Core i9-12900K gives very superior performance compared to previous generations, Intel was right when switching to a small core design with a new architecture, thereby bringing multifaceted advantages to the Alder Lake line .

Alder Lake and the turning point of x86

The first turning point in Intel’s processor architecture was in 2015 when it launched the Skylake architecture – an architecture that opened the way for Intel’s 14nm era and also Intel’s most ups and downs when it constantly had to reuse this architecture as Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Cannnon Lake, Whiskey Lake and Comet Lake. On desktop or S-series processors, Intel only improved Skylake and used it on Intel Core generations 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, ie 5 generations. It was not until the 11th generation Core that Intel introduced a new microarchitecture called Cypress Cove, which was based on the Sunny Cove of Intel’s first 10nm processors and was backported by the company to be able to manufacture on the go. 14nm process. Generation 11 as a test of Intel, both in terms of process and architecture to prepare for the next page is Alder Lake.

Alder Lake is the turning point of Intel as well as x86 processors in general when it switched to a small core design instead of a co-core as before. Core i9-12900K is the flagship of the Alder Lake-S desktop series with 8 strong cores using Golden Cove architecture (P-core) and 8 power-saving Gracemont cores (E-core). With this design, the Core i9-12900K has 16 cores and 24 threads, twice as many processing cores as the Rocket Lake-S series, on par with the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X series.

It can be seen that with this 8-core to 8-core setup, each group of cores uses a different architecture. Golden Cove is an architecture developed and inherited from Sunny Cove on the Ice Lake line with new features such as a wider instruction decoder with 6-wide instead of 4-wide of previous generations, thereby allowing cores to load up to 32 bytes of instruction per clock cycle, thus doubling. In addition, the microOP buffer has also been increased to 4K entries from 2.25K, the number of execution ports to 12 up from 10 and the larger out-of-order indication window compared to Sunny Cove. The clocks of the Golden Cove cores are also higher than that of Sunny Cove on Ice Lake, which contributes to an improvement in IPC, up to 19% compared to Rocket Lake-S or 28% compared to Comet Lake-S.

Meanwhile, the energy-saving cores use the improved Gracemont architecture from Tremont. Gracemont is the 4th generation of low-power out-of-order microarchitecture for Atom, Celeron and Pentium Silver and it features significant improvements such as larger instruction cache, support for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 memory with instructions such as AVX, AVX2, FMA3, and AVX-VNNI.

In order for the two groups of strong and weak cores to work well, Intel has integrated a technology called Thread Director – an intelligent scheduler to monitor instructions, allocate and optimize the workload for the cores. handling. Thread Director will communicate with the operating system and the best supported operating system version is Windows 11. With the same kernel design as Thread Director and Windows 11, Alder Lake will give good parallel processing performance of heavy tasks. thereby enhancing the user experience.

With the Golden Cove and Gracemont architectures both developed for the Intel 7 process, ie 10nm SuperFIN Advanced, the Alder Lake line also marks the transition to a new process of Intel processors after many years of sticking with 14nm.

DDR5 and PCIe 5

In addition to the small core design, Alder Lake also has many changes in technology such as DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. Memory microcontrollers on Alder Lake now support DDR5 RAM in addition to DDR4 with very high transfer rates, from 4800 MT/s to over 6800 MT/s or more with OC RAM kits. The generation of DDR5 memory has many differences compared to DDR4, in which 2 things to note are that the power management chip (PMIC) and VRM have been integrated on the DIMM stick instead of on the board, the voltage of the RAM is lower. from 1.2 V and the XMP chip supports 2 customizable profiles.

But besides DDR5, Alder Lake’s memory microcontroller also supports DDR4, so if you want to reuse old RAM kits or want to reduce the cost of buying RAM, you can use Alder Lake with motherboards that use DDR4 RAM instead of DDR5.

