Intel has announced its 12th generation Alder Lake-S desktop platform, bringing six new desktop processors to the table. These processors bring a true next-generation upgrade to Intel for the first time in years, and also mark the company's first major change from Skylake, which it has iterated on since 2015. If you've been keeping an eye on the IT world for the last few Years ago, you've probably noticed that Intel started to struggle when it was once the undisputed leader in processors. But, now it looks like Team Blue might have a chance to reclaim their CPU performance crown in a big way. These processors are led by the Intel Core i9-12900K, which is a 16-core, 24-thread chip, with 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, and this is where Intel's secret weapon lies to regain dominance of desktop computers. Like Apple with its recent design victories, Intel is taking the big.LITTLE design philosophy that has made ARM chips so successful on mobile platforms and applying it to high-performance computing. And honestly, I'm really excited to see what they can do when they launch on November 2016th. I haven't been able to test these processors yet, though those results will definitely come at a later date. However, even based on the information Intel provided on this new platform, I haven't been this excited about launching a processor since AMD's Ryzen first exploded on the scene in XNUMX. The new 12th Gen Alder Lake processors are:
- Core i9-12900K | Core 8 P, Core 8 E | Up to 5,2 GHz | 241W MTP | € 589
- Core i9-12900KF | Core 8 P, Core 8 E | Up to 5,2 GHz | 241W MTP | € 564
- Core i7-12700K | Core 8 P, Core 4 E | Up to 5,0 GHz | 190W MTP | € 409
- Core i7-12700KF | Core 8 P, Core 4 E | Up to 5,0 GHz | 190W MTP | € 384
- Core i5-12600K | 6 P cores, 4 E cores | Up to 4,9 GHz | 150W MTP | € 289
- Core i5-12600KF | 6 P cores, 4 E cores | Up to 4,9 GHz | 150W MTP | € 264
Specifications change, what do we do?
Intel Alder Lake marks a big change in the way we talk about Intel processors, as much of the terminology has changed, for better or worse. And of course the biggest change here is the TDP. In the past, Intel has advertised a power level that just wasn't exactly realistic, referring to PL1 (power level one) as the amount of power the processor was designed to run with. However, when the processor is pushed, it is more accurate to speak of the processor's PL2 (power level 2), as in normal scenarios (or basically when the chip is not overclocked), this is the peak power it will consume at full power. load, though we've found that chips can beat that. But Intel made this clear in its Alder Lake processor listings by talking about two different powers; base processor power and max turbo power. The former is what the processor will run on in most day-to-day workloads, and it's actually the same 125W across the entire Alder Lake lineup. The other is the Maximum Turbo Power, which replaces the PL2. This is the amount of power consumed by the processor when it loads all cores to full, without changing the BIOS settings. So while it may seem like these newer processors will draw MUCH more power than their 11th-gen predecessors, they actually draw less - the PL2 for the Core i9-11900K was rated PL2 at 250W. But thanks to the inclusion of efficiency cores, these new processors are also much more energy efficient. Despite the fact that these new processors consume slightly less power, Intel claims that the Intel Core i9-12900K is up to 100% faster than the Core i9-11900K in After Effects, which is a big increase in performance for build in generation. Across the entire Adobe suite, Intel claims a performance boost of at least 32%.
Efficiency is everything
When it comes to desktop processors, efficiency isn't something most people really care about, especially with flagship chips like the Intel Core i9-12900K. But while battery life isn't all that important, the amount of work you can get done in the same power envelope is important, especially if you're not the type who likes overclocking and introducing exotic cooling to your platform. And again, I haven't tested these processors yet, but Intel is making some incredibly bold claims here. Intel claims that with a peak power output of 241W – remember, that max turbo power – the Intel Core i9-12900K will deliver roughly 50% faster multi-threaded performance than the Intel Core i9-12900K. What's even more impressive, though, is that Intel has apparently succeeded in making the Core i9-12900K perform on par with the 11900K at 65W, which will be surprising for builds of PCs that have a more restricted thermal design. – Think prebuilt gaming PCs. . It's a bit early to say how realistic Intel's claims are here, but given that this is a similar design to what Apple achieved with its early M1 chips, and now the M1 Pro and M1 Max, I can definitely see how Intel can go ahead. .
Is the hybrid the future?
With new silicon from Apple and Intel featuring this big.LITTLE design philosophy, it really looks like the future of computing lies in hybrid chip designs. And after hearing Intel talk about the performance of these chips, it starts to make a lot of sense. As a general rule of thumb, Apple generally doesn't know how its processors work, but Intel provides much more information on how these processors work, at least in the context of Windows 11, the operating system it recommends to consumers. In every Intel Alder Lake processor is a piece of hardware called the Intel Thread Director, which provides workload characterization information to Windows 11. And with this information, the operating system will automatically know which cores to assign the loads to. To maximize performance and efficiency. . Background tasks will be offloaded to the efficiency cores, so they won't interfere with the things you're trying to do on your system, while closely related tasks like games and creative apps like Adobe Premiere will take precedence over the efficiency cores. performance. But it's a little more dynamic. When you walk away from a task that's going to take a while, Windows 11 will offload that task to the efficiency cores, so your computer is still fully usable even when it's processing a huge video in the background. But, if you want that video to take precedence even when it's in the alternate tab, you can still configure Windows to prioritize this process over the Performance tabs. Intel told us that there is an AI model that Thread Director will use to further optimize tasks over time, but also told us that it's not really necessary. In fact, it learns where to put tasks very quickly, so you probably never have to experience a task in a non-optimized state. And it won't completely depend on developers writing specific code either, as it depends more on the type of task. So even legacy programs will work extremely well, although there are a few exceptions, mostly in the form of PC gaming, mostly thanks to Denuvo (surprise, surprise). This is apparently because the anti-hacking software recognized the two core groups as different processors and would therefore block the software. Intel says there were 91 games with Denuvo that had issues with Alder Lake, but only 32 still have issues. However, Denuvo and Intel are hard at work to ensure that all games run out of the box on new hardware. Alder Lake is really Intel's first really exciting processor launch in years. I remember at CES 2020 lamenting Intel for ditching the desktop and putting all its chips on the mobile cart. And it seems that he was wrong, and Intel could be back; now I just have to get my hands on the chips to see exactly how scared AMD should be.