And everything he sees is just blue Like him inside and outside - Intel showcases new products at CES

[williamcll]

 

Just as AMD then Nvidia, Intel has also announced new products from their processors, including new desktop and laptop CPUs as well as. Details about their dedicated GPU weren't as thorough and is expected to be presented at a later date.

Quotes

Quote

Intel continues its introduction of industry-leading mobile performance with the launch of all-new 12th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors led by the Intel Core i9-12900HK – not only the world’s best mobile gaming platform, but also the fastest mobile processor ever created. By pairing Performance-cores (P-cores) and Efficient-cores (E-cores) with intelligent workload prioritization and management distribution through Intel® Thread Director3, the new Intel Core i9-12900HK improves system performance across single and multi-threaded applications.

The expansive 12th Gen Intel Core mobile family also includes the new U- and P-series mobile processors. With up to 14 cores and 20 threads and featuring Intel® Iris® Xe integrated graphics, the new P-series processors operate at 28W base power and are designed for performance thin-and-light laptops, while the U-series processors operate at 9 to 15W and are designed for form factor optimized thin-and-light laptops. These mobile processors are tailor-made for the performance needed in the variety of thin-and-light laptops and cutting-edge form factors that OEMs will deliver in 2022, including foldables, 2 and 1s, detachables and others.

Quote

Today, 22 new processors join the 12th Gen Intel Core desktop processor family and range from Intel Core i9 to Pentium and Celeron. These processors (65-watt and 35-watt) deliver scalable power and great performance for gaming, creation and productivity. Intel also introduced new Intel® Laminar Coolers that accompany the new 65-watt processors. In addition, Intel introduced the new Intel® H670, H610 and B660 chipsets that will support broad consumer processors. The new chipset options deliver many of the great Z-series platform capabilities, like PCIe 4.0 lanes, integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) and Intel® Volume Management Device (VMD) – as well as support for memory overclocking.

 

Additionally, Intel also teased their i9-12900KS binned CPU on their twitter:

My thoughts

Unfortunately AMD didn't show any performance comparisons for their R9 6980HX so it's hard to tell which is going to be the king of mobile CPU of 2022. Also interesting to see Intel is aware of Apple's M1M so hopefully the competition might just bring the price down. 

 

Sources

https://videocardz.com/press-release/intel-announces-12th-gen-core-alder-lake-mobile-and-desktop-processors

[Rauten]

What? Why go back to 4 digit skus? 

Intel, why do you keep screwing up your naming this much? WHY?!

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

*cries in a corner*

[williamcll]

12 minutes ago, Rauten said:

What? Why go back to 4 digit skus? 

Intel, why do you keep screwing up your naming this much? WHY?!

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

*cries in a corner*

Because there was never an intel ix-1xxx series

[Rauten]

1 minute ago, williamcll said:

Because there was never an intel ix-1xxx series

There was a 7000 and 8000 though; and it clearly hasn't stopped them.

[Blademaster91]

So the U series mobile parts get a 4 number sku,and the H and P series are still confusing, like an i7 12650H is a 10c/16t, while an i7 12700H is a 14c/20t. It seems like Intel is doing whatever they want to.

[LAwLz]

That i7-12700 is looking really nice. 50 dollars less than the K model which was already pretty aggressively priced, and you only lose some base clock that you're probably not going to miss that much anyway.

 

It's a shame they removed the E-Cores from the i5-12600 though. I think that makes it a lot less appealing, even though it's way cheaper. I guess if you mainly want to play games on your PC it might be the new default recommendation, but it if had kept the E-Cores it would basically have been the best processor to buy for 90% of people.

 

 

Edit:

The U-series laptop chips seems pretty good as well. I am not sure what the difference is between the i7-1250U and the i7-1260U though. Is it just me or are they exactly the same? In any case, it will be a massive upgrade from my current i7-8565U. More than twice the raw CPU performance, and like 3-4 times the GPU performance.

