Intel introduces its 12th-gen Alder Lake desktop CPUs
Intel's latest processors offer support for DDR5 memory and PCI-E Gen 5.
Earlier today, Intel took the opportunity to formally introduce its newest generation of consumer desktop processors, dubbed Alder Lake. Alder Lake will be sold under Intel’s 12th-gen branding along with the new Z690 motherboard platform. These new CPUs and motherboards are the first to support DDR5 memory and PCI-E Gen 5.
The initial Alder Lake offering will consist of six CPU models. These parts are aimed at hardcore gamers and enthusiasts as they offer the highest possible performance, but also bring a premium price. More budget-oriented options in the 12th-gen Alder Lake family of CPUs are expected to come early next year. Today’s launch is headlined by the Core i9-12900K which serves as the flagship CPU of the line. It features 16 cores and 24 threads. The 11th-gen flagship CPU, the Core i9-11900K had 8 cores and sixteen threads.
Alder Lake is a notable release for Intel because it marks the first wide release of products built on Intel’s 7 process (10nm), allowing for higher performance and efficiency when matched against its previous 14nm process. Intel has been launching CPUs on the 14nm process dating back to early 2015 and the release of the Core i7-6700K.
The new 12th-gen processors are also notable for featuring a completely new architecture that Intel refers to as a hybrid design. It pairs Performance cores (P-Cores) with Efficient cores (E-Cores). Intel’s Thread Director intelligently distributes workloads across CPU threads for the best possible performance. Intel claims this new hybrid design has pushed its 12th-gen parts to new performance heights. The Core i9-12900K is said to offer massive gen-over-gen gains in gaming performance. Intel specifically mentioned a nearly 30 percent fps boost in Hitman 3 and a nearly 25 percent boost in Far Cry 6 when compared to the 11th-gen Core i9-11900K.
Along with the new CPUs comes the 600-series motherboard chipsets. The first on shelves will be the enthusiast-oriented Z690. The Z690 chipset offers support for new DDR5 memory modules, PCI-E Gen 5 (up to 16 lanes), Thunderbolt 4, and Intel’s Killer Wi-Fi 6E. Support for all the newest USB standards is included. Z690 also offers Intel VMD on consumer-level hardware for the first time. This allows direct control and management of NVMe-based SSDs from the PCIe bus without additional RAID controllers or other hardware adaptors.
The 12th-gen Alder Lake parts will officially go on sale on November 4 and many retailers have begun accepting pre-orders already. For the full list of new CPUs, including part numbers, features, and pricing, you can visit Intel’s official Alder Lake landing page.
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replyChris Jarrard posted a new article, Intel introduces its 12th-gen Alder Lake desktop CPUs
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Intel Alder Lake specs and pricing
https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Speeds-feed-prices.png?quality=50&strip=all
Guy Therien, an Intel fellow, noted that the Core i9-12900K can be run at 65W, and still deliver the performance of the Core i9-11900K at 250W.
article source - https://www.pcworld.com/article/546076/intel-alder-lake-12th-gen-core-speeds-prices.html
Can't wait for actual benchmarks.-
Kick in the pants will be DDR5 pricing, and new motherboards.
What will be nice are the fact that DDR4 support will exist (not on highest end boards), and Xeons based off this may support similar DDR4/5 split. Anyone looking at used workstation setups (in a few years' time) can get a relative bargain for home builds.
Bring on the benchmarks!-
They 12th gen CPUs still support DDR4. Remains to be seen if there will be any performance penalty for not using DDR5 though.
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12 cores but 20 threads. So 4 cores are single and 8 are multithreaded?
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It seems that the P-cores have AVX support in the silicon, but it's switched off because they couldn't figure out a way to get schedulers to respect that the E-Cores don't.
I read that somewhere at least, and it kinda tracks I think.
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Some of the numbers they are giving in relation to AMD performance on Windows 11 are sketchy given Microsoft and Intel collaborated for awhile and there were performance decreases for AMD products just from going Windows 10 to 11. They have since fixed it, but I'd wait for third party benchmarking. That being said, it looks like these will be pretty awesome chips.
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I kinda feel like gaming will still be better in AMD chips, but I'm kinda stoked for competition.
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It'll be interesting to see if they are even in stock on launch day, or sold out immediately.
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They got listed on Newegg early apparently and sold out in minutes.
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ooof, no. shhhhh, don't say that around the internet. AMD got one major leg up and so many people wanted to see intel tank, they were convinced it would never ever ever do anything remotely good ever again.
let them continue to live in a world where an AMD without competition is somehow their best friend and out only to make them happy.
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EVGA Z690 Kingpin - this motherboard looks amazing, not sure why there's only two ram slots though.
https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Z690-dark-1480x1480.png
https://wccftech.com/evga-unveils-z690-dark-kingpin-z690-classified-motherboards/-
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TIL, thank you!
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Because DDR5 is confusing as fuck..
If the motherboard has two memory slots total, then the maximum support is DDR5-4800 in any configuration.
If the motherboard has four memory slots total, then the maximum support is DDR5-4400 when two slots are filled with any memory.
If all four memory slots are filled, single rank memory will support up to DDR5-4000.
If all four memory slots are filled, dual-rank memory will support up to DDR5-3600.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16959/intel-innovation-alder-lake-november-4th/4
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Yeah I mean didn't Nvidia do that with the 30 series too?
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Not exactly. They gave preview units to a few places (Digital Foundry being a big one, IIRC) prior even to the 30 series announcement, with the caveat that they couldn't report specific framerate numbers, only percentage differences. So DF could say the 3080 is 70% faster than the 2080 in such-and-such a game, but not that the game went from 40 fps to 78 fps.
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Places just got the chips today so this gives smaller channels a chance to test.
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Can't wait to be unable to find one to buy!
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you can preorder some right now at newegg, for better or worse https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i5-12600k-core-i5-12th-gen/p/N82E16819118347
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here's a list of 12th gen pre-builts, motherboards, RAM kits, and coolers - shit is expensive!
https://wccftech.com/heres-where-you-can-pre-order-intels-12th-gen-alder-lake-desktop-cpus-z690-motherboards-ddr5-memory-kits-lga-1700-coolers/ -
Every time I get tempted I look at 4k benchmarks and even on the very latest games the RTX 3080 is the bottleneck, not the CPU. We'll see how Alder Lake shakes out but I can't imagine that it would provide enough uplift in 4k over my 7700k. If I was gaming at 1440p it would be a different story but I'm maxing out on my GPU.
It also doesn't help that DDR5 is holy shit expensive, more than double the price of DDR4-
Even in those slides they're only showing performance differences at 1080p. I assume those uplift bars are flat at 4k.
No doubt that these would be much better for content creation and serious multitasking. I only really use my PC for gaming though and its very tempting to just ride this 7700k until DirectStorage finally becomes more of a thing-
i don't disagree, but as someone who has been trying like hell to maintain 144hz@1080p in CPU heavy games (*cough* warzone), there is a market for this stuff.
but yeah, the GPU remains the most important part of a gaming rig. shame there's little competition there, so i'll take intel getting competitive as "good news". -
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Here's der8auer delidding a 12900k
https://youtu.be/ExPdq4yX2OI-
Sucks that he killed the CPU by mistake.. I'd be soo pissed at myself if I killed a brand new CPU.
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I have this feeling that we will see more mainstream computers go for $4k-$5k that previous modern Intel systems.
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i9, 3060ti, for 2.3k:
https://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Intel-Z690-Core-i9-Configurator
Pretty mainstream GPU, paired with the highest end CPU available.-
Plus it’s ibuypower, who probably is the worst major system integrator.
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