[HN Gopher] Intel's Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it...
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Intel's Alder Lake big.little CPU design, tested: it's a barn
burner
Author : neogodless
Score : 149 points
Date : 2021-11-04 13:24 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| neogodless wrote:
| Anandtech Review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/the-
| intel-12th-gen-core...
| caycep wrote:
| I feel like this review is more even headed...but they don't
| seem overly concerned by the close-to-300W elephant in the
| room...
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, arguably if you're buying a desktop processor that
| costs $700 just for the chip, you probably don't care THAT
| much?
|
| This is very much a niche product.
| dijit wrote:
| Still. Your VRMs pulling 90A and your cooling solution are
| going to care.
|
| So will your ears when that cooling solution needs to try
| spreading the thermal load
| paulpan wrote:
| Looks like the i5-12600K is the real value play for Intel's 12th
| gen. It essentially beats Ryzen 5600X at similar power
| consumption. LTT review:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EogHCFd7w0
|
| That said, the cost of ownership is likely much higher for Intel
| vs. AMD - due to requiring DDR5 RAM and new motherboard.
| zucker42 wrote:
| You don't need DDR5 RAM. DDR5 is a halo feature at this point,
| only for the people for whom money is no issue. There's zero
| reason to use DDR5 RAM with the 12600k (considering you could
| be served better by spending the extra money on a better CPU or
| more capacity). The performance benefit is varied and probably
| not more than 5% at best.
|
| The increased price of Z690 vs B550 and even X570 is
| significant though.
| Osiris wrote:
| If that's true, what advantage is there to DDR5 besides lower
| stock voltage?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I asked myself the same thing when DDR4 came out. I was
| looking forward to skipping it, but Ryzen was able to
| unofficially use ECC ram so that intrigued me. DDR5 will be
| able to have larger sizes for ram as well if I remember
| correctly.
| sliken wrote:
| DDR4 didn't have much over DDR3, just a bit of bandwidth,
| and most apps weren't that sensitive.
|
| However DDR5 doubles the number of channels vs DDR4,
| while also having a higher clock rate (more bandwidth),
| so it's a bigger difference.
| toast0 wrote:
| DDR5 has more future promise, whether that's lower power,
| higher bandwidth, higher capacity, maybe lower latency too.
| There's something about DDR5 requiring ECC, but it's not
| clear if that includes actual CPU/OS reporting or if it's
| internally using ECC but with no error reporting.
|
| But, I'm not sure how much of that shines through in the
| first DDR5 product vs mature DDR4 products. Now is the part
| of the cycle where the old memory is still high volume and
| the new memory is starting to ramp up; in not too long,
| we'll have the part of the cycle where they made too much
| of the old memory and prices drop and it's time to scoop up
| all the old memory you'll ever need.
| smolder wrote:
| One big thing is better resistance to cosmic ray bitflips
| due to the on-chip error protection. (Different from ECC,
| all DDR5 gets it.) Hopefully rowhammer style trickery is
| effectively quashed now.
| sliken wrote:
| Twice as many channels so twice as many cache misses in
| flight. The Anandtech shows significant gains on multi core
| workloads. So the I9-12900K with DDR4 shows 61.33 int,
| 59.55 FP. With DDR5 it gets 80.53 Intel and 81.85. Some of
| that is increased bandwidth, but having more memory
| requests in flight helps as well.
|
| Imagine all the cores generating cache misses and you have
| 2 channel of memory. When a channel handles a transaction
| it's unavailable for 40 ns (keep in mind that @ 3GHz with 2
| instructions per cycle that's 240 instructions per core).
|
| Now with 4 channels you can have twice as many transactions
| in flight and your cores spend less time idle and waiting
| on memory.
|
| So over a 30% increase in performance when going from DDR4
| to DDR5, of course this doesn't matter if your application
| has a high rate of cache hits.
| neogodless wrote:
| Here's the specific segment comparing power consumption:
|
| https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=503
|
| In Blender, the i5-12600K draws about 125W, while the 5600X
| appears to draw about 75W. In games, the difference is much
| smaller.
|
| You can also compare the heat dissipation of those two chips:
|
| https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=604
| freemint wrote:
| *in synthetic benchmarks or multicore alu-constrained workloads
| flakiness wrote:
| I wonder what's the story for Linux here.
|
| I don't think it is possible for OSS projects to utilize this
| big.little system: I tried to look at the instruction level
| details of the thread director but could find very little. If
| that's the case, the future of linux desktop/laptop is even
| dimmer than before.
|
| Android has downstream (partially upstream?) EAS scheduler to
| handle this kind of architecture [1], but I'm not sure there is
| any move to take this up to the intel platform. As a linux laptop
| user, I hope someone does something. [1]
| https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-
| software/linux-kernel/energy-aware-scheduling
| usr1106 wrote:
| As a Linux desktop user I am still a bit disappointed about
| AMD. My Ryzen 7 does not run 100% reliably (freezes many times
| a year, althoug typically not more than once a month. The net
| is full of similar stories, but nothing seems to help).
| Independently but equally annoying the temperature sensors are
| not well supported, obviously AMD does not share documentation
| or contribute to the kernel. Don't remember the details now.
| Gave up frustrated 2 years ago or so.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Sounds like a motherboard issue. Never had that happen.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| FYI temperature sensors are fixed in the latest Linux kernel.
| The only occasional bug I get is from the amdgpu driver (I
| use an APU) but even that seems to have been resolved.
|
| I would highly recommend making sure you are using the latest
| BIOS and kernel.
| bavell wrote:
| YMMV... I bought a 5950X in late January for my main
| workstation (Arch) and haven't had any problems with it at
| all. FWIW my last Intel CPU (2700k IIRC) crashed my machine
| regularly whenever the iGPU fired up for some tasks (e.g. I
| could crash Blender in < 10 seconds...)
| [deleted]
| piperswe wrote:
| Intel does a surprisingly fantastic job of open-sourcing
| things. They're one of the biggest contributors to the Linux
| kernel, and the official drivers for their integrated GPUs are
| in the mainline kernel. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see
| patches submitted from Intel adding Alder Lake support to
| Linux's Capacity Aware Scheduling [1], or if there already have
| been patches submitted under the radar.
|
| EDIT: Oh, and Linux support for their NICs is fantastic as well
| in my experience, both wired and wireless. That's something
| Broadcom can learn from - I end up replacing Broadcom wireless
| NICs in my laptops with Intel ones because it's such a pain to
| work with Broadcom on Linux. [1]
| https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-
| capacity.html
| jdub wrote:
| Linux has supported big.LITTLE style systems for a long time,
| and has been improving scheduler support for them for about 10
| years.
|
| (The main gap you tend to see in the Linux world is integration
| further up the stack. For example, allowing app developers to
| nominate a core preference by configuration. That's partly due
| to the assumption of the distribution model.)
| neogodless wrote:
| Phoronix does a suite of benchmarks on Linux.
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-12...
| kcb wrote:
| Intel is one of(possibly the biggest) the largest contributors
| to Linux. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
| Symmetry wrote:
| The prices do look very compelling, though Intel motherboards do
| tend to be more expensive than AMD so spec out the whole system
| before deciding which is the better deal.
|
| It's great to have competition, even if it's comping out a year
| behind the equivalent AMD systems.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| What's the price point though?
| neogodless wrote:
| Officially?
|
| https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134599/...
|
| > $589.00 - $599.00
|
| Retail will vary. Currently $649 at NewEgg.com, but sold out.
|
| https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i9-12900k-core-i9-12th-gen...
| snuxoll wrote:
| It's always important to note that pricing on ark is bulk
| pricing (1K unit order), retail will always be higher.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| not bad, ty for sharing.
| rektide wrote:
| Overall fabulous news, but I am weirded out that mobile is now
| the connected, featureful, good core, and desktop gets a bunch of
| last gen bad tech:
|
| * an UHD 770 gpu rather than a Xe (understandable-ish as many
| want dedicated GPUs anyhow)
|
| * no Thunderbolt 4, only USB4. way way less connected & capable.
| neogodless wrote:
| Z690 supports Thunderbolt 4.
|
| See, for example, https://wccftech.com/review/intel-
| core-i9-12900k-core-i5-126...
| rektide wrote:
| my understanding is that a number of (already deluxe
| expensive fancy) motherboards have add-on chips to further
| jack up the cost i mean add thunderbolt4 support. i haven't
| seen any indicators that the kick ass readily available on
| chip 4x 40 Gbps of connectivity that intel mobile chips offer
| on integrated tb4 is available on desktop.
|
| this, to me, constrains the desktop from being a good movipe
| partner to the great laptops available. at least usb4
| mandates host-to-host networking, but all these great laptops
| with desktops lagging so far behind, having such lower
| standards, is excessively sad, to me.
|
| atm phones are way far behind. no usb4 (with host-to-host
| networkingl nor tb4 are avialbable. i have a hard time
| imagining phones remaining market segmented out, not
| participating, in the good, not meeting the new bar.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Intel's processor is drawing 307W to slightly edge past the 5950X
| in Cinebench, which only draws around 214W.
|
| It's hard to cool 307W over extended periods without your
| computer becoming _really_ loud, even with a water cooling setup.
|
| Now, if they had that kind of cooling available, they could have
| easily gotten a lot more performance out of the Ryzen, while the
| i9 is already operating at the limits of what consumer grade
| cooling can sustain.
|
| There's no way that Intel processor is beating a 5950X that is
| _also_ drawing 300W. At that point some Ryzen 's will be
| operating at close to 6GHz per core.
|
| The most interesting takeaway is that Intel apparently has no
| qualms selling a processor with a stock configuration that draws
| 300W.
|
| Also their Ryzen numbers are beyond suspicious. On a _silent_
| configuration (peak power draw ~209W, 175W sustained, some
| undervolting) my Ryzen 5900X hits a Cinebench R20 score of 8835
| vs their 8390. I suspect my rig is worse since I cheaped out on
| the RAM, but I wouldn 't know because they omit information about
| the Ryzen test rig.
|
| Their Ryzen numbers don't add up with other benchmarks around the
| internet either: The 5950X should hit around 10400, and the 5900X
| should hit 8600 in their stock configurations with mid-to-high-
| grade RAM[1]. Their scores are 400 points and 200 points lower
| respectively.
|
| To get numbers as bad as theirs, I have to mismatch my FCLK and
| RAM intentionally. But again, we don't know what their setup is
| because they didn't tell us.