[tim0901]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It's a shame they removed the E-Cores from the i5-12600 though. I think that makes it a lot less appealing, even though it's way cheaper. I guess if you mainly want to play games on your PC it might be the new default recommendation, but it if had kept the E-Cores it would basically have been the best processor to buy for 90% of people.

I'm not sure if it's going to matter. Outlets have already gotten their hands on the i5-12400 and it's beating the 5600X in gaming and trading blows with it in productivity (while using DDR4) for over $100 less, while also consuming less power to boot. To quote tomsHardware:

Quote

As you'll see in our benchmarks below, the 65W Core i5-12400 is a stellar gaming chip that easily outperforms all of AMD's competing chips. In fact, the $185 Core i5-12400 is faster than the $299 Ryzen 5 5600X in gaming. After tuning, the 12400 is also faster than the Core i9-11900K at gaming, courtesy of Intel's memory overclocking support on B- and H-series motherboards. Overall, the Core i5-12400 is the uncontested new budget gaming champ. 

If these reviews are remotely accurate - which I'd expect from a source like Toms or wccftech - then the i5-12400 seems to be as much of a no-brainer recommendation as the r5 3600 was. The i5-12400f will likely be an even better value chip if you don't care for the onboard graphics.

 

If you need the multicore benefits of the E-Cores, the 12600K on B660 or H670 will probably end as the go-to recommendation over the 5800X on B450/B550. How the 5800X3D (I hate that name) will slot into this is anyone's guess. Zen 4 is of course irrelevant given it isn't arriving for at least 6 months, right around the time that we're expecting 13th gen core to arrive as well.

[AlTech]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That i7-12700 is looking really nice. 50 dollars less than the K model which was already pretty aggressively priced, and you only lose some base clock that you're probably not going to miss that much anyway.

 

It's a shame they removed the E-Cores from the i5-12600 though. I think that makes it a lot less appealing, even though it's way cheaper. I guess if you mainly want to play games on your PC it might be the new default recommendation, but it if had kept the E-Cores it would basically have been the best processor to buy for 90% of people.

It doesn't look like the E cores are terribly helpful for the time being outside of very niche areas.

 

The 15W laptop segment seems to be a major regression in P cores from Tigerlake's 4 performance cores to 2P 8E. I doubt Intel will be able to make up for the P cores lost with those 8 E cores in many scenarios.

 

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

Edit:

The U-series laptop chips seems pretty good as well. I am not sure what the difference is between the i7-1250U and the i7-1260U though. Is it just me or are they exactly the same? In any case, it will be a massive upgrade from my current i7-8565U. More than twice the raw CPU performance, and like 3-4 times the GPU performance.

I seriously doubt it'll be more than 2x raw CPU considering that's going from 4 Performance cores in the 8565U to 2 P cores in the 1250U.

If you're lucky I would guess around the same perf or slightly better perf in non benchmarking workloads. Anywhere massively parallel or threaded may do better cos of the 8 E cores but I can tell you without looking at benchmarks that AMD's new 8 performance core mobile APUs are the clearly better choice given they have real cores and not the slow E cores and this will translate into real world perf improvements.

 

Btw, the 50U part has no vPro but the 60U has vPro according to Intel's info.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

The 15W laptop segment seems to be a major regression in P cores from Tigerlake's 4 performance cores to 2P 8E. I doubt Intel will be able to make up for the P cores lost with those 8 E cores in many scenarios.

 

I seriously doubt it'll be more than 2x raw CPU considering that's going from 4 Performance cores in the 8565U to 2 P cores in the 1250U.

I think you're drastically underestimating how powerful the E-cores are.

The E-cores, depending on the workload, are roughly around the same performance as Skylake (so 6th to 10th gen). 

Each E-core is roughly as powerful as a zen2 CPU clock for clock for integer workloads (although they fall behind in FP performance).

 

Anandtech CPU Benchmark Performance: E-Cores:

Quote

In these few tests, we can see that the E-core is almost there at 4.2 GHz Skylake. Moving down to 3.9 GHz, perhaps something like the i7-6700, would put it on par. 

