Summary and conclusion
Now, why does Alder Lake fall so far behind in benchmarks like Linpack Xtreme or Super Pi 32M, but can consistently place itself as the top performer in gaming? The answer for the first part of the question looks to be the changed RAM interface. For the compatibility with DDR5 Intel had to rebuild some things here and doubled the memory controllers. The consequences of this are also for DDR4 on the one hand more throughput, as we could see in the AIDA64 Copy and Read tests. But in return you have to accept a noticeably higher latency for memory accesses. This is particularly impressive in the Super Pi 32M with a disadvantage of around 8 percentage points compared to the predecessor Rocket Lake. Even the approx. 200 MHz higher memory controller clock potential in the Gear 1 won’t be able to compensate for this in the end. Only more computing power or much faster DDR5 can help here.
But more compute alone doesn’t always help, unfortunately. In Linpack Xtreme, the Windows 11 scheduler doesn’t seem to be able to do anything with the new efficiency cores yet. And even if we turn this off and re-enable the AVX512 instruction set on the Golden Cove cores, it’s not even enough for parity with the 11900K. Again, memory latency will ultimately be the limiting factor in this application. Not even the increased cache from 16 to 30 MB can help here.
Where the extra cache clearly pays off, however, is in gaming. Because no matter what resolution, no matter what game, in our test today the 12900K is effectively always first in Average FPS. But even with the 1% low FPS, frame time variances, and power efficiency, there’s nothing better than the P cores on Intel’s latest CPU right now. Thus, the 12th generation is clearly recommended for gamers, no matter with which RAM. Overclockers, on the other hand, will have to make do with the older Rocket Lake CPUs in some benchmarks for a while longer if the target is absolute records.
In retrospect, of course, one might question how Rocket Lake would perform with 30MB of cache, and why Intel was stingier for the 11th generation than previous and subsequent CPUs in the first place. Rocket Lake’s Cypress Cove cores are a back-port of the Colden Cove cores from 7nm to 14nm, according to Intel, and with the larger process, lack of space could have been an easy explanation for trimming the cache. On the other hand, one could also ask oneself whether Alder Lake would also occupy the first place in gaming so decisively if Rocket Lake CPUs also had 30 MB cache, and whether Intel might have deliberately held back an ace up its sleeve here in the past.
Speculations aside, today’s test clearly showed that Intel’s new 12th gen CPUs are not all-rounders, at least not yet. The fact that the thread director still needs some love is actually nothing new – keyword Denuvo Scroll Lock workaround. But there is still a lot of potential for the memory interface, which will hopefully be exploited by the DDR5 development in the near future. As is often the case with such radical changes to a compute architecture, the surrounding interfaces must now also evolve – be it software or hardware. So all that’s left is to wait for Windows patches and better DDR5 availability – fingers crossed.
22 Antworten
Kommentar
Lade neue Kommentare
Neuling
Urgestein
Veteran
Veteran
Urgestein
Urgestein
Veteran
Urgestein
Veteran
Mitglied
Mitglied
Urgestein
Mitglied
Urgestein
Mitglied
Urgestein
1
Veteran
Urgestein
Alle Kommentare lesen unter igor´sLAB Community →