|
| We however do know that they used DDR5 RAM for the Intel
| processor, which the current gen Ryzen don't support. Likely some
| performance was gained there as well, but obviously they didn't
| test the Intel processor with DDR4 RAM to get an idea of how much
| comes down to faster RAM. It's still fair to use DDR5, since the
| Intel processor supports it, but it's hard to say much about the
| Intel processor performance (development) itself without some
| additional information. Without this information we don't know
| whether we can expect the next generation of Ryzen processors
| with DDR5 support to immediately leave Intel in the dust again,
| or whether DDR4/DDR5 doesn't really matter.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_9_5900x_and_...
| threatripper wrote:
| > We however do know that they used DDR5 RAM for the Intel
| processor, which the current gen Ryzen don't support. Likely
| some performance was gained there as well, but obviously they
| didn't test the Intel processor with DDR4 RAM to get an idea of
| how much comes down to faster RAM.
|
| Anandtech has a detailed section comparing DDR4 to DDR5:
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/the-intel-12th-gen-core...
| sroussey wrote:
| So, up to 18% uplift, weighted towards heavily threaded
| loads.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Someone pointed out they're using a Windows 11 version that
| cripples AMD. https://www.neowin.net/news/charlie-demerjian-
| intel-used-uno...
| jessermeyer wrote:
| Can you please read the article before posting?
|
| >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.
|
| Thanks.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Thanks I only read the charts
| walrus01 wrote:
| If I had to guess the TDP of the new Intel CPU when maxed out
| is actually around 270-280W. Not all of that 307W is the CPU,
| there's power used by the motherboard itself, a mostly idle
| GPU, fans, NVME SSD, etc.
|
| Still a very serious heat producing thing in one socket
| compared to the AMD.
|
| This also means it's going to require some rather expensive
| motherboards since reliably delivering 280W to one socket is no
| simple task.
| gambiting wrote:
| You don't have to guess, Intel themselves say the "peak" TDP
| of their top i9 is 250W. All to slightly beat 5900X which
| tops out at 150W. It's insanity, literally have no idea who
| will buy this.
| pie42000 wrote:
| You don't get the bleeding edge tech for practicality or
| reasonableness. You don't buy a Bugatti Veyron for cargo
| space and gas mileage. You get silly tech for insane
| performance at massive cost. Eventually this tech is
| refined, optimized and made reasonable.
|
| It's what humans do. We don't cross the Pacific on a tiki
| raft or fly to the moon in a tin bucket because our
| destination is nicer than where we are currently, we do it
| because we can and because it's awesome.
| noir_lord wrote:
| People in cold climates.
|
| Computing and heating in one go.
| arcticbull wrote:
| TDP isn't really a peak wattage number though, it's hand-
| wavey.
| r00fus wrote:
| A few lifetimes ago, I worked at a small company where the
| VP shared with me why we had some "caddilac" service plans
| (ie, super expensive, cost/benefit=unreasonable).
|
| His reply: These are the showroom-only models where
| customer won't buy but will feel their (already expensive)
| not as high end plan is more reasonable.
|
| Essentially it's a part of product marketing segmentation
| where you create an unobtanium segment that's only there to
| sell other segments.
| sroussey wrote:
| The old axiom about people buying the middle priced
| choice...
| r00fus wrote:
| Product marketing version of the Overton Window, I guess.
| kyrra wrote:
| As others have sort of pointed out, your opening sentence is
| incorrect. That "307W" draw is "Full System Power Consumption",
| not just the CPU. The 12900K will draw around 230-240W at max
| load (when doing work like Blender renders), compared to 140W
| for a 5900X.
|
| But for Gaming loads where the CPU maxes out, I haven't seen
| reviewers hit those numbers. The 12900K was using ~125W in
| those workloads, just a few watts lower than AMD.
|
| Now, if you go down to Intel's midrange (i5, not the i9 you
| were quoting), the power usage is way down (at 125W), vs the
| AMD 5600X at 75W with a blender workload. Gaming workload,
| Intel is a few watts higher than AMD.
|
| Yes, Intel is drawing way more power for super CPU intensive
| tasks, but for what most people will be doing, it's pretty
| even.
|
| Source: LTT review:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EogHCFd7w0&t=513s
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Yes, Intel is drawing way more power for super CPU
| intensive tasks, but for what most people will be doing, it's
| pretty even._
|
| This. I honestly don't get why people are so focused suddenly
| on the power consumption for a desktop CPU designed for
| enthusiasts who want top performance at any cost.
|
| GPUs are consuming way more power than that(Nvidia's Ampere
| is a notorious power hog), pushing consumers to 700W+ PSUs
| and nobody bats an eye, but seem to throw their hands in the
| air when their CPUs get close to that of a GPU.
|
| Like why? It's the top spec model, it's supposed to be
| ludicrous, not be good value for money or highly efficient,
| they have other models more competitive for that. It feels
| like people are just looking for reasons to to create outrage
| about a product they're not gonna buy anyway.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Because there isn't a proportional performance gain, and
| the heat generated will degrade the computer, at what cost?
| A few irrelevant percentage points?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| If you're concerned about proportional performance gains,
| this product isn't for you. So why are you complaining
| about something you're not gonna buy anyway?
|
| Most tech products that are the tip of the spear are bad
| value for money and less energy efficient than the ones
| down the range (Nvidia 3090 vs 3080 for example) as they
| pass the point of diminishing returns of what the design
| can do and what's cheap and easy to manufacture.
|
| But they exist because there is a marke of enthusiasts
| for whom efficiency or price does not matter, they just
| want the best performance money can buy because maybe
| their business use case benefits from the 10% shorter
| render/compile times at the cost of 50% extra power
| consumption. Who are you to judge?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| To feel better about my non Intel purchase by laughing at
| the performance.
|
| If that is true they should be comparing it to the Epyc
| 7763 or other CPUs that aren't meant to be reasonably
| priced. No reason a true enthusiast would pick this CPU
| over Epyc.
| nawgz wrote:
| > they should be comparing it to the Epyc 7763
|
| That's a server chip/line, no? And therefore will have
| significantly worse per-core performance, one of the most
| important things for non-embarrassingly-parallel compute
| tasks?
|
| Edit: and after a cursory search, is it not also true
| that Epyc line is 4-8x higher priced than the 12900k
| MSRP?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> To feel better about my non Intel purchase by laughing
| at the performance._
|
| That just sounds childish.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's a self deprecating joke, dude. People make these to
| de-escalate situations safely. I sometimes really wonder
| at the social skills of people on this website.
| 24t wrote:
| Intel have a rich and storied history of paying for biased
| and dishonest reviews. You should be thankful that people
| are willing to fill in the gaps so you hear the full story.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| But we're talking a small lead in many cases, a lot of
| times a tie, for 30% higher power draw here.
| fwip wrote:
| So instead of drawing 50% more power than the AMD chip, the
| Intel chip draws closer to 70% more power.
| eloff wrote:
| Your comment was more revealing than the article. Thanks for
| sharing!
| api wrote:
| Maybe by barn burner they mean it would catch a barn on fire if
| not properly cooled.
| caycep wrote:
| Ha! I thought "they meant literally" when I read the
| headline...
| webmobdev wrote:
| Apparently Intel used an older build of Windows 11 that has
| bugs that slows down AMD processors, even though Windows has
| fixed the issue - https://www.neowin.net/news/charlie-
| demerjian-intel-used-uno... ...
| [deleted]
| mhh__ wrote:
| Maxing a CPU is very hard in practice, the power usage under
| realistic loads is actually much less crap.
| freemint wrote:
| In particular in gaming loads it even draws less than the
| same tier AMD products at mostly better results (modulo DDR5
| vs DDR4).
| vondur wrote:
| In the Gamers Nexus review, they were using a high end 360MM
| AIO cooler and the CPU Temp shot up to 74C almost immediately
| during a blender session. Definitely a hot, power hungry CPU.
| zeusk wrote:
| immediate temp fluctuation is more of a heat transfer
| problem, not overall thermal budget.
| smolder wrote:
| It seems like all the focus has been on how these chips are
| at maximum load. I wonder how they perform under more typical
| light/mixed loads.
|
| AFAIK, the theoretical benefit of doing the big-little
| arrangement is improved power scaling with load. At partial
| load, powering a wimpy "e-core" at its ideal clock speed
| should be more efficient (instructions per kwh) & possibly
| have better latency characteristics than the usual approach
| of doing a drastic underclock & undervolt on big performance-
| oriented cores.
|
| Naturally I'm interested in seeing whether that theoretical
| advantage of the architecture has paid off. The maximum speed
| performance stats and wattage numbers give an incomplete
| picture. I want to see wattage and performance metrics across
| the spectrum of load levels, from <1% all the way up.
|
| If the 12900K delivers roughly 5950 level performance using
| 25% more power than the 5950, that looks pretty bad. But if
| the 12900K can deliver 25% of its max performance for only
| 10% of its max power envelope, and the 5950 needs 30% of its
| max power envelope to keep up with that load, that's a big
| deal, and the intel chip will actually be the cooler one more
| often than not. That dynamism is what reviewers need to focus
| on explaining & quantifying, IMO.
| snuxoll wrote:
| What's the die size of the ADL silicon? I know my 5800X will
| rocket up past 70C even on a custom loop with 30C water temps
| because the chiplets are so small and power dense that
| there's not enough surface area to transfer heat any quicker
| to the IHS.
| zamadatix wrote:
| You can give a 5950x all the wattage all day but it really
| doesn't get much faster until you start dropping the temps to
| sub ambient. I have a 480mm radiator dedicated to my 5950X
| along with high quality RAM and extensive tuning (sub timings,
| fabric clocks) and I'm not able to get anywhere near 6 GHz at
| room temp without a voltage level that would destroy the chip
| after a few benchmarks.
|
| And while I think my highly optimized 5950x setup could
| probably eek out the 12900k cinebench multicore score I'm sure
| if you gave me 10 minutes to also be fair and tweak a few
| settings on the 12900K I could get that to win again, even
| without messing with max power.
|
| I do agree the Ryzen numbers in the article do in general seem
| lower than normal though.
|
| Given this is Intel's "Catch up multiple nodes, new performance
| design, 300 watt class, ddr5" CPU and it's only able to get
| this eek ahead vs AMD's CPU from last year which is about to
| get the same litany of improvements plus their stacked cache
| improvement I'm not holding my breath Intel is really
| innovating fast enough again but at least they don't seem to be
| sitting still anymore.
| tails4e wrote:
| What is the cold temp helping with? AFAIK transistors no
| longer get faster at cold, at least since 16nm the perforamce
| at sub 1V thin-ox transistors is pretty flat with
| temperature. Cold helps a lot with power though, leakage at
| hot (100C) could be 20W, so maybe going cold allowed more
| dynamic power dissapation? I'd be intersted to hear what the
| overclock experts like yourself think.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Unless anything has changed the silicon/die itself isn't
| staying sub ambient at all it's just that there's a limit
| to hot steep temperature gradient you can build when the
| ambient/sink temperature is fixed.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Transistors have a maximum operating temperature[1]
| (Tj_max), and the package has a fixed thermal
| resistance[2].
