chief architect, and general manager of Architecture, Graphics, and Software said in August at Alder Lake’s official tip-off at the Intel Architecture Day.

Koduri said then that Alder Lake will combine an unknown number of performance-oriented Golden Cove CPU cores (similar to Lakefield’s Sunny Cove), with an equally unknown number of low-power Gracemont CPU cores (successor to Lakefield’s Tremont cores), with more emphasis on performance. If the VideoCardz presentation is accurate, Alder Lake will have eight of each.

The presentation also shows Alder Lake with Intel’s XeLP GPU inside, which Intel also talked about last year.

Note that while the presentation doesn’t specifically refer to both desktop and mobile parts, it specifically identifies Alder Lake-S, implying a desktop processor. Because Lakefield was a mobile chip, that probably means Alder Lake will be available for both laptop and desktop PCs.

The second slide offers a glimpse of the Intel 600 motherboard chipset to power the desktop version of the Alder Lake CPUs. According to VideoCardz, the chipset will appear in an upcoming Z690 motherboard series.

Along with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, the chipset will support older technologies, including DDR4 RAM at speeds up to 3200MHz, and PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 3. However, the chipset will use a new socket type called LGA1700. So older motherboards from Z490 and Z590 series probably won’t be compatible with the Alder Lake chips.

Intel has said Alder Lake will launch in the second half of 2021.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

I wonder how long they work on this to give such big boosting updates?

 

[cm2]

I wonder how long they work on this to give such big boosting updates?

Indeed they are quite secretive about it.

Hopefully Alder Lake's Real World performance will not be a disaster like Intel's Rocket Lake...

 

[froggyboy604]

It look like a very fast CPU.

 

[cm2]

It look like a very fast CPU.

if it will work as planned and not disastrous like Rocket Lake then yes indeed and If the price to performance ratio is great then I want to get it later down the line when Nvidia's PCIe-5 videocard is out that has a great/good price to performance ratio too...

 

[eagleapk]

if it will work as planned and not disastrous like Rocket Lake then yes indeed and If the price to performance ratio is great then I want to get it later down the line when Nvidia's PCIe-5 videocard is out that has a great/good price to performance ratio too.

 

[cm2]

Just read it's a great CPU, and the new Alder Lake i5-12600K CPU kills the i9 11900k and the i5-12600K is only $300.

 

[cm2]

Read some games are not compatible with Alder Lake because of the new E-cores, however there is a workaround
, read from PCGamer:

Incompatible games (Windows 11)

• Anthem
• Bravely Default 2
• Fishing Sim World
• Football Manager 2019
• Football Manager Touch 2019
• Football Manager 2020
• Football Manager Touch 2020
• Legend of Mana
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 and 2
• Warhammer I
• Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• Far Cry Primal
• Fernbus Simulator
• For Honor
• Lost in Random
• Madden 22
• Maneater
• Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit Remastered
• Sea of Solitude
• Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order
• Tourist Bus Simulator
• Maneater

Incompatible games (Windows 10)

• All of the above, plus:
• Ace Combat 7
• Assassins Creed Odyssey
• Assassins Creed Origins
• Code Vein
• eFootball 2021
• F1 2019
• Far Cry New Dawn
• FIFA 19
• FIFA 20
• Football Manager 2021
• Football Manager Touch 2021
• Ghost Recon Breakpoint
• Ghost Recon Wildlands
• Immortals Fenyx Rising
• Just Cause 4
• Life is Strange 2
• Madden 21
• Monopoly Plus
• Need For Speed Heat
• Scott Pilgrim vs The World
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Shinobi Striker
• Soulcalibur VI
• Starlink
• Team Sonic Racing
• Total War Saga - Three Kingdoms
• Train Sim World
• Train Sim World 2
• Wolfenstein Youngblood

The games in bold, Intel states, are set to receive a patch with the Windows 11 update sometime mid-November, which should put this issue to rest. For the remaining games, Intel says it is working with the developers on a fix.

Intel does mention a workaround, however, and it's partially to do with Intel Alder Lake's brand new Efficient Cores (E-Cores).

According to Intel, DRM software may wrongly assume these E-Cores are an entirely different system to the other CPU cores included in Alder Lake, the Performance Cores (P-Cores). Thus, preventing the game from running successfully.

So, one way to get around that would be to disable your E-Cores. Now that's not great, as that's one reason why Alder Lake processors are so impressive, but when need's must.


It's possible to do so by enabling Legacy Game Compatibility Mode, which is a fairly simple process:

• Power-up system and enter system BIOS setup.
• Enable switch Legacy Game Compatibility Mode to ON (one-time only) in BIOS.
• Save BIOS setup changes and exit.
• Boot to OS.
• Toggle Keyboard Scroll Lock key ON.
• Launch affected game title.
• Toggle Keyboard Scroll Lock key OFF after ending game title.

