Intel Alder Lake (12000 Series)

Making this thread based a new available information to be confirmed later in the day.

Summary:
- First Intel desktop CPU on a new node since Skylake
- Hybrid architecture (higher end models): Performance Cores + Efficiency Cores (low power)
- 12400 and lower models expected to have only performance cores,
- DDR5/4 support
- PCIe 4/5 support
- Expected 20% ST performance over Rocket Lake

Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake-S" final specifications and pricing leak ahead of launch - VideoCardz.com

 

Regarding the benchmarks from intel: It has been criticized that they were done before the Ryzen performance patch for Windows 11 was available, so they just might not show the whole picture.

 

And of course Intel aren't allowing reviews to be released until the actual release day, feeding FOMO purchases before gamers can actually see real world results. This is especially important given the complete unknown of big.LITTLE combination on gaming.

 

I'm mainly interested in benchmark on Windows 10 since I'm not moving to 11 anytime soon, if ever.
I know that it wouldn't be fair to benchmark on 10 since it lacked the optimization needed for Alder Lake, but I think lots of gamers, at least right now, probably prefer to stay on 10.

 

I can't imagine Windows 10 won't contain the optimizations for Alder Lake core priority by release. There's no chance Intel would be ok with Windows 11 support only.

 

I believe currently MS focus is to make it work on 11. Intel will definitely pressure MS to make it work well enough on 10.
It is similar-ish to the situation with DirectStorage where it will only come with 11 but later they backtracked probably because lots of people complained about it and now some element of it will come to 10.
So it will be interesting to see how good it will run on 10, especially compared to 11. If there is indeed a performance difference (where 10 ended up slower), will MS actually bring Alder Lake optimization to 10? When?

 

Regarding benchmarks

To be clear, some outlets have reported really meaningless differences in most games pre and post patch in Windows 11 regarding ryzen cpus. Some games took a big hit, but they are the exception.

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/intel-shares-alder-lake-pricing-specs-and-gaming-performance

Nontheless most leaked benchmarks are pointing into the same direction.

- Alder Lake basically destroys Zen 3 in single thread performance but it's less efficient
- 5950X continues to be the king in MT tasks
- Yet to be seen if 24 hybrid (16big threads + 8small threads) beats 24 big threads (5900x) in REAL world apps.

 

Are there any benchmarks showing the difference between Win 10 and 11 on Lakefield CPUs?

 

Intels share price went down 11.6% with this announcement, so I guess the market wasn't happy

Now does the CEO/board that got paid large cash bonuses from making bad decisions for short-term profits many years ago at the expense of making the company a laughing stock have to pay back their bonuses? (rhetorical question)

This ain't just about intel but more about the general negative short-term thinking, eg share buybacks etc that companies tend to do recently

 

No, Intel shares fell after Q3 earnings, nothing to do with Alder Lake. They fell because Intel has decided to invest 25B dollars a year in R&D and building new manufacturing plants so margins will go down and therefore profits. The plan is both bold and risky, and part of the market considers it won't be too successful.

 

You could be correct, though I see they released their Q3 earnings on 21st Oct, but the shares fell 26th Oct, though I now see the alder lake info came out 27th oct, so you're right its prolly not that

 

Actually they fell the next day, the 22nd. To be more precise, they started falling the 21st in the after hours market during the earnings release.

Markets can be affected by benchmarks, but only slighly unless they show something way out of the ordinary. But in the long run it's all about earnings per share and free cash flow.

 

Yes I see this now, extremely worrying I concede this is correct, because when I looked it was 26th that it went down, maybe the page I looked at was wrong, or (more likely, the more info I have) my brain is not operating like it once did, weird and worrying (for me, hopefully its just stress from so much shit )

 

Core i9 12900K processor review - Introduction (guru3d.com)
Core i5 12600K processor review - Introduction (guru3d.com)

 

I'd love to see some ray tracing benchmarks to see how well these cpu's tackle the dxr cpu overhead. My RTX3080 is basically crippled by my cpu when I turn ray tracing on. GPU utilization plummets.

 

What CPU and game?

 

ryzen 3600x. I think pretty much any game I've tried ray tracing in, but haven't tried that many. Control for sure. The Ascent, like most smaller UE titles is very cpu heavy and ray tracing seems to kill performance without hitting the gpu too hard.

Just loaded up the ascent. If I put everything low with dlss on performance mode, I get about 260fps. Leave everything on low but turn on ray tracing and I get about 90-100fps, but my gpu utilization only hits 75% in the scene I'm looking at. I'm assuming there's a thread/driver bottleneck. This is basically the same thing I found with control. I could play the game at 720p with DLSS turned on, and certain scenes there was just a hard cap on how high my fps would go, even with very low gpu utilization.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/dxr-performance-cpu-cost.62177/

Edit: I forgot I even checked how cpu clock affected performance

DXR performance - CPU cost

I have a feeling these Alder Lake CPUs will be killer in ray traced games because of the single-threaded performance.

 

I've ordered a i5 12600K and matx Asus Z690M D4 board. Gonna replace my i5 7600K setup. Apparently the board has support for old coolers so I can continue using my Sandy Bridge era Coolermaster Geminii S and I have some DDR4 4000 for it.

 

Alder Lake is great because AMD and Intel now really have to battle it out on price, both with high-performance options.

OTOH, I just don't see how this will be competitive in the laptop market against the Zen 3 APUs. Sure the E cores might be good enough for 99% of the tasks done on mobility, but those P-cores are going to demand a lot from a laptop's smaller power supply and cooling system.

The only thing they have going for them is the fact that AMD decided to severely cripple the PCIe lanes on Cezanne, but if Rembrandt solves that then Intel is going to lose a lot in the laptop market.