https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/11/intels-alder-lake-big-little-cpu-design-tested-its-a-barn-burner/ Skip to main content * Biz & IT * Tech * Science * Policy * Cars * Gaming & Culture * Store * Forums Subscribe [ ] Close Navigate * Store * Subscribe * Videos * Features * Reviews * RSS Feeds * Mobile Site * About Ars * Staff Directory * Contact Us * Advertise with Ars * Reprints Filter by topic * Biz & IT * Tech * Science * Policy * Cars * Gaming & Culture * Store * Forums Settings Front page layout Grid List Site theme Black on white White on black Sign in Comment activity Sign up or login to join the discussions! [ ] [ ] [Submit] [ ] Stay logged in | Having trouble? Sign up to comment and more Sign up hot and heavy -- Intel's Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: It's a barn burner Intel's power-gulping i9-12900K crushes AMD's Ryzen 9 5950x--even multithreaded. Jim Salter - Nov 4, 2021 1:00 pm UTC hero shot of test system Enlarge / Our test rig marries the Alder Lake i9-12900K (pictured) or the i5-12600K with 64 GB DDR5 SDRAM, an MSI Carbon motherboard, SK Hynix Gold NVMe SSD, and Apex Gaming 850M PSU. Cooling is provided by a Corsair fluid cooler and triple fan radiator. Jim Salter reader comments 348 with 191 posters participating, including story author Share this story * Share on Facebook * Share on Twitter * Share on Reddit After spending several days with Intel's newest consumer CPU designs, we have some surprising news: they're faster than AMD's latest Ryzens on both single-threaded and most multithreaded benchmarks. We suspect this will be especially surprising to some, since Intel's newest desktop CPUs feature a hybrid "big.little" design similar to those found in ARM CPUs. AMD's flagship Ryzen 9 5950x is a traditional 16 core, 32 thread design, with all cores being "big" high-performance types with symmetric multithreading (SMT, also known as "hyperthreading"). By contrast, the i9-12900K offers 16 cores and only 24 threads--with eight "performance" cores featuring SMT and eight lower-performance "efficiency" cores with no SMT. Although the world largely understands big.little design in mobile CPUs--where the value of having slow but efficient cores for non-latency-sensitive tasks means longer battery life and less waste heat--the value isn't as well-understood in desktop CPUs, where power and thermal budgets aren't such an obvious problem. But there's still good reason for hybrid designs even on the desktop--die space remains sharply limited in CPUs, and you can fit more of the smaller "efficiency" cores into a given package size. The proof of the pudding, they say, is in the tasting--or in this case, the benchmarking. And despite having the same number of cores and fewer overall threads, Intel for the first time in years beats AMD handily on almost all multithreaded benchmarks. Unfortunately, Intel still requires a power premium to achieve those results; despite its theoretically more efficient chip layout, Alder Lake consumes more power and runs hotter than Zen 3 does. We tested Alder Lake on the latest Windows 11 below, but our Ryzen results are on Windows 10--this made certain to avoid AMD being penalized by the current Windows 11 regressions in L3 cache and Preferred Core selection, while giving Alder Lake the big.little architecture support it needs from Windows 11 itself. Advertisement Multithreaded CPU performance * We typically consider Cinebench to be the gold standard for general-purpose CPU tests--and for the first time in years, Intel trounces AMD's best offerings here. Jim Salter * Unsurprisingly, i9-12900K also comes out on top in Geekbench 5. Jim Salter * The general-purpose Passmark CPU benchmark is the only test where we saw Ryzen 9 outperform i9-12900K--but even here, by a much, much lower margin than we're accustomed to seeing. Jim Salter For the first time in several years, the story here isn't just whether or not Intel managed to one-up its own previous generation--Intel is actually beating AMD's best consumer CPU offerings, almost across the board. In addition to nearly doubling generation-on-generation performance from i9-11900K to i9-12900K, Intel beats the pants off the Ryzen 9 line in both Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R20 multithreaded tests. Passmark is the only benchmark we ran that still gave the nod to AMD's Ryzen 9 CPUs--and even there, AMD won only by a narrow margin. We weren't too surprised to see the i9-12900K beat the 12c/24t Ryzen 9 5900X--with DDR5 RAM