Quote

Having a full eight E-cores compared to Skylake's 4C/8T arrangement helps in a lot of scenarios that are compute limited. When we move to more memory limited environments, or with cross-talk, then the E-cores are a bit more limited due to the cache structure and the long core-to-core latencies. Even with DDR5 in tow, the E-cores can be marginal to the Skylake, for example in WinRAR which tends to benefit from cache and memory bandwidth.

 

I think a lot of people are underestimating the E-Cores because we think of them as the LITTLE cores on ARM processors (which sucks ass).

Outside of memory heavy workloads or workloads that require good core-to-core loads, each E-core will most likely outperform my current "P-core", and I am getting 2 extra cores. On top of that I will get two really good "P-cores", that will outperform my current "P-cores" by a lot.

 

I honestly suspect I will get around twice the performance in something like multi-threaded Cinebench. Not quite as much in the single threaded test though, but probably like 50% more.

 

 

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Btw, the 50U part has no vPro but the 60U has vPro according to Intel's info.

That makes sense. Thanks for the info.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I think you're drastically underestimating how powerful the E-cores are.

The E-cores, depending on the workload, are roughly around the same performance as Skylake (so 6th to 10th gen). 

Each E-core is roughly as powerful as a zen2 CPU clock for clock for integer workloads (although they fall behind in FP performance).

In synthetics*

 

You know what also fell behind in FP but had good integer performance? Bulldozer and AMD's mess prior to Zen.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

 

Anandtech CPU Benchmark Performance: E-Cores:

Don't get me wrong the E cores are excellent in synthetics and benchmark workloads but it's yet to translate into any real world workload. Anything an E core can do, a P core does better seems to be the analysis so far on it. Nobody seems to know what the "Killer app" of E cores is yet, not even Intel.

 

Intel suggests streaming, but HardwareUnboxed indicates that's really a job for P cores.

 

Intel suggests gaming, but there's little to no perf increases in gaming as tested by HardwareUnboxed.

 

E cores seem to require developers to target it for it to have good perf and make sense over a P core.

 

Until we know what the "killer app" of E cores is, it's hard not to feel like it's a waste of die space and that a higher P core count would be better. Intel can't or won't go for higher P core counts which is what seems to have caused the creation of E cores.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I think a lot of people are underestimating the E-Cores because we think of them as the LITTLE cores on ARM processors (which sucks ass).

What scenario would you expect an E core or a number of them to excel at?

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Outside of memory heavy workloads or workloads that require good core-to-core loads, each E-core will most likely outperform my current "P-core"

Let's not kid ourselves here, E cores are Atom CPU cores. If you want to see what E cores perform like then Intel's J series or N series Celeron or Pentium provide a front row seat to horrible IPC but okay multi thread perf.

 

It's better to have 8 P cores than it is to have a 2P 8E CPU. This is the comparison between AMD and Intel right now and it's more in AMD's favour in their upcoming 6000 series.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

and I am getting 2 extra cores. On top of that I will get two really good "P-cores", that will outperform my current "P-cores" by a lot.

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I honestly suspect I will get around twice the performance in something like multi-threaded Cinebench. Not quite as much in the single threaded test though, but probably like 50% more.

Yes, in a synthetic it'll do well but see what I said above about real world performance and workloads.

[CarlBar]

@AluminiumTech So far the E-Cores have been letting Intel's 8P core part challenge AMD's 12P and 16P core parts in actual production workloads, so no it's not just synthetics. Despite that i do expect the AMD offering to completely flatten Intel in practise, one thing that someone, (I think either HUB or GN, can't remember), did show was that for any workload thats even mildly sensitive to single threaded performance a lack of at least 4 P cores really hurt.

[tim0901]

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Until we know what the "killer app" of E cores is, it's hard not to feel like it's a waste of die space and that a higher P core count would be better. Intel can't or won't go for higher P core counts which is what seems to have caused the creation of E cores.

