Question Alder Lake - Official Thread

[Hulk]

With the release of Alder Lake less than a week away and the "Lakes" thread having turned into a nightmare to navigate I thought it might be a good time to start a discussion thread solely for Alder Lake.

 

[blckgrffn]

I really want Alder Lake to be great, but…

I am suspicious the platform (chipsets), ram and maybe even the combination of cores (while I like the 6C all P core CPU, I think adding four E cores and having 16 total threads would be the sweet spot) this time next year will be more compelling.

Excited to read reviews that might change my mind!

 

[jpiniero]

I'm convinced that DDR4 is the way to go if you were going to buy at launch. This always happens with new memory but unlike last time Intel changed memory you have a choice.

 

[UsandThem]

I'm convinced that DDR4 is the way to go if you were going to buy at launch. This always happens with new memory but unlike last time Intel changed memory you have a choice.

When Skylake launched with DDR4, they still had a limited number of boards that supported DDR3:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/7

It appears to be a similar situation this time with DDR5.

 

[Zucker2k]

I think Intel going with DDR5 for reviews (do they really have a choice?) means that overall, DDR5 provides better performance than DDR4 across the board. The jury is still out on DDR4 vs DDR5 on gaming, but looking at the fact that Intel even chose to support DDR4 on the new platform probably means it has its uses, outside of financial considerations for consumers, and especially, enthusiasts.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is it true that we are finally getting ECC standard on DDR5 DIMMs? I thought that I had read that somewhere.

 

[Markfw]

Is it true that we are finally getting ECC standard on DDR5 DIMMs? I thought that I had read that somewhere.

Well, newegg has quite a few DDR5, none are ECC

 

[jpiniero]

When Skylake launched with DDR4, they still had a limited number of boards that supported DDR3:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/7

It appears to be a similar situation this time with DDR5.

Right now on Newegg they have 12 DDR4 boards versus 11 DDR5. We'll have to see what people choose but it's definately not going to be like Skylake's limited DDR3L support.

Big diff is that DDR4 had been available on the market for a year when Skylake was released.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So one same board can't take DDR4 and DDR5 in the same slots? That's what I kind of figured.

 

[Arthav]

It is the next-gen processors will heat up the AMD vs. Intel gaming

 

[Aikouka]

Is it true that we are finally getting ECC standard on DDR5 DIMMs? I thought that I had read that somewhere.

ECC is built into the module itself.

 

[dweilbacher]

I have not built a PC in a while (since 4th Gen intel). So it is time. The Alder Lake appears to be the right upgrade for me. PCI 5, DDR5. And I'm very interested/curious about the P / E Cores performance. Should be a fun build.

 

[KompuKare]

Is it true that we are finally getting ECC standard on DDR5 DIMMs? I thought that I had read that somewhere.

Sort of. If you are a marketeer.
DDR5 modules can have internal ECC. But that's not the same as proper ECC and I don't think the modules can signal anything to the CPU's memory controller about any errors.
What this seems to be more about, is that if the memory chips are run at high speeds which might cause errors, they can try to detect or correct those, AFAIK.
So I'd consider this more like how multi-layer NAND can and has to do error checking.

 

[phillyman36]

I wound up ordering
12900k PreOrder Newegg
Asus z690 Hero Pre order Newegg
Corsair Dominator 2x16 ddr5 5200Mhz (cl36) ram Directly from Corsair
I sold some of my old pc equipment so the money went towards Alder Lake. Ram should be here by Wednesday at the latest.

I'm either going to put it in my Corsair 680x case with a Noctua D15 Chromax black or in my Lian Li O11 dynamic xl case with the Galahad 360 AIo. (I have the lga 1700 mounting brackets for both.) For those getting it you doing air or water cooling? I leaning towards air since im probably not going to overclock. (unless someone gives me a good reason to go aio instead)
Once its set up ill probably sell my 5900x rig for more money for a second rig. ( I know someone will ask but the 5900x with the dark hero has been a headache for me usb disconnects memory error post codes of 40 even under default.) Im off the 4th and 5th so hopefully Newegg ships early so i can put it together.

 

[Hougy]

Looks like all the K chips will be based on the 8+8 die. So will the 6 core die be used only for locked, low frequency chips? Will they also bin these chips or will they waste the golden samples? Why?

