12100F vs 11400F with a mid range GPU

[Gamer Guy]

I can see everyone is testing the 12100F vs 11400F with top end GPUs like 6900XT and 3090. But if I buy any of these CPUs I'm not going to get any GPU over the RTX 3050/3060 category. So the difference in FPS will be unnoticeable (playing at 1080p high settings). So, am I better with a 11400 that has 6c12t? One more advantage of going with 12th gen is room for upgrade to 13th gen since 12th gen is the TICK of intel and 13th will be TOCK so LGA1700 stays, but I'm not going to upgrade for like 4-5 years since a casual users. B660 is going to cost obviously more than the B560 in my country. Any other differences/advantages? Which one should I get?

 

EDIT: Added suffix F to the CPUs.

[SorryBella]

4 minutes ago, Gamer Guy said:

Which one should I get?

12400F and hope low end B660 wont come out utterly garbage. If you cant find a good deal on 10400F combo instead you should just wait for 12400 to come out.

[Gamer Guy]

3 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

12400F and hope low end B660 wont come out utterly garbage. If you cant find a good deal on 10400F combo instead you should just wait for 12400 to come out.

12400F is way out of my budget, that's why I'm deciding between similarly priced 11400F and 12100F (didn't add the F in the post will edit it now).

[Action_Johnson]

I'd probably go with that 11400 right now. Alder Lake's got compatibility problems with older games, and 6c/12t is a great place to be for gaming. In reality, you'll be GPU limited almost the entire time, even running 6900XT's or 3090's. Only way you really wouldn't' be is if you're at 1080p and low settings because you competitively play CS:GO for a living. And if you're running a 3050/6500XT and getting big framerates, that game's so old that it wouldn't even matter. 

 

I'm scratching my head trying to think of a game that realistically uses more than 4-8 cores. Even on my production computer at the office with a 5900X in it, unless I'm running a photoshop action or an AI tool, or processing out images in Capture One, I rarely see all 12c/24t being used.

I more often max out the VRAM than anything. 

[RONOTHAN##]

21 minutes ago, Action_Johnson said:

Alder Lake's got compatibility problems with older games

I do want to point out that has (mostly) been ironed out, and that was due to the fact it has a heterogeneous architecture. For an i3 12100F, that won't apply. 

 

Personally, I'm really of the 12400 camp. It's only ~$50 US more expensive, and it's a worthwhile $50. 12th gen is a lot faster than 11th gen, so unless you're getting an 11th gen setup for dirt cheap it doesn't make much sense to go 11th gen over 12th. In a week or so low end B660 boards will be out with prices fully announced, so the difference in price between the 12100F and the 12400F can be made up in the board. If you really can't swing it, I guess get the 12100F with the plan of upgrading it a few months down the line. 

[Dogzilla07]

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

10400F

12100F outperforms 10400F (even in 1% and 0.1% lows). 12100F = 11400F and sometimes beats like in CSGO (in everything gaming related). The only game I noticed in reviews where the 12100F isn't beating 10400F/3600 in 1% lows is PUBG.

 

So no spikes no lag no nothing for the 4/8 core 12100F even in games which previously didn't mesh well 4 cores.

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

In a week or so low end B660 boards will be out with prices fully announced, so the difference in price between the 12100F and the 12400F can be made up in the board.

B660/H610/H670 low-medium end has been out and widely available for 5 days already (on amazon).

 

@Gamer GuyCheck my 12400F + H610/B660 makes every other build obsolete thread here on the forum for details.

 

TL:DR 12100F outperforms or matches all comparably priced CPUs without stutter, in all currently out games. And Asus Prime H610M series has (on paper) better or similar VRM section than all other H610, and half the B660/H670. With low impact of unlocked TDP (MCE) for 12100F/12400F, and with 3200MHz memory support and Alder Lake in general having memory IMC that doesn't scale that much with memory speed, this is a perfect storm for H610 for the first time in quite a long time.

 

@Gamer GuyFor the most savings a H610 (Asus Prime) is not that worse compared to B660/H670, and the choice of buying comes down to I/O (USB, USB-C, M.2). starting from the cheapest H610 and going up the stack to B660 and H670, you can choose a motherboard  by the number if USB and M.2 you need, and think you'll need in the near future, and get away with a really cheap board in the process (that's not horrible).

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Dogzilla07 said:

B660/H610/H670 low-medium end has been out and widely available for 5 days already.

Yes and no. Some are available, but a lot still don't have pricing announced or you can't find them on shelves. Only about half of the motherboards announced you can actually find a price and a store listing for, and most of those are the boards that seem to make the most sense to buy (MSI Pro series, ASRock's entire lineup, Gigabyte's low end boards). The only real exception is ASUS, but they haven't really released a good value motherboard in a few years, so I'd personally want to wait for all those other motherboards to announce pricing first. 