|
| If the junction-to-case thermal resistance is 0.5 deg C/W
| and CPU dissipates 100W, then the junction will operate at
| 50 deg C _above_ the case temperature, whatever that is.
|
| If the case is kept at room temperature (say 25 deg C),
| which is the best possible a simple air or water cooled
| system can do, then the junction will operate at 75 deg C.
|
| For simple discrete transistors and diodes, Tj_max is
| typically 150-175 deg C. For modern CPUs I believe it's
| closer to 100-125 deg C.
|
| Thus, lowering the case temperature means the chip can
| consume more power before reaching the maximum junction
| temperature.
|
| A greater power budget means you could raise operating
| voltages to help with overclocking for example. Keep in
| mind power dissipation scales with voltage squared.
|
| There might be other effects too, I'm no overclocking
| expert, but this is one aspect.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junction_temperature
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_resistance
| baybal2 wrote:
| Leakage increases with temperature, and the speed at
| which FET switches also increases with temperature.
| 55873445216111 wrote:
| If 5950x was designed for 240W max power like 12900k, then it
| is likely that the optimizations AMD would have needed to
| implement in the silicon would have also provided some
| additional frequency headroom. It's all hypothetical though
| since all we can do is compare the chips that were actually
| produced.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| > There's no way that Intel processor is beating a 5950X that
| is also drawing 300W. At that point some Ryzen's will be
| operating at close to 6GHz per core.
|
| Modern desktop CPUs are already being pushed well past the peak
| perf/watt efficiency in order to extract the maximum amount of
| performance. A Ryzen 9 5950X would need substantially more than
| 300W to hit 6 GHz, and you would need exotic sub-ambient
| cooling to keep it stable at those speeds.
|
| A more reasonable comparison would be against EPYC and
| Threadripper, both of which use their respective power budgets
| for more cores rather than more clocks. A 64-core EPYC 7763 has
| a TDP of about 280W, and it's going to substantially outperform
| the Core i9-12900K when given 300W of power.
| native_samples wrote:
| Outperform it assuming your workload can actually saturate 64
| cores. In the desktop market though, and heck often in the
| server market, you're going to struggle to do that. Single
| thread performance is still hyper important and that isn't
| going to change anytime soon. Intel seem to have the edge
| there, in a big way.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Also their Ryzen numbers are beyond suspicious. On a silent
| configuration (peak power draw ~209W, 175W sustained, some
| undervolting) my Ryzen 5900X hits a Cinebench R20 score of 8835
| vs their 8390. I suspect my rig is worse since I cheaped out on
| the RAM, but I wouldn't know because they omit information
| about the Ryzen test rig.
|
| Firmware quality for AM4 boards is ... "variable". My board
| restricted CPU power to 60% of nominal because they put in the
| wrong ADC scaling factors in some BIOS revision. Some boards
| have PBO enabled by default (which nets big % on the kill-a-
| watt, less % in performance). Many boards have bad defaults
| when you enable XMP which steal a few Watts from the actual CPU
| cores.
|
| CB mostly scales with core frequency, memory and FCLK are less
| important.
|
| > At that point some Ryzen's will be operating at close to 6GHz
| per core.
|
| There's no way any of them will get close to 6 GHz without LN2.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| > There's no way any of them will get close to 6 GHz without
| LN2.
|
| No need for LN2, you could probably achieve this easily using
| a closed loop CO2 system. But I'm not aware of any such
| systems readily available. Kinda seems like an unfilled niche
| to me.
| franciscop wrote:
| > "Intel beats the pants off the Ryzen 9 line in both Geekbench 5
| and Cinebench R20 multithreaded tests"
|
| Am I reading the graph wrong or Intel is barely a 3% faster than
| Ryzen in that Cinebench i9/9 graph?
| mey wrote:
| Watching several detailed YouTube reviews (Gamers Nexus,
| Hardware Unboxed), the performance difference is 0-20% above a
| 5950x. Long duration (above 8 min) render workloads seem to
| push AMD back to break even, but memory dependant mutlithreaded
| bursty workloads heavily favor 12900k. Of course halo products
| are going to halo. The interesting story may be the 12600k, for
| it's price to performance considerations. Cooling the chips is
| not simple, air cooling is not enough, one reviewer
| recommending 360mm AIO as a requirement.
|
| Edit: Gaming benchmarks are all over the place reviewer to
| reviewer. Some showing huge jumps, others not, game to game.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Yeah, Geekbench is the only one where Intel chip really
| meaningfully ahead. I guess you gotta talk up the parts a bit
| to get the free test samples.
| acomjean wrote:
| I think this is great improvement. (I own machines with intel and
| AMD processors). It feels like AMDs progress has lit a fire under
| intel to innovate. Competition seems to be back and I look
| forward to the progress next few years. I think the i5 not the i9
| is the chip of note.
|
| I'm using linux more and more and like open architecture PCs, so
| optimistic they can stay competitive with those SOC. Should be
| interesting how the linux scheduler deals with the different core
| types.
|
| The architecture bumps to DDR5.0, and PCIe5.0 hopefully will help
| performance in the future too.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I predict it will be many years before linux works in a
| satisfactory way out of the box on these machines. The existing
| kernel model of task priority is not rich enough. Perhaps this
| will accelerate the adoption of user-space task scheduling.
| cestith wrote:
| Ars Technica, where 2.4% in the Cinebench R20 is "beats the pants
| off". $ perl -E 'say ( ( ( 10323 - 10085 ) /
| 10085 ) * 100 )' 2.35994050570154
| [deleted]
| nomel wrote:
| > crushes AMD's Ryzen 9 5950x--even multithreaded.
|
| > they're faster than AMD's latest Ryzens on both single-
| threaded and most multithreaded benchmarks
|
| They prove how silly their headline is in the second sentence.
| This is screaming "biased".
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| That has been the case with every site I looked at, its full
| of Intel shilling, they compare a CPU that is many times as
| expensive as AMD, see its got a slight edge with way higher
| power usage and declare the Intel processor the winner.
| Androider wrote:
| The 12900K MSRP is $589, the AMD 5950X MSRP is $799.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is MSRP relevant? Does the Nvidia 3080 Ti MSRP matter in
| the real world?
|
| Where is it $589? Its sold for $1,426.45
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FXDLX95 and the 5950X is
| $749 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0815Y8J9N/ so the Intel
| is much more expensive in the real word than MSRP and the
| AMD is slightly cheaper.
| Androider wrote:
| CPU prices are usually much closer to MSRP except perhaps
| right at launch. You can put a 12700K or 12600K in your
| bag at Newegg right now at ~MSRP+$20, and you were able
| to do that for the 12900K Newegg pre-order last week. The
| 12700K at $449 on Newegg right now is some excellent
| value you have to admit (same P cores as 12900K, 4 less
| efficiency cores) any way you look at it, and the 12600K
| even more so.
|
| Claiming that the Intel CPUs are "many times more
| expensive" than the AMD comparables is just wrong.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| If you want that CPU you'll have to pay much more than
| MSRP, and the MSRP is higher than the real world price
| you can get the AMD for. Using historical prices with pre
| order prices that nobody can get now is a dishonest way
| to reflect cost. MSRP is a useless representation in this
| case and for GPUs.
|
| Edit: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/intel-
| core-i9-12900k-desktop-pr... Never mind found it for less
| here, wonder why it's so much on amazon.
| postalrat wrote:
| I already have an i9 and the i5 is old. These CPUs aren't an
| upgrade.
| oblio wrote:
| I really wish they wouldn't use obscure American expressions for
| these article titles.
| ant6n wrote:
| I guess these chips run really hot.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| It does, Intel is better because you can use it to heat your
| house like AMD bulldozer.
| bagels wrote:
| I'm American and I don't know what it means either. I assume
| burning a barn is bad? I expect not a lot of overlap between
| the audience of the article and people knowledgeable about
| agriculture idioms.
| oblio wrote:
| Apparently it's good (at least in the sense they're using
| here). Which is extremely counterintuitive.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's a sports colloquialism. It means 'exciting'. Someone may
| say "the game was a real barn burner", meaning that it was
| exciting and competitive. Ars is saying that Alder Lake is an
| excitingly competitive CPU.
| ksec wrote:
| At roughly 25W per Performance Core running at 5.2GHz on Intel
| 7nm High Performance Node, with a ST Geekbench score of ~1900.
| Compared to The Apple M1 Max running at 3.2GHz on a TSMC 5nm Low
| Power node, at roughly 5W per core, with Geekbench score of
| ~1750.
|
| The is _5x_ the power for a 8.5% of performance increase.
|
| But I know there are many who just want to get the best ST
| performance regardless or power usage. And considering someone
| Overclock the thing past 8Ghz barrier. It is still pretty damn
| impressive.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| I see this comparison all the time in articles about Intel, but
| until I can build a desktop with M1 Pro/Max, they are
| meaningless.
| ksec wrote:
| That is the difference between a consumer review and tech
| review. They may be meaningless to _consumers_ , but they are
| meaningful for those of us only want to learn about tech.
|
| This it the same with Graviton 2 on Servers.
| dirkg wrote:
| they are meaningless to oem's and manufacturers as well
| since they cant buy an M1 and build a system around it.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| These biased sites will declare Intel the winner despite the
| higher cost in motherboard, CPU, power usage, cost to
| overclock, and heat creation. These tech sites are obviously
| nothing but product shilling sites with a cheap veneer that
| relies on their old reputation, but after seeing them all
| saying the opposite of reality with Ryzen, I won't give them
| clicks and I won't buy Intel again.
| [deleted]
| nyxaiur wrote:
| lmao what?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| He's not wrong per se though he's wrong in this case,
| because many tech reviewers were overly enthusiastic about
| Ryzen parts and acted as-if they're much better than their
| Intel counterparts because they performed better in various
| benchmarks and productivity applications; this is kind of a
| meme in the gaming scene (where AMD's best CPUs generally
| still struggle with Intel's 10th gen offerings).
|
| In tech your product has to be REALLY bad in order to
| receive critical reviews and manufacturers are basically
| smart enough to just not send these bad products to
| reviewers, so you basically get no or few reviews on them.
| Most reviewers are completely dependent on the
| manufacturers to give them stuff to review at no cost, and
| obviously when your reviews are too critical they're going
| to stop sending you stuff, which threatens the reviewer's
| business. There are very few reviewers who can do highly
| critical reviews, GamersNexus comes to mind. Notice how
| they're often not getting stuff from the manufacturer but
| buy it off the shelf instead.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Lots of tech reviews will also not say anything bad, for
| instance anyone critial of Apple won't get access to
| their events, products, and will be blacklisted.
|
| You can't trust these publications at all anymore.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| you are delusional.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Prove me wrong. Show me a large mainstream publication
| that is crital of Apple that still gets their products to
| review, or one that isn't full of nothing but praise for
| Apple, unless you're deluded to deny it. I bet you can't.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Can you show me one that is critical and doesn't get
| access?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| https://techaeris.com/2015/01/29/have-i-been-blacklisted-
| by-...
|
| https://www.cultofmac.com/255618/how-apples-blacklist-
| manipu...
|
| > Yes, Apple maintains a press "blacklist," a list of
| people in the media who are shunned and ignored --
| "punished," as it were, for "disloyalty."
|
| >"Blacklisted" reporters, editorialists and media
| personalities are denied access to information, products
| and events.
|
| >Once you're on the list, it's almost impossible to get
| off. (I've been on it for more than a decade.)