and a four-core advantage, that was Intel's fight to win or lose. Seeing i9-12900K outperform the 5950X was a considerably larger surprise, though, since the 5950X has the same sixteen cores--all of which are high-performance cores with SMT enabled, compared to Intel's eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores. Usually, we'd be pointing at Geekbench 5 as a likely Intel-favoring outlier, but this time around Passmark is the odd one out. Cinebench is, as always, our gold standard for one-size-fits-all multithreaded CPU testing--and Intel's extreme results in both Cinebench and Geekbench match up with our seat-of-the-pants observations of the i9-12900K. This is an incredibly fast CPU, and it feels that way in action. If you were concerned that those efficiency cores might cause the system to feel slow or stutter-y, you can shelve that concern. * If Core i9 vs Ryzen 9 impressed you, you'd better buckle in before checking out Core i5 vs Ryzen 5. Jim Salter * Geekbench 5 confirms that Core i5-12600K beats the absolute pants off Ryzen 5 5600X--it's not even close. Jim Salter * i5-12600K trounces its Ryzen 5 competition even on multithreaded Passmark--the one test where Ryzen 9 still came out on top. Jim Salter Dropping down to the "value performance" segment, Core i5-12600K is the hands-down winner across the board. The new i5 beats both last year's i5 and Ryzen 5 5600X by very unsubtle margins of 30 to 50 percent. We usually find ourselves advising readers not to get too carried away about subtle performance differences between CPUs, but these are not subtle differences. Advertisement A 30 to 50 percent performance advantage is something that you can immediately feel in CPU-bound tasks, without any need for stopwatches or special benchmarks. AMD has its work cut out for it if it wants to regain the value-performance crown in its next release cycle. Single-threaded CPU performance * Unsurprisingly, Intel leads single-threaded performance--and by a wider margin than usual. Jim Salter * Geekbench affords Intel a narrower single-threaded win than either Cinebench or Passmark--but it's a win, nonetheless. Jim Salter * Once again, the i9-12900K wins. Jim Salter It should be much less surprising that Intel came out on top across the board for single-threaded CPU performance--after all, that's the one area it has actually been able to compete strongly with AMD for in the last few product cycles. As with the multithreaded tests, though, Intel wins by a wider margin than it used to. We still think most readers should pay more attention to multithreaded results than single-threaded results--but with 15 percent margins across the board in Intel's favor, the single-threaded wins here are at least worth talking about, unlike the paltry 2 to 5 percent single-threaded victories we're more accustomed to seeing. * The Core i5-12600K puts the single-threaded smackdown on both the Ryzen 5 5600X and the Core i5-11600K, with a 15 percent margin just like its Core i9 big brother. Jim Salter * Geekbench 5 only affords the i5-12600K a 9 percent margin over AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X--which is still a bigger win than we're used to seeing on single-threaded performance. Jim Salter * With Passmark, we're back once again to a 15 percent single-threaded margin over the Ryzen 5 5600X. Jim Salter The single-threaded story with Intel's i5-12600K is the same as it was with the bigger i9-12900K--unusually large (for single-threaded) victories across the board. Geekbench 5 once again offers Intel the narrowest win of our three primary CPU benchmarks, but the 9 percent margin we see there is still a lot bigger than we're used to seeing. Page: 1 2 Next - reader comments 348 with 191 posters participating, including story author Share this story * Share on Facebook * Share on Twitter * Share on Reddit Jim Salter Jim is an author, podcaster, mercenary sysadmin, coder, and father of three--not necessarily in that order. Email jim.salter@arstechnica.com // Twitter @jrssnet Advertisement You must login or create an account to comment. Channel Ars Technica - Previous story Next story - Related Stories Today on Ars * Store * Subscribe * About Us * RSS Feeds * View Mobile Site * Contact Us * Staff * Advertise with us * Reprints Newsletter Signup Join the Ars Orbital Transmission mailing list to get weekly updates delivered to your inbox. Sign me up - CNMN Collection WIRED Media Group (c) 2021 Conde Nast. All rights reserved. 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