[Dogzilla07]

51 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The only real exception is ASUS, but they haven't really released a good value motherboard in a few years, so I'd personally want to wait for all those other motherboards to announce pricing first. 

True, only Asus was widely available 5 days ago, however they've done a 180, and are now arguably the best value in the lowest end motherboards. As I've explain and written out in detail in my forum topic, in this forum section.

 

Here's an example/comparison, where as long you don't need internal/external USB-C, the Asus H610M-A for ($110) and H610M-E for ($100) are absolute best-buy kings (for 12400F as well 12100F).

 

https://geizhals.eu/?cmp=2660866&cmp=2660875&cmp=2661683&cmp=2661037&cmp=2660671&cmp=2660681

 

And here in this second example/comparison, the Asus Prime B660-Plus D4 shows why stepping up to any of the microATX boards in the link above, as well as their fullATX counterparts is not worth it, as this B660 Prime dominates all of them in everything except the raw number of external USB.

 

https://geizhals.eu/?cmp=2660681&cmp=2661038&cmp=2661026&active=1

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, Dogzilla07 said:

True, only Asus is widely available, however they've done a 180, and are now arguably the best value in the lowest end motherboards. As I've explain and written out in detail in my forum post in the topic, in this forum section.

Debatable. The ones I've seen either have very mediocre IO and VRM solutions, or cost more than a MSI Z690-A Pro. Either way they're not great, and boards like the MSI B660-A Pro and H670 Steel Legend look very promising given that they're priced well (~$150 range).

 

Either way, you have to agree it's good to know what all your options are before you make a purchase decision. Pricing data will likely be out within a week, and board availability will follow soon after. It's not like you're waiting a month or longer to find out.

[Dogzilla07]

35 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Debatable. The ones I've seen either have very mediocre IO and VRM solutions,

How so ?, Asus H610M series has true 6x64A Mosfets, which is better / equal / comparable to any other VRM combination <$170 (on paper, and not 100% sure about Asrock).

35 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Either way, you have to agree it's good to know what all your options are before you make a purchase decision. Pricing data will likely be out within a week, and board availability will follow soon after. It's not like you're waiting a month or longer to find out.

While i would normally agree, in this case I have to disagree, as the prices and detailed comparison are available in Europe, on the links I gave, and as prices are easily comparable, there's no need to wait, all the available information is here to compare and judge the Asus Prime lineup with the other lineups.

 

There is a decent chance Asrock B660M PRO RS might have comparable VRM section, in which case it would be a really good mid point between Prime H610 and Prime B660, however even in that case the Asus Prime B660-Plus D4 and H670-Plus D4, match or beat all similarly priced boards in every metric except raw number of external USB ports.

 

Granted it's VRM comparison on paper, so an actual test is direly needed, but it is highly unlikely this would impact 12100F in any way (and very unlikely 12400F), especially with the heatsinked H610M-A.

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, Dogzilla07 said:

How so ?, Asus H610M series has true 6x64A Mosfets, which is better / equal to any other VRM combination <$170 (on paper, and not 100% sure about Asrock).

To be fair, I'm not even considering H610, since unless you're building an office/multimedia PC, you're gonna spend the extra $20-30 for a B660 board so you don't have to deal with all the shortcomings of H610 (no memory overclocking, 1 DIMM per channel, etc), and if you're going to be building a PC like that, you're gonna run a Celeron or an i3 and will only really care about the VRMs if they're going to blow up. 

 

The boards I'm considering are B660 and H670. The B660 Plus D4 is in the ~$140 price range, and for that, you get 5 USB Type A ports, and what looks to me a 6+2 phase power delivery (can't know for sure, they didn't say on the product page) with fairly weak heatsinks. The B660-A Pro (again, will hopefully be in the same ballpark of price, maybe ~$10-20 more expensive at most, but we won't know for sure for a few days) has an extra Type A port, much more substantial heatsinks, and a 12+2 phase VRM. ASRock has a lot of boards that look like they'll compete in price a lot closer again with what appear to be at first glance decent VRM solutions, but ASRock is bipolar with their pricing, some boards they price insanely cheap, and then there's the Z690 Taichi, so we really don't know.

 

Either way, you want to wait for proper reviews and prices to come out before making a decision. Anything right now is just speculation. ASUS might be using really nice Mosfets on their H610 boards, but if the actual VRM is designed poorly or there's some other flaw with the motherboard, that really doesn't matter. 

[Dogzilla07]

17 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

To be fair, I'm not even considering H610, since unless you're building an office/multimedia PC, you're gonna spend the extra $20-30 for a B660 board so you don't have to deal with all the shortcomings of H610 (no memory overclocking, 1 DIMM per channel, etc)

Again true before, not not so much now, Why spend the extra $20-30 when the H610 has same or better VRMs and 2xM.2 slots, and when memory overclocking doesn't do much on Alder Lake ? a Crucial 3000 MHz 15-16-16 would do wonders.