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/07/reg_effort_to_atte
| nd_...
|
| > It's been a number of years since an Apple PR staffer
| secretly admitted to one of our reporters that The
| Register was on a blacklist.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Dude, it's a company that makes consumer goods. It's not
| the government refusing to credential a reporter.
|
| If you are actually an objective news company trying to
| evaluate a product, then do what Consumer Reports does
| and go to the open market and buy the generally available
| product for the full retail price, and then evaluate it.
| That is a requirement to be an honest broker not
| influenced by a vendor, which is why Consumer Reports
| does it. So make up your mind as to whether you want to
| be a journalist that is independent or whether you are
| willing to compromise and do P.R. work for apple in
| exchange for early access.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You asked me for journalists that are critical and didn't
| get access and I showed you. What's your point in
| justifying exactly what I proved?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Perhaps you are confusing me with another poster?
| [deleted]
| nyxaiur wrote:
| As I said in my other comments you are delusional. You
| see a conspiracy theory without proofing based on your
| feelings and you disregard the facts from several high
| regarded sources like anandtech, phoronix and everyone
| who has published their benchmarks today. It's the
| literal definition of a delusion.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Prove me wrong; you can't.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| Every reputable source has benchmarks of the new alder
| lake CPUs and the ones that cater to Apple Users have
| comparisons with the M1 variants. There is no point to
| proof except your acquisitions because from theverge to
| phoronix there is nothing even remotely helping your
| argument.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Still waiting for a shred of evidence.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| This is just a list of issues and articles that came to
| my mind. Every of these sites also criticized the thermal
| of the last intel macbook pros and all hated the touchbar
| and all of them are still reporting on apple on exactly
| the day the embargo lifts. wtf are YOU on about?
|
| Macbook Keyboard Issues: 21x Apple critical articles on
| the verge
| https://www.theverge.com/search?q=keyboard+macbook 10x
| Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/
| Search?doctype=news&query=macbook%20k... 5x Apple
| critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com
| /search;_ylc=X3IDMgRncHJpZAN0NEMu...
|
| iPad Jelly Scrolling: 12x Apple critical articles on the
| verge
| https://www.theverge.com/search?q=jelly+scrolling+apple
| 1x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.c
| om/Search?doctype=news&query=jelly%20scr... 4x Apple
| critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com
| /search;_ylt=AwrJ7FcGV4Rh6okADpZ8...
|
| Mini LED Blooming: 4x Apple critical articles on the
| verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=apple+blooming 3x
| Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/
| Search?doctype=news&query=blooming%20... 6x Apple
| critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com
| /search;_ylt=A0geKJBBV4RhUYAANg58...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| iFixit doesn't get access to Apple hardware.
|
| What you're linking to proves the opposite of critical
| articles. Let's show some titles you linked.
|
| > The saga of Apple's bad butterfly MacBook keyboards is
| finally over
|
| >iPad mini review (2021): The best small tablet gets a
| facelift
|
| >Will Apple's Mini LED MacBook Pros avoid the iPad Pro's
| downsides?
|
| >Apple says the iPad mini's 'jelly scrolling' problem is
| normal
|
| So where are these critial articles?
| nyxaiur wrote:
| If you don't cherry pick there are enough critical
| articles and critical comments in every review (You said
| there aren't in your first comment.
|
| You are totally right they must have a giant blacklist if
| blacklisting is for you not to send demo units of
| unreleased products to every outlet. THE BLACKLIST IS
| GIGANTIC DUDE.
|
| If you ever look for help call here The National Alliance
| on Mental Illness (NAMI): 1-800-950-6264
| pie42000 wrote:
| Dude, just give up. He called you delusional. He won the
| argument. Your facts and logic don't matter here anymore.
| You had the opportunity to call him delusional, but he
| beat you to it. Sorry bud, better luck tomorrow
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| These biased sites will declare Intel the winner despite
| the higher cost in motherboard, CPU, power usage, cost to
| overclock, and heat creation. These tech sites are
| obviously nothing but product shilling sites with a cheap
| veneer that relies on their old reputation, but after
| seeing them all saying the opposite of reality with Ryzen,
| I won't give them clicks and I won't buy Intel again.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| On pure performance metrics Intel will be the winner
| every cycle they bring one "enthusiast" CPU that tops the
| benchmark in gaming or creator CPU loads. they are
| expensive they are power hogs but they are the fastest. I
| don't get why you are so adjetated by it.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| >they are expensive they are power hogs but they are the
| fastest.
|
| That is absolutely false and a lie for multicore
| processes, real world usage, and programs that I use.
| This is an enormous lie, unless your workload only
| consists of synthetic benchmarks that are Intel optimized
| and ignore the gains from other hardware like premium
| DDR5 they use to set these sythetic benchmarks.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| As I said in my other comments you are delusional. have a
| good one. You see a conspiracy theory without proofing it
| and you disregard the facts from several high regarded
| sources like anandtech, phoronix and everyone who has
| published their benchmarks today. It's the literal
| definition of a delusion.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Sorry, facts don't care about your feelings. You are
| wrong and can't do anything more than shill for Intel
| with no evidence, personal attacks and delusions you made
| up and can't prove. I don't know why your ego is so
| fragile over hearing the truth. Are you being paid well
| to shill and spread lies?
| nyxaiur wrote:
| You think every benchmarking site, even the sites that
| use open source software to benchmark is getting payed by
| Intel? Phoronix and Anandtech have open benchmark suites
| you can go and check the results yourself. You are
| arguing that commercial benchmark providers, open source
| software developers, tech journalists and enthusiasts and
| hobbiest are in a conspiracy to favor Intel in
| performance benchmarks without providing a single source
| stating your acquisitions except yourself. Insane.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Prove me wrong; you still can't.
| nyxaiur wrote:
| This is just a list of issues and articles that came to
| my mind. Every of these sites also criticized the thermal
| of the last intel macbook pros and all hated the touchbar
| and all of them are still reporting on apple on exactly
| the day the embargo lifts. wtf are YOU on about?
|
| Macbook Keyboard Issues: 21x Apple critical articles on
| the verge
| https://www.theverge.com/search?q=keyboard+macbook 10x
| Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/
| Search?doctype=news&query=macbook%20k... 5x Apple
| critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com
| /search;_ylc=X3IDMgRncHJpZAN0NEMu...
|
| iPad Jelly Scrolling: 12x Apple critical articles on the
| verge
| https://www.theverge.com/search?q=jelly+scrolling+apple
| 1x Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.c
| om/Search?doctype=news&query=jelly%20scr... 4x Apple
| critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com
| /search;_ylt=AwrJ7FcGV4Rh6okADpZ8...
|
| Mini LED Blooming: 4x Apple critical articles on the
| verge https://www.theverge.com/search?q=apple+blooming 3x
| Apple critical articles on ifixit https://www.ifixit.com/
| Search?doctype=news&query=blooming%20... 6x Apple
| critical articles on engadget https://search.engadget.com
| /search;_ylt=A0geKJBBV4RhUYAANg58...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Critical articles like "iPad mini review (2021): The best
| small tablet gets a facelift"?
| https://www.engadget.com/apple-ipad-mini-6th-
| generation-2021... You're grasping at straws since ifixit
| doesn't get Apple press invites, hardware and you linked
| to searches of Apple praise since you can't find evidence
| to prove your point. Thanks you proved my point for me
| and linked to articles that prove I am right.
| vadfa wrote:
| 5x the power so you can run x86 32-bit and 64-bit code. I don't
| see the performance part as being that important
| threeseed wrote:
| I run x86 code all the time on my M1 Mac.
|
| And surprisingly well given it's being transpiled.
| liuliu wrote:
| Sorry about my impulsive correction:
|
| It is Intel 7 (formerly known as Intel's 10nm process).
|
| There is also Intel 4 (formerly known as Intel's 7nm process).
| ksec wrote:
| Yes except I got asked again and again what is "Intel 7". So
| I am going to stick with a simple naming scheme that right
| now happens to be about the same across all three foundry
| working on leading node, Samsung, Intel and TSMC. And
| everyone can relate or understand.
| SahAssar wrote:
| If that is the case shouldn't you call it "Intel 10nm"
| since that is what it was called when Intel was still using
| the same units as everyone else (even if those units are
| becoming meaningless)?
|
| Not even Intel itself says that "Intel 7" means "7nm",
| right?
| nly wrote:
| Imagine what Intel could accomplish on the TSMC node!
| marricks wrote:
| Only 2.5x the power usage?
|
| More seriously, there's always a few comments on threads like
| this claiming it's unfair to compare Intel to AMD or Apple
| because "they have a larger node size and are hamstrung by
| it." Which is Intel's choice, they were happy having a
| superior node all to themselves for decades and now it's a
| problem for them.
|
| I don't remember people saying AMD was just as good as Intel
| but was just on a worse node either, did it matter to anyone
| but AMD fanboys?
| kube-system wrote:
| Well, it made less sense to make excuses about fabs back
| when Intel and AMD both ran their own fabs.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| When did they make these excuses? AMD hasn't had its own
| fabs for about a decade way before Intel was stuck on
| 14nm.
| gpderetta wrote:
| For those that do not care just about the faster CPUs on
| benchmark and tribal fights, and like instead to nerd out
| about architectures, it is still interesting to know
| whether Apple superiority is due the ARM architecture, the
| Apple microarchitecture improvements or TSMC process.
|
| It is likely a mix of all three and of course
| microarchitecture cant be easily disentangled from the
| process.
| sroussey wrote:
| There are relatively large differences in performance
| between implementations of ARM X1, so yeah, there is more
| to it than microarchitecture.
