Intel 12th Gen Core Alder Lake for Desktops: Top SKUs Only, Coming November 4th +Z690 Chipset

[RejZoR]

Just now, leadeater said:

It's doesn't matter, Windows is Windows and Apps are Apps. You allow something to swallow memory until 100% utilization and Windows just does not handle that properly.

Again, NOT THE POINT. My god. Lets just stop this right here, right now. And instead talk about Alder Lake or something since this is its thread.

 

For me Alder Lake is a bit of disappointment. Yes, it's fast(er), but again at expense of high power draw and stupid heat. Just to beat a year old products from AMD. I'd call that pretty disappointing all things considered. I mean, if you think about it, AMD wasn't sitting on their ass all this time, they have new stuff planned, so Intel's dominance is probably very short lived depending on when they'll push out new products, probably in spring 2022 like they usually do.

 

And I'm saying this as someone who had Intel CPU's since like 2005 when I sold my last AMD CPU, the Athlon XP 2400+. So, 15 years of Intel. Alder Lake is very good effort especially on the hybrid design, but it just doesn't excite me as much as drop of Ryzen 5000 was a year ago when I just said, daaaaym, I need this. Here it's like, meh, it's pretty good, but only worth it if you're still stuck on 4c/8t Skylake or something. If you already have Ryzen 5 5600X I don't think it's worth the swap, especially not at the cost premium of entire platform just to get those stated 30%. You're probably looking at some 1000-1500€ cost. For 30% boost. Just not worth it. Just roll that 5600X for several more years in which time Intel will hopefully make things even better and you then decide what you'll buy then.

[Tan3l6]

  

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

You're probably looking at some 1000-1500€ cost

Since you'd be swapping the old system the total cost is actually 1000-1500 minus the cost of old rig current market price.

 

Swapping to Alder Lake from R5 5600X platform for mostly gaming is pointless, sure.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Again, NOT THE POINT

Well it was but ok w/e. You said 100% was good, it's not as explained, but yes we can leave it there. Use more = better, use 100% = bad.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Well it was but ok w/e. You said 100% was good, it's not as explained, but yes we can leave it there. Use more = better, use 100% = bad.

Perhaps if I were this articulate, I could have succeeded in explaining my point, lol.

[igormp]

44 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Also if OS can be aware what tasks is throwing to what cores, it could very well know what can be discarded at will and what absolutely has to remain in memory.

But it is, the OS is the one that pages stuff in and out of memory.

 

45 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Also yes, most people here talking about it obviously don't seem to understand any of it.

I dare to say that since it seems that many people don't understand you, maybe the problem lies within you.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

@MageTank

 

your @ isnt embeding. It should be like @MageTank not just @MageTank

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

your @ isnt embeding. It should be like @MageTank not just @MageTank

For thousands of years, I lie dormant. Who dares summo- Oh... Yeah, that does help.

 

While we are back on the subject of Alder Lake and thermals, completely disabled AVX in BIOS, still hitting 100C in Prime95. Decided to throw Cinebench R23 at it. 100C on the CoolerMaster ML240L, 83C on a Corsair H150i. Using the new LGA 1700 brackets too (though 1200 vs 1700 made no difference in thermal performance on these ASUS boards with their holes cut to support both).

 

I am at a bit of a loss on why my thermal results don't really match what is shown in reviews. Power consumption is similar, clock speeds are similar, but in a controlled lab with  23C ambient on an open air bench, I am running considerably hotter. Starting to wonder if my final samples are not final samples after all, lol.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, MageTank said:

For thousands of years, I lie dormant. Who dares summo- Oh... Yeah, that does help.

 

While we are back on the subject of Alder Lake and thermals, completely disabled AVX in BIOS, still hitting 100C in Prime95. Decided to throw Cinebench R23 at it. 100C on the CoolerMaster ML240L, 83C on a Corsair H150i. Using the new LGA 1700 brackets too (though 1200 vs 1700 made no difference in thermal performance on these ASUS boards with their holes cut to support both).

 

I am at a bit of a loss on why my thermal results don't really match what is shown in reviews. Power consumption is similar, clock speeds are similar, but in a controlled lab with  23C ambient on an open air bench, I am running considerably hotter. Starting to wonder if my final samples are not final samples after all, lol.