That should do it, and while not the ideal fix we're hoping for, it does at least mean these games aren't entirely off the cards with your brand new Alder Lake-powered PC.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

cm2 E-cores?

 

[cm2]

cm2 E-cores?

Alder Lake is using a new CPU architecture, P-cores and E-cores. E-cores are the efficient cores part of the CPU. P-cores are the high performance cores of the CPU.

From PC gamer:

Essentially, there are two different Core architectures powering most 12th Gen processors: Golden Cove and Gracemont.

The Golden Cove architecture aims to be something close to your traditional CPU core as we gamers would know it, built to excel at single-threaded performance and deliver high clock speeds. These are the P-Cores.

The Gracemont architecture is something Alder Lake borrows from Intel's Atom lineup of low-power chips. These are built to be efficient, and you can fit more of them onto a chip without taking up too much space. These are the E-Cores.

From Rockpaper Shotgun:

Whereas previous Intel CPUs were comprised of a bunch of identical cores, Alder Lake splits them up into larger, faster Performance cores (P-cores) and smaller Efficiency cores (E-cores). The Core i5-12600K has six P-cores and four E-cores, not to mention Hyper-Threading bringing the total thread count to 16, so it already has a numbers advantage on the hexa-core Ryzen 5 5600X and Core i5-11600K. The idea is to spread the workload more effectively: E-cores pick up background processes and less power-hungry apps, while the P-cores can go to town on more demanding tasks (like games) without having to share as much power or heat as if the E-cores were the full-size cores of old.


Alder Lake, in general, also brings support for DDR5 RAM and PCIe 5.0 hardware. You won’t find any of the latter on the market for a few months at least, though PCIe 4.0 support comes as standard as well.

Although the Core i5-12600K’s highest P-core Turbo speed of 4.9Ghz is equal to that of the Core i5-11600K, and its 3.7GHz base clock speed is actually a little lower, it looks like architectural improvements are enough to produce a major jump in single core prowess. Both previous Intel chips and the Ryzen 5 5600X are left well behind, and the Core i5-12600K even keeps pace with its twice-as-expensive Alder Lake stablemate, the Core i9-12900K.

The bonus E-cores and upgraded task scheduling also make a big difference in multitasking. Historically this is AMD’s turf, but while the Core i9-12900K claims the premium end as its own, this is the first time that we’ve seen a mid-tier Intel chip trounce its AMD equivalent. And again, this is with high-latency RAM. What an excellent showing for the 12th Gen’s reworked, more multithreaded design.

From Windows Central:

Above all else, the gaming performance of the i5-12600K is what truly makes it a standout. Based on benchmark tests conducted by Windows Central as well as other reviewers like Linus Tech Tips, the i5-12600K confidently outperforms the entirety of Intel's previous 11th Gen lineup as well as most Ryzen 5000 chips (it even surpasses the beastly Ryzen 9 5950X in many cases). This is one of the biggest generational performance leaps that Intel has offered in a long, long time.

The i5-12600K's performance is stellar, but that's only half of the reason why it's such an attractive piece of silicon. Intel has priced it incredibly competitively at $320, which is only $10 more expensive than the similarly priced Ryzen 5 5600X that it destroys in benchmarks. It's also several hundred dollars less expensive than other CPUs it outperforms, like Intel's i9-11900K and the Ryzen 7 5900X. At the end of the day, that's value that you simply can't ignore, especially in an era where building your own PC is generally more expensive than ever thanks to scalpers and the ongoing global chip shortage.

It's important to note that there are some reasons why you might not want to get an i5-12600K, at least for the time being. One of them is that the i5-12600K, like all Alder Lake chips, aren't compatible with motherboards from previous generations. This means that you'll need to pay for a new motherboard, and right now, the best motherboards for the Intel Core i5-12600K don't come cheap. The price will come down at some point — new motherboards don't usually stay pricey for long — but it's a valid concern that's worth mentioning regardless.

Even with these considerations, the i5-12600K is still a fantastic CPU that represents the best of what Intel can do when a challenger like AMD forces it to dig its heels in and compete fiercely. Between its superb performance capabilities and its excellent pricing, the i5-12600K is a dream CPU for any PC gamer who needs an upgrade.

With enough performance for even the most demanding games and a killer price to match, the Intel Core i5-12600K is pretty much everything you could want out of a CPU for gaming.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

Damn, some big stuff. Good to know.

 

[cm2]

Damn, some big stuff. Good to know.

Indeed. and now I wonder on the next one in line, The Raptor Lake.