| [deleted]
| ksec wrote:
| Yes. That is why I have been very explicit about node
| numbers and characteristics along with clock speed. Apple
| cant push to 5GHz without using another node and possibly
| some redesign. Intel using their own ultra low Power node
| or even TSMC 5nm low power node will not be able to reach
| 5Ghz either.
|
| And let people make their own judgement. Again this isn't
| for consumer review, just for those interested in tech and
| how it all fits together.
| schmorptron wrote:
| While this is exciting, the thing I'm most looking forward to is
| intel entering the dedicated GPU market next year. Arc is looking
| really promising and god knows nVidia and AMD need some
| disrupting.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Intel's Linux drivers for their integrated graphics chipsets
| are pretty good, at least compared to Nvidia's, so hopefully
| the same effort will be spent on Linux support for Arc. It
| would be nice to have another option than AMD on the table for
| Linux-compatible GPUs.
| KuiN wrote:
| This might be completely irrational, but it really annoys me when
| the press use 'big.little' for all heterogeneous CPUs. big.LITTLE
| is an ARM trademark for ARM's implementation of heterogenous
| designs. Intel have clearly decided heterogeneous is a marketing
| no-go and have gone with 'hybrid' architecture, which is fair
| enough. But these are absolutely not big.LITTLE CPUs.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Unless we get something better sounding than "heterogeneous CPU
| topology", I'm going to go with big.LITTLE. I know it's
| incorrect to apply it outside of ARM processors, but it's also
| not 13 syllables and it's more likely that someone will know
| what I'm talking about.
| freeAgent wrote:
| Do you get just as annoyed about discussions where x86-64,
| AMD64, Intel 64, and x64 are used interchangeably?
| dlp211 wrote:
| "big.little" is like "kleenex" or "ziploc". Yes, technically
| they refer to a specific implementation of a thing,
| heterogenous CPU core size, tissues, plastic storage bags, but
| in reality, they were so perfectly branded that they just
| replaced the item name. It's not a big deal.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| And I'm sure that people are going to call the Google Tensor
| "big.little" when it is really "big.medium.little" (it has 3
| different types of ARM cores)!
| guerrilla wrote:
| or "Google" for web search.
| seabrookmx wrote:
| +1
|
| It's exactly the same thing when people say an AMD Ryzen CPU
| has "Hyperthreading." This is Intel's trademark for
| Simultaneous multithreading (or SMT).
|
| We all know what someone means when they say this. There's no
| use being so pedantic.
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| Please measure the AVX-512 ResNet50 inference performance (e.g.,
| https://NN-512.com).
|
| Does Alder Lake AVX-512 finally provide an advantage over AVX2
| (the way it should)?
|
| Is Intel serious about making AVX-512 worthwhile? Will AMD
| provide efficient AVX-512 hardware?
| ksec wrote:
| AVX 512 is "fused off" to quote Intel. Although Anandtech
| discovered it is actually disabled.
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| You're right:
|
| "In order to get to this point, Intel had to cut down some of
| the features of its P-core, and improve some features on the
| E-core. The biggest thing that gets the cut is that Intel is
| losing AVX-512 support inside Alder Lake. When we say losing
| support, we mean that the AVX-512 is going to be physically
| fused off, so even if you ran the processor with the E-cores
| disabled at boot time, AVX-512 is still disabled."
|
| "But it does mean that AVX-512 is probably dead for
| consumers."
|
| "Intel isn't even supporting AVX-512 with a dual-issue AVX2
| mode over multiple operations - it simply won't work on Alder
| Lake. If AMD's Zen 4 processors plan to support some form of
| AVX-512 as has been theorized, even as dual-issue AVX2
| operations, we might be in some dystopian processor
| environment where AMD is the only consumer processor on the
| market to support AVX-512."
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16881/a-deep-dive-into-
| intels...
|
| It's shocking how Intel has failed with AVX-512, and
| unfortunate for those who embraced the technology.
| ksec wrote:
| My suspicious / theory is that Intel needed the hybrid
| design for Mobile, otherwise there is no way to keep up
| with AMD in terms of pref / watt. So they basically throw
| this hybrid design on desktop as test bed before launching
| it on Mobile.
| dralley wrote:
| It's probably part of their fab strategy. They want to
| offer x86 IP blocks to SoC customers, and it's nice to
| have options tuned for performance and ones tuned for
| size / efficiency.
| neogodless wrote:
| It's odd, because in today's review, they have this to say:
|
| > I have to say a side word about AVX-512 support, because
| we found it. If you're prepared to disable the E-cores, and
| use specific motherboards, it works. After Intel spent time
| saying it was fused off, we dug into the story and found it
| still works for those that need it. It's going to be
| interesting to hear how this feature will be discussed by
| Intel in future.
|
| There's a whole page on it:
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/17047/the-intel-12th-gen-
| core...
| selectodude wrote:
| One thing that I genuinely appreciate about AMD is that I
| don't need to do any research to see what CPUs support
| what. They have a handful of SKUs, they're all
| straightforward, you spend what you're willing to and go
| from there. I feel like Intel requires me to do a bunch
| of research to see if the CPU I've picked checks all the
| boxes.
|
| Then I buy my AMD and deal with their weird driver issues
| and throw my hands up.
| ksec wrote:
| >I feel like Intel requires me to do a bunch of research
| to see if the CPU I've picked checks all the boxes.
|
| I will not be surprised if Intel follows the AMD example
| soon. Pat Gelsinger is a product person. And generally
| Product person understand these issues better. Compared
| to Marketing / Financial people who have _zero_
| understanding. ( I dont want to bash them too much but
| seriously I have never met a marketing / financial guy
| who is any good at products in the 20+ years. )
| klelatti wrote:
| This is incredibly bizarre especially given AVX-512 takes
| quite a lot of transistors. A late design decision to try
| to limit power use?
| monocasa wrote:
| It's to allow easy e-core p-core thread migrations in the
| OS. They probably weren't intending the p-cores to be
| matched with e-cores when the RTL was being initially
| written for the p-cores, which would have been a few
| years ago.
| klelatti wrote:
| Very good point. I guess they both cores have to have
| identical ISAs as they don't know which instructions will
| be needed at the point at which they're deciding which
| core to use.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Wow, and 2 FMA units/ports as well? Gotta love that the
| first consumer chip with 2 x AVX-512 FMA units doesn't
| officially support it.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Its very good to see three viable, great emerging CPU
| architectures. Intel is important, and them getting their CPU
| node up is critical. AMD has saved x86 from irrelevency and
| stagnation, and has been sitting on their next node while Intel
| caught up, but now has to release it to keep their spot on top.
| Apple is remaking the game with the M1 / Pro and Max variants -
| and we still have Jade 2c and Jade 4c coming.
|
| Competition is great.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Jade 2/4c are additional processors being developed by Apple
| for their <strike>Macbook Air line of notebooks</strike> Mac
| Pro line for anyone who is like me and didn't know.
|
| Edit: first thing I read was wrong, turns out that these are
| Mac Pro level processors, see below comments for more details.
| Thanks everyone for the clarification.
| InTheArena wrote:
| No, the 2c/4c are the MacPro / iMacPro CPUs. Think big-boy
| versions of the Max / Pro (which are insane already).
|
| Jade C "Chop" is the Pro, Jade C Die is the Max.
|
| jade 2c is two Maxes. Jade 4c is 4 maxes.
|
| https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1395706013286809600?lang.
| ..
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| All this die chopping really sounds like the consequence of
| the Intel architects Apple hired away. Over the years lots
| of Intel products segmented SKUs by laying them out in a
| way that facilitated simple chops post wafersort.
| kube-system wrote:
| That Jade 4c might be pretty sweet in an Xserve.
| neogodless wrote:
| My understanding is that they are rumored, code names.
|
| But they are expected be even higher scaled iterations of
| Apple Silicon. In other words, while M1 had up to 4
| performance (P) cores, 4 efficiency (E) cores and 8 GPU (G)
| cores, the M1 Pro and Max scaled up to as high as 8P, 2E and
| 32G.
|
| The Jade 2/4c designation is rumored to go even higher on P
| and G cores, which means it's much more likely to end up in a
| Mac Pro than the Macbook Air.
| superkuh wrote:
| Saying Apple has remade the processor game is like saying the
| PS4 remade the gaming market. Yeah, it's true. But only for
| people that use consoles/macs. That kind of hardware only
| supports the configuration it's sold in and not full spec. If
| you try to do things that 99% of people won't do it won't work
| (ie, attempting to boot off an external drive when the internal
| one breaks).
| agumonkey wrote:
| The storage subsystem design failure seems extremely
| irrelevant to processor design really (no matter how bad
| Apple made it there)
| megablast wrote:
| > But only for people that use consoles/macs.
|
| Or phones or tablets.
| xmodem wrote:
| I mean, the M1 gains are so great that it's making the mac
| relevant to entirely new market segments, so i'd say that's
| pretty game changing.
| errantspark wrote:
| I am curious how much of the M1 gains can be realized by
| just slapping 16 gigs of cache on your die. I know that's a
| gross oversimplification, and I'm 100% just going off
| intuition here but it seems to me that memory access
| efficiency is what carries the brunt of the M1's gains.
| ericye16 wrote:
| If you slapped 16GB of cache on your die, you would have
| a humongous die and the most expensive processor in the
| world. It would be very fast though.
| smolder wrote:
| At some point the physical distance to parts of cache
| would mean you'd have rapidly diminishing returns on
| adding more. For 16GB it'd need to be some kind of tiered
| thing with nearer cache segments being quicker. Maybe you
| could have it present itself as a giant unified cache...
| sort of like what they did in the new IBM mainframes.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is 1GB interesting enough?
| https://gadgettendency.com/amds-new-processors-will-have-
| nea...
| criddell wrote:
| Do the gains you talk about include power consumption
| considerations? Could an Intel chip with a tone of cache
| run all day on typical laptop battery?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The M1 parts actually have way worse memory latency (i.e.
| random accesses) than both AMD and Intel. A finely tuned
| Intel system has around 3x lower memory latency than an
| M1P/X.
|
| All of this is SDRAM, the S stands for synchronous and
| means that the memory is driven according to fixed
| timings in relation to a fixed bus clock. All
| LPDDR4X-4266 parts with the same timings perform exactly
| the same, whether they are soldered to the interposer or
| are 5 cm away on the board.
| sliken wrote:
| That's not at all what I'm seeing. Can you be specific as
| to what chips you are looking at and what benchmark you
| are using to draw this conclusion?
|
| I'll go first.
|
| Personally when talking about memory latency, I want to
| measure time to main memory, without TLB thrashing. Not
| that TLB latency isn't interesting, but it should be
| separately quantified.
