Have the differences in IPC and single core perf. been overstated in games, between Zen 3 and Golden Cove?

[g67575]

Looking back at an old review on Techspot, the minimum framerates at 1080p appear quite similar between Golden Cove CPUs like the 12700K and Zen 3 CPUs like the 5800X:

From this 12600K review:

Intel Core i5-12600K Review: 5600X Defeated

The Core i5-12600K is Intel's latest mainstream CPU and a direct competitor to AMD's popular Ryzen 5 5600X. The Alder Lake chip packs 6 P-cores and 4...

www.techspot.com

My dad is curious about the likely differences in 'real world' performance between Zen 4 and Intel's 12th/13th generations, because he wants to build a new PC (upgrading from 1st gen i7!).

Looking at the above chart, my impression is that since Zen 4 has an 8% increase in IPC, it could end up about equal, or being slighty ahead of the Golden Cove architecture in games (min. framerate). If the IPC translates directly into increased min FPS, that would be a min. FPS of around 158 (10 game average, based on 5800X result).

 

[g67575]

Bit of everything really, I think he will be happy as long as the performance seems steady and consistent in games. He likes historical strategy games like some of the Total War series (he's not a fan of the fantasy games like I am, like WH3). I sold him a RTX 3070 GPU recently, so he should be all set, he's not bothered about a larger/higher resolution display though.

We've been noticing slowdowns when Windows 10 is booting and updating itself, so I think it will be easy to see an improvement. He transfers / moves around files quite a bit, so I think USB4 will help there, particularly with external backups.

I think he's been waiting for the clock speeds to hit 5ghz (all core) at the mainstream, it's taken a long time! I've told him if he goes with AM5, he will probably be able to upgrade the CPU for at least a few more years.

 

[g67575]

True, but there will be no new CPU releases for those platforms (after Intel's 13th gen). He wants DDR5 RAM too, partly because it's the latest thing. I don't think he minds waiting until the end of the year, if needed.

 

[g67575]

But Zen 4 could get a smaller IPC improvement than 13th gen.

13th gen is the same architecture (Golden Cove) as the 12th gen. It's an optimization of the 12th generation, with the same IPC, more cache and approx. 5-6% higher all core clocks for the 13900K compared to the 12900KS. Zen 4 on desktop has an 8% improvement in IPC according to AMD.

They can get 5.5ghz all core out of a recent engineering sample:

Early Core i9-13900K sample shows massive improvement in minimum framerates, boosts to 5.8 GHz

Hardware reviewer ExtremePlayer has posted some benchmarks of an Core i9-13900K qualification sample they managed to obtain. This CPU should offer near-identical performance to shipping products as...

www.techspot.com

It's interesting to see Intel trying to get more performance out of the E-cores, by clocking them upto 400mhz higher.

The new 700 series motherboards for the 13th gen, might ultimately be more interesting than the CPUs themselves.

 

[g67575]

I knew this was going to be a g6 thread, all his posts sound the same

I'm glad you came too

 

[g67575]

But I have seen ring clock boost to 4600MHz if e-cores are on, but not called on.

So, 4600mhz or higher is possible, and clocking it higher improves the single threaded performance?

I would imagine that the Zen ring cache is about the same as the average clock speed? So, Zen 4 will probably have a ring/cache clock of 5ghz or more?

 

[g67575]

Games not showing that difference probably has more to do with being GPU bottlenecked even at 1080P

I'm doubtful about that, in the Techspot review they used a 6900XT, easily enough for 1080p. In most games, the minimum FPS is similar between Zen 3 and Golden Cove. The minimum FPS (10 game average) was 147 for the 5800X and 151 for the 12700KF, both operating at stock settings.

Notably, in some games like Horizon Zero Dawn, the 5800X has 130 min FPS and the 12700KF had 122 min FPS. In Watchdogs:Legion, Rainbow Six and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the 5800X was slightly ahead. It's probably true though that you'd see more of a difference in CPU performance in games like Cyberpunk, at 720p resolution.

 

[g67575]

Even at 720p, the difference in framerate between the Zen 3 CPUs with 8-16 cores and the 12700K is around 7-8%, in Techpowerup's review:

Intel Core i7-12700K Review - Almost as Fast as the i9-12900K

With the Core i7-12700K, Intel has released a formidable competitor to AMD's Ryzen 5800X and even 5900X. Thanks to eight powerful Golden Cove cores, the processor handles all workloads very well, including gaming. Compared to the i9-12900K, it runs almost as fast, but much cooler, with better...

www.techpowerup.com

At 1440p, the difference on average framerate falls to around 4%, which I think for most, the difference would be quite hard to distinguish.

I think what this shows, is that there's not an exact correlation between IPC and game performance (there's other factors involved like cache, core count to a lesser extent), otherwise we would expect around 20% higher minimum and average framerates in most games, at lower resolutions.