 

Yes the Asus have less raw number of USBs, but that $140 board has external 1x USB-C 3.2 (20Gb/s) for Pete's sake, and internal 5GB/s USB-C it's quality over quantity. Can you please check the geizhals links for detailed VRM comparison, it's all there.

 

And yes I agree we need a test to see if there isn't a weird snafu with the H610 board VRMs, however that's hardly applicable to the 12100F. Also could we please stop posting in this topic (with further board discussion, and especially more expensive board) and post in the other one instead, it'll get too congested with too much wall of text for the OP.

 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Dogzilla07 said:

when memory overclocking doesn't do much on Alder Lake ?

Um, no? Memory overclocking has been the way to improve performance for quite a while, and Alder Lake does benefit from going higher than 3200MHz. You also get even more limited IO. I'd spend that $20-30 just for an extra 2 USB ports. 

 

Besides, you only have 1 DIMM per channel, which while for most people it shouldn't be a big deal, if you're in this price tier you're likely to buy a lower amount of RAM so you can upgrade in the future, so you'd have to buy whole new RAM for a system like this. 

 

And yes, those H610 motherboards for some reason have a better set of MOSFETs, it won't matter if the rest of the board is garbage which we won't know until proper reviews and everything is out. Don't just say ASUS is the best until you know what ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI have up their sleeves, a decent amount of what they've announced does look really good. 

[Dogzilla07]

11 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Um, no? Memory overclocking has been the way to improve performance for quite a while, and Alder Lake does benefit from going higher than 3200MHz.

Alder lake in general does, 12100F/12400F on a budget build (for the relative budget) does not. Context is important, only 12100F and what's applicable for this CPU is the point of discussion in this topic, not the higher end stuff.

 

11 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Don't just say ASUS is the best

I'm not saying Asus is the best, I'm not even saying Asus low-end will be the best bang for buck when the other boards are out. yes there's gonna "better" options. But my whole point is when Asus low-end is so close this generation to the best-buy, best bang for buck, best value, why bother with the "better" options for 12100F/12400F budget builds ?

[Gamer Guy]

Wow, so much for the 12100/12400 with H610/B660. Till now, we only have SKUs until i5-12600K in my country. I will have to wait for 12100 or 12300 to see the pricing. I hope reviews on these entry level CPUs along motherboard VRMs come out before my country gets the chips. 12400F is out of my budget, because it is costing more than 11400 (non-F).  Also, the RTX 3050/3060 will be arriving late after I build my PC, until then I will be on my integrated GPU playing older games. So, "F" chips are out of my list. Does memory overclocking (like from 3200CL16 to 4000Cl18) help iGPU performance anyhow? Plus I need to be keen on choosing the motherboard so that I can get along with new intel stock cooler and power limits removed. Lot of things to consider. I will wait a month or so.

[Dogzilla07]

4 hours ago, Gamer Guy said:

Plus I need to be keen on choosing the motherboard so that I can get along with new intel stock cooler and power limits removed.

Power limit removal does nothing for 12100, 12400, No discernable performance gain. The stock cooler works for both, but is very loud for 12100. Either way you can get a tray version without an integrated cooler and Arctic Cooling Freezer I13 for 15 eur (hopefully similar in US), which goes a long way for cooling.

 

4 hours ago, Gamer Guy said:

Does memory overclocking (like from 3200CL16 to 4000Cl18) help iGPU performance anyhow?

This however changes things a bit, and makes some of the options I mentioned not really attractive. If you're trying to get the most of the IGPus, yeah definitely keep an eye out for tests with 12100/12400 and faster memory, that my warrant a B660. or a cheaper 11400 + b560 combo.

 

Do keep your focus however on snagging a Nvidia 3050 8GB, because there might be a small chance of wide availability for the first couple of hours, if not even 10-12 hours maybe.

[Dogzilla07]

 

12100 + H610M-K = 40w in PUBG (with discrete 6900 XT GPU). But in general it works amazing. XMP works, dual-channel works, 12100 is close to 12400, which are both close enough to 5600x in some games.

 

the 12100 integrated is a bit weak, so idk if this the best option for what u have in mind, but with a discrete GPU, it's definitely what you're looking for. Just a slightly more expensive ($10-$15) H610 with more M.2, faster USB, or a B660 if u need more I/O.

[Gamer Guy]

16 hours ago, Dogzilla07 said:

Either way you can get a tray version without an integrated cooler and Arctic Cooling Freezer I13 for 15 eur (hopefully similar in US)

I am from India and there are no tray versions sold here.

 

My aim to get the RTX 3050 8GB at a reasonable price, but that us close to impossible. Scalpers are all over the market. If I can't get one, I will then check then decide on which CPU to get for iGPU gaming. (I have a lot of game backlogs to play which would run fine on iGPU - medium settings - 1080p). Thanks!