|
| I've written a few microbenchmarks in this area, but I
| get very similar numbers to the Anandtech R per RV
| prange. Which puts the latency to main memory at around
| 35ns looking like it might flatten out at 40ns. Yes, full
| TLB thrashing is up at 110ns or so, but that's not a
| usual use case. If it is, at least under linux, you can
| switch to 1GB pages if that's important to you.
|
| R per RV prange numbers on the Ryzen 9 5950x is 65ns or
| so.
|
| So sure the TLB worst case is higher latency on the M1,
| but then you have to figure out how big the TLB is, and
| how often that's an issue if you want to know the real
| world performance impact.
|
| The i9-12900K with DDR5 gets 30ns on the R per RV prange,
| and 92ns on full random (tlb thrashing).
|
| Even assuming the worst case TLB behavior the m1 max is
| 111ns and the 5950x is 79ns or 1.4x higher. On the Intel
| side is 111ns vs 92n, 1.2x higher.
|
| Finding it hard to find any numbers that make the M1X
| look like 3x higher memory latency.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I feel like R per R isn't quite the perfect match for the
| pointer-chasy workloads I have in mind where you end up
| going through more-or-less random selections of
| relatively small (<< page size) objects, so R per R
| amortizes the randomization a little much. I still think
| having the overall totally random access for a system is
| a good number precisely because it contains all the
| penalties and latencies that can add up. Embarrassing as
| it may be, I also compared the wrong numbers across parts
| here (and in the past too, I think) - thanks for calling
| that out. I was kinda irritated how exactly they would be
| able to get the performance they were getting across all
| workloads with such poor latency but failed to double
| check.
| sliken wrote:
| Ah, sensible. Generally with the TLB numbers and the
| memory latency you can get a good idea of the performance
| by interoplating between the two number for any number of
| TLB misses (from 0% to 100%).
|
| The M1 Max also has a crazy number of memory channels,
| even the older M1 has 4 channels, pro has 8 channels, and
| max has 16. So you can have many more cache misses in
| flight, this is part of why the m1 max is 20% faster than
| the 5950x with twice as many cores.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Honestly it's kinda crazy what's possible these days.
| Couple years ago you'd easily burn 30+ watts on just the
| memory chips to get this kind of bandwidth.
| sliken wrote:
| Indeed, 64GB ram, 400GB/sec, decent GPU, ML acceleration,
| 10 cores, etc all in a small package that gives good
| battery life to a relatively thin laptop.
|
| Here's hoping they put the same in the mac mini. Anyone
| interested in a linux port join the Marcan patreon, I'm
| kicking in a few $ a month.
| errantspark wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know that the memory latency was
| worse. The bandwidth is still much higher right? In your
| estimation how much of the perf gains of the M1 chip are
| due to the increased memory bandwidth vs other
| optimizations/advancements?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I don't think you can single out one aspect when
| comparing designs which are so different, but I'd say
| most of the CPU performance is down to the core. There
| you have the M1 core which is (iirc) 10 pipes wide, much
| wider than both AMD and Intel, and a much fatter frontend
| as well to feed the beast. I think that's the main
| advantage the M1 has. It also has a larger L1 cache
| (twice as big as x86). These two are one of the few areas
| where x86 has an innate disadvantage because fattening up
| the frontend is much more complex on x86 compared to ARM,
| and you can't have a VIPT L1 cache larger than 64K with
| 4K pages, which is a hard-to-change default on x86, while
| the M1 by default uses larger pages (32K or something
| like that).
| errantspark wrote:
| "x86 has an innate disadvantage [...] fattening up the
| frontend" this is inherent largely because of ISA
| complexity and variable width instructions?
|
| "M1 core which is [...] much wider than both AMD and
| Intel" The core width you're referring to is the decoder
| width yeah? As another poster pointed out the M1 has a
| large reorder buffer as well. Combined with the ability
| to index a larger L1 cache what I'm getting here is that
| the M1 can be a lot better about scheduling instructions
| (and perhaps even running non-interfering instructions in
| parallel on a given core (is that a thing?)) because the
| frontend has more power and space to do so.
|
| I guess that efficiency is then a big part of the puzzle
| on why the increased bandwidth to ram makes such an
| impact?
| sliken wrote:
| Many things don't push the memory bandwidth and are cache
| friendly. However GPUs are bandwidth limited and the M1
| Max does quite well against any other integrated graphics
| from Intel or AMD.
|
| Even on the CPU side it can be a big win, in particular
| on SpecFPRate (a collection of heavy floating point real
| world codes, not microbenchmarks) Anand has this to say:
| The fp2017 suite has more workloads that are more memory-
| bound, and it's here where the M1 Max is absolutely
| absurd. The workloads that put the most memory pressure
| and stress the DRAM the most, such as 503.bwaves,
| 519.lbm, 549.fotonik3d and 554.roms, have all multiple
| factors of performance advantages compared to the best
| Intel and AMD have to offer.
|
| To drive this home compare the Spec2017 FP Rate, the M1
| Max gets 81.07, the Ryzen 5950x (high end desktop with
| twice as many fast cores and a 105 watt TDP) gets 62.27.
|
| So a low power M1 Max with half as many cores and much
| lower power is 30% faster than AMD's highest end desktop
| chip. Instead of a desktop size/volume/power, you can get
| it in a laptop that's 2/3rd of an inch thick.
| klelatti wrote:
| It's also very wide and has a big reorder buffer so 'just
| slapping 16 gigs' of cache probably isn't the answer.
| errantspark wrote:
| Very wide in the sense of memory bandwidth particularly,
| or is there another kind of wideness at play here?
|
| "has a big reorder buffer", I'm interpreting this as "one
| of the notable advantages of the M1 is it's ability to be
| more clever about processing instructions out of order to
| maximize resource utilization". Is that about right?
| klelatti wrote:
| Width in the sense of how many instructions can be
| executed at the same time.
|
| If you're really interested in this it might be worth
| finding a copy of the Patterson and Hennessy book. It's a
| big read and expensive (but older versions are on the
| internet archive [1]) and covers all these design issues
| in quite a lot of detail.
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/ComputerArchitectureAQuan
| titativ...
| monkmartinez wrote:
| What market segments?
|
| CAD/CAM, CAE/Engineering, Render farms, Movie making, GIS?
| sliken wrote:
| I disagree. Sure primarily faster more power efficient Apple
| desktops/laptops benefit Apple users. But it also helps
| people realize what arm designs can offer. The M1 Max is a
| marvel, decent GPU performance compared to discrete, and
| amazing GPU performance for integrated. Amazing perf/watt,
| and also amazing memory bandwidth. Desktops and Laptops are
| primarily in the 50-70GB/sec range, M1 Max is at 400 GB/sec.
|
| Suddenly Intel and AMD have to keep an eye not just on each
| other, but also on the various ARM designs targeting
| microcontrollers up to supercomputers.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I don't get why people are pouncing on the memory BW thing.
| There are very few applications which are actually bound by
| memory bandwidth (most of these will never be used on a
| laptop) and I've seen nothing so far to suggest that the
| CPU cores in the M1P/M1M can actually use it. The M1P/M
| parts are basically a midrange GPU and CPU in the same
| package and use a wide, high-speed memory interface (LPDDR
| is conceptually more similar to GDDR than standard DDR) to
| get GPU-like bandwidth because there's an actual GPU in
| there - which is actually rather impressive.
|
| For reference, in Zen 2/3 a chiplet (of eight cores) is
| limited to around 25 GB/s write, 50 GB/s read.
|
| Edit: The anandtech test has memory B/W numbers and gives
| 100 GB/s for a single core and around 220 GB/s for all
| cores, which is extremely high, but also not the full
| memory bandwidth.
| sliken wrote:
| One clear benefit is decent GPU performance, without the
| cost, physical size, and power/cooling for a discrete
| GPU. It's way faster than Intel or AMD's integrated
| graphics. You can see this difference when you unplug a
| MBP vs any of the laptops with a discrete GPU.
|
| Marketing brags about memory bandwidth based on
| clockspeed * bus width = 400GB/sec. Getting 60% of peak
| on some memory bandwidth benchmark is pretty common. Try
| McCalpin's stream benchmark on your platform of choice to
| verify. I suspect you'll find similar on Intel or AMD on
| desktops, laptops, or servers.
|
| Not sure I buy the memory bound argument, sure peak
| performance will not change, but worst case performance
| can be caused by cache misses. So I expect that the new
| MBPs will be more evenly fast than the x86-64
| competition, even while doing stressful things. I don't
| currently need a $3k laptop, but am hoping they ship a
| mini with a M1 Max or Pro.
|
| To quote anandtech: The fp2017 suite has more workloads
| that are more memory-bound, and it's here where the M1
| Max is absolutely absurd. The workloads that put the most
| memory pressure and stress the DRAM the most, such as
| 503.bwaves, 519.lbm, 549.fotonik3d and 554.roms, have all
| multiple factors of performance advantages compared to
| the best Intel and AMD have to offer.
|
| So an apple M1 Max is 19% faster on SpecFP (floating
| point applications) as a Ryzen 5950x which has twice as
| many fast cores (16 vs 8) and runs at 105 watts TDP.
| That's pretty amazing in my book.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Memory bandwidth _per core, per clock cycle_ is actually
| very limited on many systems. So you end up being bound
| by memory bandwidth any time you 're running compute-
| intensive apps on multiple cores, unless thermal
| constraints hit sooner - which is quite unlikely on Apple
| silicon, and ARM silicon more generally.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Apple laptops are twice as expensive as x86 hardware but
| not twice as powerful.
|
| What other kind ofARM hardware can we buy beside Apple
| laptops?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Surface Pro X, Qualcomm laptops that run Windows 10 x64
| emulation, JingPad, https://en.jingos.com/jingpad-a1/ and
| PineBook https://pine64.com/product/14%e2%80%b3-pinebook-
| pro-linux-la...
|
| You can also buy RISCV if you want something more open
| and not ARM.
| eptcyka wrote:
| They are almost 2x as power efficient.
| InTheArena wrote:
| A Dell Latitude 5520 Laptop, 15inch, 4k, 2TB SSD is
| $4,099.00 form Dell (after a 35% off coupon). A Apple M1
| MAx 16 inch, with a far better display both in quality
| and display, better keyboard, same storage is also $4099.
| stagger87 wrote:
| PC laptop pricing fluctuates so much and I don't know
| why. You can kit out a ThinkPad P15 with these specs for
| ~2500 right now. Next month the prices will be flipped.
| Go figure. At least Apple is consistently priced high.
| pie42000 wrote:
| ThinkPads are made of shitty plastic, have stupid
| keyboard layouts, worse trackpads, and come preloaded
| with malware/bloatware. I say this an exclusive x86 user.
| ThinkPads are average quality tools, MacBooks are
| delightful, beautifully designed devices. Really tempted
| to switch
| dirkg wrote:
| are you trying to troll?
