12900K 5Ghz on 8 cores. 12700K 4.7Ghz on 8 cores.

[g67575]

Some info about desktop Alder Lake CPU specs, here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/284566/specs-of-top-intel-12th-gen-core-alder-lake-s-processors-surface

Looks like the top CPU (12900K) will be able to clock to 5ghz on 8 cores. The PL1 / PL2 power limits are very similar to the 10700K, at 125w and 228w, so I expect you will need an excellent air cooler (or water cooling if you prefer) to run all cores at 5ghz.

The PL2 is a bit lower than the Rocket Lake 11900K and 11700K, which have a PL2 of 251w.

I think the 12700K (also has 4 smaller cores) will probably be overclockable to 5ghz in some cases too (since the 12700K can turbo to 5ghz on +1 cores). It might be worth buying a pre-tested one from the silicon lottery website, when these become available.

Overall, probably about a 10% performance boost for higher clocks (my CPU runs around 4.6ghz on all cores) and perhaps another 20% for IPC and cache improvements, vs Comet Lake.

If you have an Intel CPU clocked at 5ghz already, the performance improvements might not be massive.

I wonder if they will do an Alder Lake CPU, released a bit later with just 8 cores (and no smaller cores)?

 

[muon]

Still only 8 proper cores with really high TDP. 10nm not looking much better.

I doubt they will do a chip with only larger cores. They would otherwise have to admit defeat on the number of cores front.

Finding those 8 core dies I am guessing is expensive as well with poor yields.

 

[EsaT]

Overall, probably about a 10% performance boost for higher clocks (my CPU runs around 4.6ghz on all cores) and perhaps another 20% for IPC and cache improvements, vs Comet Lake.

Wouldn't trust Intel's performance claims any more than their advertised power draw figures.

Rocket Lake was already new and "improved" architecture over Skylake rebrands.
But only advantage was in extremely specific areas and overall it struggled to keep up with predecessor.
(vs AMD's general performance improvements)

And if used with DDR5, improvements materializing in general use and especially gaming are even more questionable until proven in reviews:
Bandwidth isn't any top priority in gaming.
It's memory access latency which basically takes all top positions.
And timings of known to be coming DDR5s are craptacular.
Same for what's known about Alder Lake's memory latency:
https://www.legitreviews.com/ddr5-6400mhz-memory-benchmarks-shown-on-intel-alder-lake-s_226693

Sure video encoding and such handling massive amounts of data are going to benefit from more bandwidth.
But gaming is more about "small random accesses" instead of sequential transfers.

 

[g67575]

Oh well, they've reached 6400mhz on DDR5 at least, which is about 1000mhz higher than I was expecting for Alder Lake. It seems to be struggling a bit, considering that it appears to up against 3200mhz RAM.

I still think most gamers would be better off with 4x4GB of quad channel DDR4 RAM, at least until the latencies of DDR5 are improved.

It would be pretty slick to be able to do this on my current RAM, so that there would be no need to upgrade it (thats why they won't standardise quad channel DDR4 motherboards instead then!)

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

There will probably be some games that benefit from the CPUs if they are as good as claimed, but DDR5 timings could be lower. Better to wait a year or so and see what's what.

IMO it's either Zen 4, or wait for Meteor Lake since the boards will allow one upgrade to Lunar Lake. If you go Alder Lake doesn't it restrict you to Raptor Lake as the only upgrade? May as well wait for the better RAM and in turn CPUs.

 

[g67575]

Zen 4's platform /AM5 should be a better option for people who might want to upgrade after 2-3 years.

Plus, AMD they will have some CPU models that run at reasonable temps without a really beefy cooler, assuming they improve power efficiency by using a 5nm EUV fab. process.

Bonus points if they standardised quad channel memory on mid /high end boards...