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 Tests: SPEC MT Performance - DDR5 Advantage
Multi-threaded performance is where things become very interesting for Alder Lake, where the chip can now combine its 8 P-cores with its 8 E-cores. As we saw, the 8 E-cores are nothing to sneeze about, but another larger consideration for MT performance is DDR5. While in the ST results we didn’t see much change in the performance of the cores, in MT scenarios when all cores are hammering the memory, having double the memory channels as well as +50% more bandwidth is going to be extremely beneficial for Alder Lake.
As we noted, the DDR5 vs DDR4 results showcase a very large performance gap between the two memory technologies in MT scenarios. Running a total of 24 threads, 16 for the SMT-enabled P-cores, and 8 for the E-cores, Alder Lake is able to take the performance crown in quite a lot of the workloads. There are still cases where AMD’s 16-core setup with larger cores are able to perform better, undoubtedly also partly attributed to 64MB of on-chip cache.
Compared to the 11900K, the new 12900K showcases giant leaps, especially when paired with DDR5.
In the FP suite, the DDR5 advantage in some workloads is even larger, as the results scale beyond that of the pure theoretical +50% bandwidth improvement. What’s important for performance is not just the theoretical bandwidth, but the actual utilised bandwidth, and again, the doubled up memory channels of DDR5 here are seemingly contributing to extremely large increases, if the workload can take advantage of it.
In the aggregate results, there’s very clearly two conclusions, depending on whether you use the chip with DDR5 or DDR4.
With DDR4, Alder Lake and the 12900K in particular, is able to showcase very good and solid increases in performance, thanks to the IPC gains on the Golden Cove core, but most importantly, also thanks to the extra 8 Gracemont cores, which do carry their own weight. The 12900K falls behind AMD’s 5900X with DDR4, which is fair given the pricing of the chips here are generally in line with teach other.
With DDR5, the 12900K is able to fully stretch its multi-threaded performance legs. In less memory dependent workloads, the chip battles it out with AMD’s 16-core 5950X, winning some workloads, losing some others. In more memory dependent workloads, the DDR5 advantage is extremely clear, and the 12900K is able to blow past any competition, even slightly edging out the latest Apple M1 Max, released a few weeks ago, and notable for its memory bandwidth.
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Zzzoom - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
You're gullible enough to forget that AMD raised its margins as soon as it got the lead with Zen 3.lejeczek - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
And you are ready! to convince everybody... that whole freaking plandemic & communists mafia had nothing to do with prices gone up across the board. Good man!Spunjji - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
"plandemic"🙄
"communists mafia"
🤦♂️
Qasar - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
zzzoom, so in other words, intel kept raising its prices when they had the lead, but its NOT ok for amd to raise its prices when they have the lead ? so who is gullible ?amd had the right to raise its prices, after all intel did it.
madseven7 - Saturday, November 6, 2021 - link
You're gullible enough to forget that Intel raised prices for every generation of cpu's and chipsets.karmapop - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
This is a market economy. Neither company cares about your emotional attachments or misgivings beyond what is profitable for them. AMD as the market underdog played up that position heavily, gaining significant goodwill with the enthusiast consumer market. However as Zzzoom mentioned just as is expected as soon as they retook the performance dominant position their aggressive pricing strategy evaporated.If you're going to criticize Intel's market stagnation via mismangement for a decade you can't just ignore the fiasco of AMD's awful Bulldozer architecture and the 4.5 year gap between the launch of Piledriver and the launch of Zen 1. It's not unreasonable to make the argument that because Intel absolutely needed AMD to remain around at that time to avoid facing anti-trust issues, the lack of any real competitive alternative is a factor in their decision to stagnate as just 'greed'.
yeeeeman - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
AMD has been doing the same starting with Zen 3, so spare me with this...deathBOB - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
And they should be punished for correcting those problems?heickelrrx - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
AMD did since they make FX series so badStop blaming Intel alon for market segmentation AMD being not competitive also part of it
Spunjji - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
FX series was as bad as it was for a couple of reasons - partly because AMD were starved of funding during the entire Athlon 64 era, and partly because Global Foundries utterly failed to develop their fabrication processes to be suitable for high-performance CPUs.