Well, there was a  offical german language IgorsLab comment on the ltt video claiming insufficent mounting pressure on their cpus.

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, MageTank said:

For thousands of years, I lie dormant. Who dares summo- Oh... Yeah, that does help.

 

While we are back on the subject of Alder Lake and thermals, completely disabled AVX in BIOS, still hitting 100C in Prime95. Decided to throw Cinebench R23 at it. 100C on the CoolerMaster ML240L, 83C on a Corsair H150i. Using the new LGA 1700 brackets too (though 1200 vs 1700 made no difference in thermal performance on these ASUS boards with their holes cut to support both).

 

I am at a bit of a loss on why my thermal results don't really match what is shown in reviews. Power consumption is similar, clock speeds are similar, but in a controlled lab with  23C ambient on an open air bench, I am running considerably hotter. Starting to wonder if my final samples are not final samples after all, lol.

could easily be that your LGA1700 mounts are not putting enough pressure, that is an issue for some

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

could easily be that your LGA1700 mounts are not putting enough pressure, that is an issue for some

I solved that by putting metal washers between springs on my X99 system. That extra 1mm of spring tension made quite huge difference with the AiO.

[MageTank]

3 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Well, there was a  offical german language IgorsLab comment on the ltt video claiming insufficent mounting pressure on their cpus.

 

2 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

could easily be that your LGA1700 mounts are not putting enough pressure, that is an issue for some

Now that might be worth looking into. My third system (Lian Li 280mm Galahad) using an official 1700 bracket has the same thermal issues.

The top screws are already completely bottomed out, but I'll try manually pressing down on the block and see if that helps.

[LAwLz]

28 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Now that might be worth looking into. My third system (Lian Li 280mm Galahad) using an official 1700 bracket has the same thermal issues.

The top screws are already completely bottomed out, but I'll try manually pressing down on the block and see if that helps.

Saw this in the Anandtech review (which by the way is fantastic and does a ton of different tests, including P-core only and E-core only). 

 

Quote

Don’t trust thermal software just yet, it says 100C but it’s not

 

Haven't been able to find where they elaborate on it, but it might just be software compatibility issues. 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/the-intel-12th-gen-core-i912900k-review-hybrid-performance-brings-hybrid-complexity

 

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, yesyes said:

do/did you play hypixel skyblock

I don't know what that is unfortunately. If you are referring to my name, it's a name I made up back in 2008 on the Perfect World MMO game servers and have used ever since. 

 

3 minutes ago, MageTank said:

 

Now that might be worth looking into. My third system (Lian Li 280mm Galahad) using an official 1700 bracket has the same thermal issues.

The top screws are already completely bottomed out, but I'll try manually pressing down on the block and see if that helps.

@GDRRiley& @HelpfulTechWizardPressing down on any of my AIO's didn't help. Starting to question the possibility of having 3 bad CPU's all with thermal sensor issues...

Spoiler

 

 

Now I do have a plan-B, it just requires that I disassemble it from the system it is in:

 

Spoiler

 

11 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Saw this in the Anandtech review (which by the way is fantastic and does a ton of different tests, including P-core only and E-core only). 

 

 

Haven't been able to find where they elaborate on it, but it might just be software compatibility issues. 

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/the-intel-12th-gen-core-i912900k-review-hybrid-performance-brings-hybrid-complexity

 

That is possible, I just don't know how my numbers are not matching everyone else when we use the same monitoring software. Have tried both the latest (and beta) versions of Aida64 and HWinfo64 and the results are the same across my test benches. I can't quite determine what variable I am not controlling, unless they have different board firmware that was released for reviewers...

[WolframaticAlpha]

A couple of thoughts.

 

ADL might show a much higher deviance(than usual)from official benchmarks in gaming as the E cores are meant for backgroind crud, like Windows, Discord, browsers, antivirus etc.

 

The platform costs will go down in the future. The dual support shows that Raptor lake will also support DDR4. Fingers crossed for unlocked DDR4 on non-K variants.

 

Don't take AMD at their word for v-cache lol. Wait for the reviews.

 

Intel is using a newer node, so power consumption may go down during the Intel 7 times. Hope there is no Intel 7++ 

 

Compile tests may be much more interesting, since they are quite dependent on threads.