|
| Thinkpads are notoriously well made. 'shitty plastic' is
| ultra durable. Macs are great if you are ok being locked
| into the Apple ecosystem
| threeseed wrote:
| I don't understand how having a Mac locks you into the
| Apple ecosystem.
|
| In real world use I don't notice any difference in
| restrictions from my Ubuntu server.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| There was a reason why you didn't before. If you are
| willing to give that reason up in exchange of some pretty
| pixels, go for it.
| dboreham wrote:
| Hmm. I don't know that model, but I have bought two Dell
| XPS15s in the past year. One had 4K, 64G RAM, 2T SSD and
| 8 cores. It was $2500. The other was slightly lower spec
| and $2400.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Just wondering: why?
| thesquib wrote:
| Except Apple keeps their hardware locked in the Apple
| ecosystem, but anyhow can buy AMD or Intel
| zamadatix wrote:
| I wouldn't say locked in when it comes to computer hardware,
| bundled might be more apt.
| LASR wrote:
| What? Anyone can buy Apple. They aren't doing anything to
| stop you from running your own ARM os on it.
| arbirk wrote:
| https://asahilinux.org to the rescue
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Hardware ecosystem yes, but Macs continue to ship with
| unlockable bootloaders and I expect Asahi Linux to be
| extremely usable within another year.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'm skeptical of that claim. 5-year-old Intel Macs still
| have issues running Linux, and they should be easier to
| support than something like the M1.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Things happen when someone wants to work on them. Running
| Linux on Apple Silicon machines is a lot more exciting
| than running Linux on a generic Intel machine which
| happens to have an Apple logo, so there's been a lot of
| development effort.
|
| You can _already_ get a usable desktop on an M1 Mac, if
| you really want to. The CPU is fast enough that you don
| 't absolutely need graphics acceleration, and Wifi, USB,
| and display output all work.
|
| The big missing piece is the GPU, but Alyssa has a fully-
| custom user-space implementation for macOS that largely
| works.
| [deleted]
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Where are the days when a decent CPU was $100 and it draw no more
| than 100W?
| toast0 wrote:
| Right now, AMD is selling every chip they make, so they're not
| making much for the low end. Intel's got quad core comet lake
| chips around that price, but they've also not been selling low
| end versions of their newer stuff either.
|
| If Alder Lake's release signals Intel 10nm (aka Intel 7)
| finally working for desktop chips, then we may see products
| addressing the low end market again.
|
| You should probably be able to limit power to 100W though;
| power targeting is definitely a firmware feature on AMD, and
| I'd be surprised if it's not available on Intel as well. If
| nothing else, you can just provide 100W worth of cooling, and
| thermal management should throttle back the power.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| Inflation is a thing that exists, so decent $100 CPUs are going
| to be hard to come by if you expect to run modern applications
| in 2021.
|
| However, there's plenty of competitive CPUs that can operate
| below 100W. CPU reviews tend to focus on the top-end products
| which throw efficiency out the window for higher clock speeds,
| but lower tier SKUs target 95W, 65W, and 35W power points,
| while still maintaining quite reasonable performance.
|
| While I'm not as familiar with the power management
| capabilities of modern Intel CPUs, AMD Ryzen CPUs can operate
| in an "Eco mode" where the power target is lowered, so you can
| optimize for power efficiency without having to go out of your
| way to buy a special "low-power" SKU.
| zamadatix wrote:
| If you're willing to accept inflation since the early 90s check
| out something like the 5600G instead of the top end models like
| the 5950X, or wait for the low end SKUs of Alder lake to come
| out too. The 5600G is a fantastic new 6 core CPU that will
| handle all but the most extreme multithreaded workloads with
| ease while staying under 100 Watts.
| zokier wrote:
| Pentium G6400 is available <$100, is rated at 58W TDP, and is
| "decent" by some measure. For example it is dramatically faster
| than RPi4 for almost all tasks:
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberr...
|
| And in general is in the same ballpark (smidgen faster) as the
| now classic i5 2500k:
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=celeron-...
|
| Considering that I'm typing this comment on a laptop that is
| probably fair bit slower than that G6400, I do believe it is
| decent for basic desktop usage.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Also, the 12900k is trading blows with the 5950x but I think the
| mid range CPUs are actually the draw here.
| tus89 wrote:
| > symmetric multithreading (SMT, also known as "hyperthreading").
|
| Say what now?
| roody15 wrote:
| " Jim Salter 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."
|
| What nonsense look at the graph this comment is referencing. The
| new i9 barely edges ahead of Ryzen and they use the term
| trounces.
|
| Give me a break ... price per performance still clearly in AMD's
| favor.
| 1024core wrote:
| Also, this:
|
| "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."
|
| The "narrow margin" being > 20% better ... :roll eyes:
| trynumber9 wrote:
| >price per performance still clearly in AMD's favor How do you
| reckon? The 12900K is cheaper than the 5950X. And the 6+4 core
| 12600K is priced nearly the same as the 6 core 5600X.
| neogodless wrote:
| Disappointingly, despite the big.little design adding efficiency
| cores, this release focuses on performance, and is still far
| behind AMD (and of course Apple) on efficiency.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Yeah, but this is also about "enthusiast" CPUs, which is very
| much about eye popping top perf numbers, independent of
| efficiency, etc. We're talking sports cars, not commuter
| options.
| neogodless wrote:
| It is. Depending on the consumer, these are just what the
| doctor ordered. Get a high quality motherboard, massive
| cooling solution, and eke out the maximum performance.
|
| But this won't translate well into excellent laptop chips, so
| we'll continue to wait and see if Intel has something ready
| in time for their next mobile release.
|
| And personally, I don't get enough benefit from the last few
| percentage points of performance to give up a quiet, cool-
| running, relatively power-sipping desktop system. That's just
| me, but that means I prefer to see advances in efficiency
| regardless of the market segment!
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Lol how was a top-of-the-top end desktop release supposed
| to translate well into excellent laptop chips?
|
| Something about your wording here seems to imply that it's
| not practically guaranteed that these don't translate into
| laptop results
|
| -
|
| I honestly never get why the whole "quiet and cool" thing
| comes up for these top of the line CPUs.
|
| My current personal system is near-silent and already
| drawing something like 450W peaks for GPU usage alone,
| which translates to a lot more than "a few percentage
| points of performance"
|
| If you can pay, you can make just about anything short of
| server parts quiet and cool, and the power difference won't
| affect your CO2 footprint in any meaningful way. And when
| you're looking at $600 CPUs, generally speaking you can
| pay...
| [deleted]
| kalleboo wrote:
| The whole point of big.little and having efficiency cores
| is to save power on mobile when you don't need all that
| performance.
|
| The argument is made that in the same budget
| (die/power/heat) of a performance core you can fit
| multiple efficiency cores to help with threaded
| workloads, but this Intel CPU uses even more power, so
| wouldn't they have been better off with 100% performance
| cores on an "enthusiast" chip?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Intel didn't use 100% performance cores because
| apparently they felt they could get more performance from
| the little cores (which are literally smaller, you can
| fit more in a given area on the die)
|
| Shouldn't that be obvious, it's practically a tautology
| kalleboo wrote:
| The anandtech benchmarks show that they have better
| performance in single-core benchmarks (that run on the
| performance cores) and Ryzen has the upper-hand in multi-
| threaded benchmarks (since it is all performance cores).
| So it seems like if the goal was to make an enthusiast
| chip they would have been better off stuffing their chip
| with their superior performance cores.
|
| Obviously Intel wants to compete on mobile. It's the
| biggest market now, and they've been the worst at it. But
| a new platform is expensive so in the beginning you have
| to start with the high-margin enthusiast chips, so even
| if a platform is designed to have gains on mobile you
| have to start them at the enthusiast level. If they
| weren't planning on scaling this down to mobile there
| would be no reason for this architecture. But it doesn't
| look like it will actually end up any more efficient with
| their tech.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I honestly don't get what you're trying to say.
|
| You don't work at Intel I presume. Even of the people who
| work at Intel I doubt there's any _one_ person who could
| tell you why they decided on the given arrangement.
|
| I expect this kind of baseless speculation on some more
| casual forums not one where most of us are aware of how
| insanely complex modern CPU design is.
|
| In the end they came up with a design that is already
| performing top of class in the workloads that are most
| common, and it's unlikely we won't see improvements over
| time.
|
| -
|
| I mean if your concern is productivity, here's what the
| people building systems for the worlds largest production
| houses have to say:
| https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/12th-Gen-
| Intel-Co...?
|
| > Overall, the 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs are terrific
| across the board, providing a large performance boost
| over the previous 11th Gen CPUs, and in almost every
| single case, handily out-performed AMD's Ryzen 5000
| series. Intel's lead is larger at the i5 and i7 level,
| but even with the Core i9 12900K, Intel consistently came
| out on top.
|
| I don't know why you're acting like they gave something
| up here... because their synthetic benchmarks aren't up
| to snuff?
| neogodless wrote:
| > Lol how was a top-of-the-top end desktop release
| supposed to translate well into excellent laptop chips?
|
| See Zen 2. Zen 3. The desktop chips are very efficient.
| When you throw 105W at them, they compete at the very top
| of the desktop performance market. Previous to this Alder
| Lake release, they were beating much more power hungry
| Intel chips. Now they remain competitive at half the
| power.
|
| Cut them down to 15W-45W chips, and they work great in
| laptops, with ample performance and excellent battery
| life.
|
| If Intel has massively more efficient chip designs that
| they plan to use in mobile, why aren't they making use of
| them? They could have competitive performance without
| doubling the power consumption.
|
| It's a similar story with Apple Silicon. They have chips
| that can do amazing things at 10W. Crank 60W through them
| and they are excellent performers.
|
| If you have no choice but to consume massive amounts of
| power to get top performance, so be it. But given the
| choice...
| LegitShady wrote:
| intel is competing on 10nm (now called intel 7) against
| TMSC's 7nm process.
|
| >If Intel has massively more efficient chip designs that
| they plan to use in mobile, why aren't they making use of
| them? They could have competitive performance without
| doubling the power consumption.
|
| I'd guess they're aimed at making competitive enthusiast
| class desktop chips with their existing process size from
| foundries they already have made many many chips from so
| there's much less investment, and saving any smaller
| process capacity for laptops chips.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Trying to draw conclusions about mobile parts from
| desktop parts is what people magazine racing CPUs do.
|
| It's silly.
|
| And it's doubly silly when you're talking about
| heterogeneous computing.
|
| > If you have no choice but to consume massive amounts of
| power to get top performance, so be it. But given the
| choice...
|
| I mean you have the choice? Don't get the top of the line
| halo part meant to break records at all costs?