PCIe 5.0 is also a very new point on the Alder Lake line, upgraded from PCIe 4.0 of the Rocket Lake series, and this time Intel is ahead of AMD in terms of supporting the new PCIe standard. The fact that I see early PCIe 5.0 support in the current context is both to wait for the PCIe 5.0 hardware in 2022, and to increase the number of PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 lanes, thereby turning Alder Lake into a micro-platform. handle a lot of PCIe lanes, opening up many use cases.

The CPU provides 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 for graphics cards and 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 for SSDs, the bandwidth of each PCIe 5.0 lane is 32 GT/s, twice as much as PCIe 4.0 and 4 times as much as PCIe 3.0. Thus, 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes will support new generation graphics cards using 16 PCIe 5.0 x16 lanes or running 2 cards with a PCIe 5.0 x8/x8 setup (equivalent to 2 cards running all 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes). In addition, with a PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD, Alder Lake-S can also support with a PCIe 5.0 x8 setup for the graphics card and 2 x PCIe 5.0 x4. The Z690 chipset platform also provides up to 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes thereby opening up ample storage capacity, high-end Z690 motherboards can support 3 more M.2 slots. For those with high storage needs, such as video production, I find the Z690 platform and Alder Lake very reasonable, no need to look to HEDT platforms like before.

Core i9-12900K . Performance

I quickly tested Core i9-12900K with default settings, only turning on XMP of RAM on the Z690 Maximus Apex motherboard platform and below are the results compared with previous generations of Intel and AMD processors.

Test configuration includes:

• CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K 8P 3.2 GHz > 5.2 GHz + 8E 2.4 GHz > 3.9 GHz, 30 MB Smart Cache;
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super FE;
• RAM: 2 x 8 G.Skill TridentZ 5 DDR5-5600 CL36-36-36-76;
• SSD: Crucial P1 1 TB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe;
• SSD: WD Black AN1200 1 TB PCIe 3.0 x8;
• MOBO: ASUS Z690 Maximus Apex;
• Cooler: ASUS Ryujin 360;
• PSU: Deepcool DQ 750 M-V2L;
• Case: Inwin 216.

In this article, I only tested Core i9-12900K at default settings, turned on XMP of RAM and let the CPU run by design. Normally, I also test the performance when the OC CPU goes to higher pulse levels, but during use, I noticed that the ASUS heatsink proved to be ineffective and this is what was predicted by Alder Lake- The S has a lower Z-height than previous generations and current heatsinks designed for the LGA 1200 socket will not achieve maximum performance. ASUS’ solution on 600 series motherboards is to drill more holes to fit the old radiator, the bracket and the heatsink are tight, but the contact between the heatsink and the IHS cap is not optimal. I will find another radiator and try the OC Core i9-12900K and then send you another article, currently, with what I have, the OC is not good.

Electricity and temperature

Although the Core i9-12900K has more cores than previous generations, with it using a new architecture, with power-saving cores and using the 10nm process, its power consumption is somewhat different. When running Cinebench R15, the CPU only eats up to 226 W with 8 powerful cores running at 4.9 GHz and 8 power-saving cores running at 3.7 GHz, Vcore at 1,267 V across all 16 cores. When stressed with AIDA64, it eats up to about 206 W. With Blender, the Classroom test will make the CPU eat up to 238 W, close to the TDP limited to 241 W with Vcore up to 1.3 V. can go below 1 GHz, powerful cores at 800 MHz and power-saving cores at 500 MHz, Vcore is only 0.8 V.

Overall, Core i9-12900K is showing Intel’s return in the high-performance CPU segment for general users when it now offers superior performance compared to previous generations as well as AMD in the same category. segment. Intel’s improvements in CPU architecture, process, and design in the Alder Lake series are timely. Supporting DDR4 and DDR5 and going ahead with PCIe 5.0 shows Intel’s calculation when it wants to be at the forefront of a technology shift, promoting a changing hardware ecosystem to follow and from there over time. then the new hardware is cheaper, like the days when PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs were expensive, but now it’s very accessible.