 

Intel's home run isn't their P cores, but rather the E cores, and only optimization will tell whether the E core gamble pays off. RN, it is paying handsome dividends in the productivity space

 

AVX512 is actually on some chips apparently. Check anandtech's article on that.

[igormp]

45 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Compile tests may be much more interesting, since they are quite dependent on threads.

Already a thing, manages to be on par with the 5950x whilst being cheaper.

Keep in mind that there's no thread director support for linux yet.

[Dabombinable]

5 hours ago, igormp said:

Paging stuff in and out does take a long time, and as yourself mentioned before, when it's not in use by active applications the system caches disk stuff into ram (which isn't shown as usage under task manager or whatever else you use), and this can be simply thrown away without caring about paging.

 

What do you mean? That doesn't make much sense to me.

If you want to see what is cached, open resource monitor (another holdover from the XP days):

[igormp]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

If you want to see what is cached, open resource monitor (another holdover from the XP days):

Yeah, I'm aware of that, most systems have a way to tell what's cached, but that doesn't count towards the usual "used memory" part:

[Dabombinable]

4 minutes ago, igormp said:

Yeah, I'm aware of that, most systems have a way to tell what's cached, but that doesn't count towards the usual "used memory" part:

Data is there so it is being used, however it can be flushed as soon as RAM availability becomes an issue so it of course not shown as actively used.

[Blademaster91]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

They were.

 

From what I've seen on the Swedish market, the boards and DDR5 doesn't seem to have that high of a price premium. They seem pretty competitive with AMD motherboards and DDR4 in terms of pricing. At least if you want products of similar tier.

The problem right now seems to be that even the cheapest Z690 boards are pretty high end, and DDR5 seems to be priced (and specced) similar to high end DDR4.

This will probably fix itself as time goes on. A lower end chipset will be released, and the initial high price of DDR5 will quickly drop. It might be a problem for people who want a budget Alder Lake system right now though.

Boards are way overpriced for the US then, not sure if retailers are taking advantage of the consumer as they are with GPU's.  An Asus Z690 strix F is $399, while the Asus X570 strix F is $299. And high end DDR4 didn't really matter, at least for gaming and most applications.

5 hours ago, yesyes said:

DDR4 actually nets even better results than DDR5 in some specific uses, so saying "was it DDR5" is a sign that you are just an Intel hater

What exactly makes me an "intel hater" for asking if the system used DDR5? The fact that testing uses DDR5 means Intel has the absolute best performance possible, although DDR5 being much more expensive than DDR4 isn't any advantage unless cost doesn't matter to you.

5 hours ago, yesyes said:

AMD''s 5050x used to cost $800, while the 11900k was $550, yet people didn't care about that, they cared about the performance

No everyone whined when AMD was more expensive, regardless of performance, there seems to be a double standard on pricing, with intel it's "only $100 more" than the previous i9, although IMO $550 for the flagship desktop CPU is already too expensive.

The 5950X is too expensive for most use cases, and the 5900X is the best value per core on AMD, but at least you can put one on a $200 board, and only need to spend $100-150 on RAM, and can use it with a $50 air cooler. Not the case with a 12900K as Z690 boards start around $300, RAM is $300, and you need A $150 water cooler for it as well.

[poochyena]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I am not sure where you live but if it's in the US the average electricity cost is 10.42 cent per kilowatt-hour. That means 80 watts of extra power will cost you 0.8336 cents an hour.

you have to factor in additional air conditioning usage too during summer months. Also the fact you'll need to purchase a bigger, more expensive, cooler.

[GoodBytes]

I can't agree on the power consumption being said on this thread about the Intel CPU.

I mean, sure it costs more for electricity, but it is a really not much per year, and typically, if you can afford such fancy computer, you can afford the electric bill increase.

Yes, A/C needs to be taken in consideration, however, that is still not a major expense being added (I am not saying A/C vs no A/C I mean A/C running a bit longer). I mean you are not, well, for a typical person, running the CPU at 100%. And as demonstrated from reviews, during games, the CPU power consumption is in similar power levels as AMD.