|
| The i5 is almost as fast as the i9, faster than the
| previous i5 and the 5800X, while using considerably less
| power than the i9.
|
| -
|
| Top performance always equals "massive power draw"
|
| A 5950X will draw over 300W if you OC, which, surprise
| surprise, a lot of people who are spending $800 on a CPU
| end up doing.
|
| I guess I just figured by now people would understand
| that and focus on performance for the halo SKUs
| neogodless wrote:
| You seem to have strong opinions about this, while also
| missing the past decade of desktop and laptop CPU
| history.
|
| Intel based the entire Core line on the architecture they
| designed with laptop chips in mind (initially, Pentium
| M). They found that throwing more power at efficient
| chips works pretty well. So they switched gears from
| Netburst.
|
| And while you just ignored my comments on Zen, they still
| apply. AMD designed Zen for efficiency, which allowed it
| to be excellent in high power, high performance
| applications, while also being excellent in low power,
| medium performance applications. While the chips have
| differences due to being used differently, the core
| architecture is used from 15W chips all the way up to
| 125W desktop chips and even 280W workstation chips.
|
| It's not impossible that Intel designs completely
| different architectures for their next laptop chips than
| what they revealed with Alder Lake, but it's also
| unlikely, and the point of pairing efficiency cores with
| performance cores is to allow for flexibility in how they
| use the architecture. If Alder Lake is really just for
| 300W workstations, then Intel made a mistake bothering
| with efficiency cores.
|
| What we didn't see today was evidence that Alder Lake is
| ready for mobile, because these chips are much less
| efficient when compared to alternatives. How can we
| expect this architecture to be efficient when you throw
| less power at it, when it's already proving to be
| inefficient and requiring lots of power in order to
| perform?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| 99% of this boils down to two words:
|
| _heterogenous computing_
|
| It means that they have exponentially more knobs to turn.
|
| -
|
| And I stand by my point of ignoring insistence on
| speculating about unannounced hardware for no discernible
| benefit?
|
| It's also weird that this is the second comment acting
| like outsiders know better than Intel when it comes to
| what mix of cores was best
|
| Especially since this has proven to be an excellent
| workstation CPU:
|
| > Overall, the 12th Gen Intel Core CPUs are terrific
| across the board, providing a large performance boost
| over the previous 11th Gen CPUs, and in almost every
| single case, handily out-performed AMD's Ryzen 5000
| series. Intel's lead is larger at the i5 and i7 level,
| but even with the Core i9 12900K, Intel consistently came
| out on top.
|
| https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/12th-Gen-
| Intel-Co...?
|
| It's almost like people confused 7zip and Cinebench for
| actual productivity results?
| notTheAuth wrote:
| "Enthusiast" CPUs seem pointless. My CPU is never above 20%
| in AAA games as it's all on the GFX card now.
|
| Good to see CPUs going through the great decoupling that
| software did.
|
| IMO Steamdeck is the future of home desktops. Both my kids
| are into science; I'm excited to have a drone remote, sensor
| base station, generic pc, etc, in a high quality package
| versus something like Pine phone.
|
| Valve and Apple are pushing hardware forward. Hopefully they
| can obsolete needing data centers of generic CPUs and tons of
| Byzantine software by making hardware with the best logic for
| a task built in, available to home users.
| shadowfacts wrote:
| > My CPU is never above 20% in AAA games
|
| That just means your GPU is the bottleneck, not that the
| CPU couldn't be utilized more.
| [deleted]
| omni wrote:
| There are plenty of games that actually use CPU: Microsoft
| Flight Simulator, Factorio, Stellaris, Total War, pretty
| much any city simulator game, etc. Sure, your average dumb
| AAA action game won't, but that doesn't mean a good CPU is
| worthless.
| notTheAuth wrote:
| With different software pipelines they could run right on
| a GPU
|
| It's all state in a machine, and ML is showing us
| recursion + memory accomplish a lot; why all the generic
| structure in x86 if we can prove our substrate works just
| as well with better power efficiency if it's structured
| specifically?
|
| Chips aren't concepts, they're coupled to physics;
| simplify the real geometry. I think that's what Apple is
| really proving with its chips, and why Intel is trying to
| become a foundry; they realize their culture can only
| extend x86 and x86 comes from another era of
| manufacturing.
|
| I got into tech designing telecom hardware for mass
| production in the late-90 and early-00s. I just code now
| but still follow manufacturing, and have friends that
| work in fabs all over; this is just sort of a summary of
| the trends we see _shrug emoji_
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is that a realistic goal to run all on GPU? Nvidia wants
| ARM to make GPU/CPUs together. The idea is as intriguing
| as making games that are OS independent and just run bare
| metal by making them with ISAs. I don't think there's
| games that do that.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Factorio isn't stressing 8 core CPUs. Stellaris can be
| played on a laptop. You are confirming his conclusion
| that they don't need a strong CPU to play.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Endgame Factorio stresses CPUs because rocket-per-minute
| bases are a thing.
|
| 1 RPM is where a mega base starts. Stronger players can
| do 20 RPM (yes, a rocket every 3 seconds).
|
| In those conditions, your CPU becomes the limit to the
| RPM as your game starts to slow down
| riversflow wrote:
| lol! Stellaris _can_ be played on a laptop, but try
| ramping the Galaxy size up to 1000 and /or increase the
| habitable planet multiplier. You get a couple hundred
| years in and the game just crawls even on nice hardware.
| Its not unplayable, its a strategy game, but the pace
| definitely slows down a lot, and space battles aren't as
| fun to watch.
|
| By the same token you can play virtually any game on a
| cheap gaming rig. Just put all the graphics on low, run
| it at 720p and be happy with 20 fps.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Most games don't need the latest or greatest hardware to
| run well, there's a lack of good AAA games that make the
| value proposition of new hardware much less appealing
| versus the days of wanting to build a computer to play
| Crysis.
| omni wrote:
| > Stellaris can be played on a laptop. You are confirming
| his conclusion that they don't need a strong CPU to play.
|
| Movies can be watched on phones. Does that mean theater
| screens are pointless?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Just look at the attendance of movies or how often phones
| are used for videos.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| If it's all on the GFX card, why is there a performance
| difference in games between Intel and AMD CPUs?
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| When testing games, CPU reviews tend to test reduced
| resolutions and quality settings with the highest-end GPU
| they have, as a means of highlighting the differences
| between the CPUs.
|
| While there aren't any nefarious intentions on behalf of
| the reviewer, this approach runs into the following
| problems:
|
| - People buying high-end GPUs are unlikely to be running
| at resolutions of 1080p or below (or at lower quality
| settings), and won't see as much (if any) performance
| difference between CPUs as what reviewers show.
|
| - People buying lower-end GPUs are going to be GPU-
| bottlenecked, and won't see as much (if any) performance
| difference between CPUs as what reviewers show.
|
| - Each frame being rendered needs to be set up, animated,
| sent to the GPU for display, etc., and like all
| workloads, there's going to be portions that can't be
| effectively parallelized. As such, the higher the frame
| rate, the more likely the game is to be bottlenecked by
| single-threaded performance, which is an area where Intel
| CPUs have traditionally been strong relative to AMD's.
| However, as frames get more complex and take longer to
| render, the CPU has more of an opportunity to perform
| that work in parallel, and raw computational throughput
| is an area where AMD's modern CPUs have been strong
| relative to Intel's. So just because a CPU has leading
| performance in games today, doesn't necessarily mean that
| will hold in the future as game worlds become more
| complex (and reviewers revisiting the performance of
| 2017-era AMD Zen 1 vs. Intel Kaby Lake in recently-
| released titles have already started seeing this).
|
| In short, the way that reviewers test CPU performance in
| games results in the tests being artificial and not
| really reflective of what most end users would actually
| experience.
|
| After all, a graph showing nearly identical CPU
| performance across the lineup and the reviewer
| concluding, "yep, still GPU-limited," doesn't make for an
| interesting article/video.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Just a question about gaming. I haven't really seen any
| good AAA games worth playing anymore. The GPUs and CPUs
| have great capabliities but I don't see any good games
| anymore that make buying the hardware worth it anymore.
| Most of the games that are good I am interested in don't
| need good hardware. Do you feel the same trend when you
| play games?
| Someone wrote:
| I don't know whether it applies to you, and don't even
| know whether it's true, but I think that may have less to
| do with new games being worse than with you being older
| and/or having seen more games. Getting older makes people
| less inclined to be obsessed with games, and having seen
| more games decreases the chance of a new game being an
| outlier, and outliers attract attention.
|
| I think this applies to other fields, too. Watch your
| umptieth Super Bowl, and chances are you will think back
| to the 'better' one you saw when you were young. Twenty
| years from now, the kids watching their first one now
| will say the same about this one.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I don't completely disagee, but the point is that games
| haven't really gotten better, gameplay hasn't improved
| for many games (look at Cyberpunk 2077), there are more
| and more HD remakes since they aren't making new good
| games that excite people (SC2 was never as loved as SC1
| same with Diablo 2 vs 3), and graphics have improved but
| gameplay has not. I think Nintendo is the most consistent
| with good new games but thats not really relevant to PC
| gaming.
| notTheAuth wrote:
| Yeah I think that's a side effect of knowing how the
| sausage is made.
|
| I have written my own ECS loops, rendering pipelines; all
| naive but after that it's optimizing to product fit, and
| product emotional themes are pretty copy-paste to satisfy
| social memes.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They still occasionally come out but it's rare. I haven't
| been happy with an AAA game aside from Prey recently
| (2017 as "recent") and Cyberpunk 2077 was all hype and no
| substance. I think they're running out of new interesting
| games (Paradox, and Arkane are still good studios though)
| and many games I'm intrigued by are just remakes.
|
| Starcraft Remastered, AoE II HD, System Shock, the Halo
| collection for instance, the Homeworld remake didn't even
| interest me since I heard it was worst in some ways with
| hit boxes. They also don't need new graphics cards. It's
| so different from when PC hardware upgrades and games
| were so much more closely coupled.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Sony has started to port prestige first party PlayStation
| games like Horizon Zero Dawn to pc. If you like that sort
| of thing it's worth checking out...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Feels like we've hit a plateau in terms of graphics for
| nearly a decade now in terms of "good enough" or
| "realistic enough."
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I haven't been excited for graphics since Crysis in 2008,
| nothing after that was very impressive in comparison.
| prirun wrote:
| I think the heat given off by that CPU is what burnt down the
| barn.
| ant6n wrote:
| Isn't that what the title means?
| neogodless wrote:
| barn burner: "an event, typically a sports contest, that is
| very exciting or intense."
|
| Though one would hope the title was selected for the double
| meaning.
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