Many people have tested this question already. "How much of a benefit are the E-Cores and does it outweigh that of the equivalent space of P-Cores".

 

The first thing to establish is how many E-Cores can fit in the same space as a P-Core. According to Intel the answer is that 4 E-Cores take up the same die space as 1 P-Core.

 

So the question becomes "Do the E-Cores in a 12900K provide more than a 25% uplift in performance vs the P-Cores on their own?" I'm being simple and assuming a linear (aka unrealistically high) scaling in performance from 8 to 10 P-Cores here. A 15-20% improvement is probably a more realistic estimation of core scaling, but to remove any ambiguity we'll stick to the idealised 25%. It only makes the E-Cores' job harder after all.

 

Of course the answer to this depends on the exact application - games are almost universally completely unaffected by the E-Cores (as anyone with a brain would expect given they don't use more than ~8 cores) but many applications see large improvements in excess of 25%. Here's a load of tests performed by TechPowerUp. Some of those tests yes are synthetic or otherwise useless benchmarks - Cinebench or browser performance for example - but many are not and are instead real pieces of software that are run everyday by people who rely on them for a living.

 

Looking at the conclusion of that article would suggest that the E-Cores barely provide a 5% uplift in performance, but that average is very misleading and looking at the individual tests reveals a very different picture. Comparing to stock the (green) tests, Blender saw an improvement of ~28% with E-Cores enabled. V-Ray saw a 25% improvement. The scientific workloads both saw boosts in excess of 20%.

 

Of course, not all of them were that good. Tensorflow for example only saw a ~15% improvement. Some like the software/game dev tests saw little to no benefits at all, although whether this is because they are thread limited (eg the MP3 encoder test), are hitting other bottlenecks such as cache or memory, or are just not able to access the E-Cores for whatever reason (likely WinRAR) is not always clear. And some of the tests (eg the AI image classification test) scored massively lower with E-Cores enabled - I think those are the results of scheduler bugs that should hopefully be ironed out in time, just as we saw when 1st Gen Ryzen was first introduced.

 

But looking at these tests - the ones where the E-Cores provide little benefit - and looking at the results other CPUs, we often see a very similar picture. That having four more cores is providing the 5950X with very little uplift in performance over the 5900X, or the 5900X over the 5800X - certainly a far smaller improvement than the % increase in core count would suggest. Which would suggest to me at least that while yes, the E-Cores are providing much less than the idealised 25% scaling we'd expect from 2 P-Cores, a pure 10P-Core configuration wouldn't be performing anywhere close 25% better than an 8P0E config either. Or to describe it as it is: that program just doesn't scale well with the number of cores. Programs that scale poorly with core count generally scale in this way because they are unable to fully utilise the additional threads they are assigned, which would suggest that these additional cores being E-Cores rather than P-Cores probably doesn't make any difference. If anything having more, slower cores is likely to be the better choice here.

 

And so the question of how much of a benefit do they provide is: it depends! If all you care about is gaming, why are you buying a 12900K anyway. Buy an i5 12400 or a 5600X - they have enough cores to satisfy your needs for the next few years anyway.

 

If you're looking at professional software, you've got a whole spectrum. Sometimes the E-Cores either outperform the amount of P-Cores they are replacing, sometimes they do nothing at all and you may as well have an 8P0E config. But many of the tests suggest that they are more or less in line with what we would expect from a 10P0E configuration. That while they aren't providing any benefits, they aren't exactly hurting performance either. There are no tests, however, that stand out as examples where having two extra P-Cores would be a better choice over the E-Cores (excluding tests that are clearly bugged right now) and therefore the choice to go with E-Cores seems to be a bit of a no brainer - when the scheduler bugs are fixed.

 

Would I buy one? No. Because it's a first-gen product with plenty of teething troubles, just like 1st Gen Ryzen. Give it a generation or two by which time the scheduler stuff should be sorted out... then I'm interested.