 

I think the concern is more noise. If you have a CPU that fluctuates so much in power consumption, if you are mix of gaming, web surfing, document writing, and work that requires a lot of the CPU, then you end up with a system noise level that isn't very consistent, and that the fan moves all over the place as you use your system, which can be annoying in a quite environment as it isn't fairly static, and can potentially sound like a jet plane reactor. Noctua fans won't help much, as Noctua fans are loud at max speed. Now, a big 3 fan water cooled heatsink will obviously help a lot in solving this over an air cooler. However, it is an extra expense, and if you aim to have a quiet computer, it will be harder, and near impossible if you aimed to have a decently quite mini-ITX system, that is actually mini. (Of course, I am assuming, the aim, is not thermal throttle).

 

What I am afraid is that now AMD will go "Hey! Intel CPU needs to go crazy power to match our performance.. and aren't criticized much in their reviews either for it. hey.. Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series also consumes a lot power as well... you know what that means? POWER IT UP BOYZ! 600W quad core Ryzen CPU at idle is here! beating Intel best offering in performance, and goes up from there!!!", if you get my point.

 

Looking at the GPU market and CPU now, I am sadden to see that power consumption is not taken seriously anymore. Computers should be smaller, consume less power, and be quieter. We made massive progress over the years in no longer having computer sounding like jet engines... and now it seems we are slowly returning to it.

 

 

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

Boards are way overpriced for the US then, not sure if retailers are taking advantage of the consumer as they are with GPU's.  An Asus Z690 strix F is $399, while the Asus X570 strix F is $299. And high end DDR4 didn't really matter, at least for gaming and most applications.

You can't really compare boards like that.

The X570 Strix F and Z690 Stix F are not necessarily competing products and shouldn't be compared against one another. They have completely different set of ports and even features.

 

You can get a really good Z690 motherboard for 220 - 250 dollars, which is generally what I recommend most people spend on their motherboards.

 

I agree that high end DDR4 memory doesn't really matter for gaming. I was just pointing out that it's not really a price premium if you get extra performance.

If DDR4 for 300 dollars provides 100 "performance points" and DDR5 for 330 dollars provides 110 "performance points", then the price to performance is the same and I wouldn't say the DDR5 has a "price premium". It costs more, but it costs more because it is (potentially) better.

Not that it matters anyway because you can get DDR4 for Alder Lake if that's your thing. Some tests indicates that you don't really lose much performance anyway and in some cases it might even perform better.

That will of course change with time, but if I were to buy an Alder Lake system I would probably go for a DDR4 board today. Ask me again in a year and I will probably recommend DDR5 instead.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

The fact that testing uses DDR5 means Intel has the absolute best performance possible

I mean, why wouldn't the test show that? DDR5 is an advantage Intel has, so why not test with it on the Intel platform?

If you are implying that it is "unfair" then it makes about as much sense as saying testing Cinebench with 16 threads is "unfair" because while AMD has that many cores, Intel only has 8 P cores so the test should be run with only 8 threads.

You don't kneecap one product to bring it down to the same feature parity as the competing product when doing tests. You showcase the best scenario for both, and right now Intel supports better memory than AMD.

[AnonymousGuy]

Wait until y'all see the server version.  2 sockets, over 600 e-cores.

 

Welcome to the era of "we gotta stop everyone and their mom from licensing ARM and putting a million of them on a package".

[CarlBar]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

If you don't limit MSSQL Server it literally will swallow all the system memory, 384GB sure no problem nom nom nom, 512GB sure no problem nom nom nom etc. System then grinds to a halt.

 

Sounds like my chrome usage habits.

 

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

Windows memory management under memory pressure is complete ass.

 

Yeah combine it with a program that doesn't respond well to that and it can crash the system, forget what program it was but i had that issue when i was getting ready for and doing the data move to the NAS i built around the start of the year.

 

7 hours ago, Dracarris said:

Apart from the fact that electricity costs much more than that where I live, the additional heat output is the much stronger argument for me. ACs aren't a thing here for environmental reasons and the heat output of my computer is a real issue in the summer given that it's in the room where I sleep.

 

Also, not everyone buys a PC primarily for gaming.

 

Also if you do have AC it adds to it's power usage. More to the point between the pandemic and energy price rises in many places peoples ability to afford even small increases to their regular bills is tight.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

It'll definitely cost more to cool this thing 

 

I'll give it a pass.