The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Andrei Frumusanu on November 4, 2021 9:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmark Performance: DDR5 vs DDR4
Traditionally we test our memory settings at JEDEC specifications. JEDEC is the standards body that determines the requirements for each memory standard. In this case, the Core i9 supports the following aligning with those standards:
- DDR4-3200 CL22
- DDR5-4800B CL40*
There's an * next to the DDR5 for a couple of reasons. First, when asked, Intel stated that 4800A (CL34) was the official support, however since the technical documents have now been released, we've discovered that it is 4800B (CL40). Secondly, 4800B CL40 technically only applies to 1 module per 64-bit channel on the motherboard, and only when the motherboard has two 64-bit slots to begin with. We covered Intel's memory support variants in a previous article, and in this instance, we're using DDR5-4800B memory in our testing.
As explained in our SPEC section, DDR5 memory not only brings bandwidth improvements but also the increased number of channels (4x32-bit vs 2x64-bit) means that the memory can be better utilized as threads pile on the memory requests. So while we don't see much improvement in single threaded workloads, there are a number of multi-threaded workloads that would love the increased performance.
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AnonymousGuy - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
Fanbois clinging to any metric they can find where AMD is maybe better. Surprised they aren't raving about the color of the box or something."OMG the power consumption is too high what ever am I going to do with my 1000W power supply and 720mm rad?!" - GTFO!
Shorty_ - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
I assume you weren't one of the people going "sure Vega can match Pascal in some places but the power efficiency is horrific!"?People care about it when it's not their product being inefficient. :)
Spunjji - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
Odd reversal of the actual logic, whereby any situation where Intel is worse gets ignored...eddman - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
I'm disappointed by power consumption figures from almost all outlets. Intel usually pushes the i9 parts to the voltage and frequency wall, meaning the power consumption would obviously be bad at max possible clocks.https://twitter.com/TweakPC/status/145596164928275...
I'm not saying I necessarily trust this source, but I don't see a reason to think it's fake. You can have ~92% of the performance for ~68% of the power.
eddman - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
Just to clarify, I'm disappointed by the depth of power consumption research in reviews, not what the max numbers are.ricebunny - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
Me too. Check out igorslab review. It turns out that the i9 12900 is more power frugal than a 5950x when gaming.jospoortvliet - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
Right, the audience that cares least about efficiency gets it while business work is inefficient.eddman - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
That's not what I meant. I wanted to see tests at different power limits to see how it does in performance/watt metrics against zen 3 at the same limits.Spunjji - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
That's fair, although it is a big ask for reviewers who are already covering multiple OS and RAM configsmode_13h - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
Yeah, it's not as if there can be only one article written about this CPU!More depth can be added in subsequent articles, as often happens.