 

[mikk]

Looks like all the K chips will be based on the 8+8 die. So will the 6 core die be used only for locked, low frequency chips? Will they also bin these chips or will they waste the golden samples? Why?

Yes it's for lower clocked non OC models, the fastest 6+0 seems to be the i5-12600. However this model comes with reasonable turbo speeds of 4.8 Ghz ST and 4.4 Ghz MT. On wccftech there is a SKU overview.

 

[jpiniero]

Yes it's for lower clocked non OC models, the fastest 6+0 seems to be the i5-12600. However this model comes with reasonable turbo speeds of 4.8 Ghz ST and 4.4 Ghz MT. On wccftech there is a SKU overview.

Given that it's WTFTech, it's probably not accurate. But not too far off. Not having the small cores is going to make the 12600 a bad deal compared to the 12600K unless the price gap is much bigger than in the past.

 

[Timorous]

Something interesting that came out of the reddit AMA is that in testing Intel found that some games do like the DDR5 bandwidth and others as we know prefer DDR4 due to lower latency.

In their 11900K vs 12900K slide there were some really big gains for some games but looking at them a lot have more going on CPU wise. It seems that it may be possible that some of these gains can be attributed to DDR5 bandwidth (anybody with a fast ram in a comet or rocket lake system want to compare improvements in the likes of Troy, hitman 3 etc at 3200 C14 vs 4400 C36 to get an idea how much bandwidth impacts some of those games that saw huge gains?).

At the other end of the scale there are a fair number of games with minimal improvements (and 1 regression). I think it is quite possible that in a DDR4 system the games on the left hand side end up with a better showing than Intel showed but some of the games with the big 20+% gains do worse.

It will be very interesting to find out.

 

[Asterox]

So one same board can't take DDR4 and DDR5 in the same slots? That's what I kind of figured.

No it cant, DDR4 and DDR5 memory/stick is not physically compatible.

 

[Arkaign]

Something interesting that came out of the reddit AMA is that in testing Intel found that some games do like the DDR5 bandwidth and others as we know prefer DDR4 due to lower latency.

In their 11900K vs 12900K slide there were some really big gains for some games but looking at them a lot have more going on CPU wise. It seems that it may be possible that some of these gains can be attributed to DDR5 bandwidth (anybody with a fast ram in a comet or rocket lake system want to compare improvements in the likes of Troy, hitman 3 etc at 3200 C14 vs 4400 C36 to get an idea how much bandwidth impacts some of those games that saw huge gains?).

At the other end of the scale there are a fair number of games with minimal improvements (and 1 regression). I think it is quite possible that in a DDR4 system the games on the left hand side end up with a better showing than Intel showed but some of the games with the big 20+% gains do worse.

It will be very interesting to find out.

Well, I mean also like DDR4 4000/C17 level stuff or better would probably be pretty great with it, but we'll have to wait to see how it plays out in GN/etc

 

[NTMBK]

... the "Lakes" thread having turned into a nightmare to navigate...

What, a 563 page thread about 6 different generations of product, all being argued about concurrently, isn't easy to follow?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Intel announces 12th-gen Alder Lake CPUs: Our long 14 nm nightmare is over

New desktop CPUs include DDR5 RAM support, PCI Express 5.0, and more cores.

arstechnica.com

Welcome to the 10nm nightmare!

it will be what? 2 years till we see Intel 4? I HOPE for my sake that I'm wrong.

 

[blckgrffn]

What, a 563 page thread about 6 different generations of product, all being argued about concurrently, isn't easy to follow?

I started at the beginning and reread through it and it was a slog. The price you pay for stepping away from the forum for a couple years but wanting to participate in one of the top CPU sub forum threads.

A little off topic, but they moved the notch on DDR5 only slightly? And towards the middle? Ugh. I find it much easier when the key is A) more towards one side to make it obvious and B) different than before enough if you grab a stick from the wrong generation it's stupidly obvious. Yikes.

In any case, it seems like the early reviews should really make it obvious whether DDR5 with it's higher capacities and internal error correction is immediately viable. Fast DDR4 is not hard to find right now, and prices are plummeting.

I can imagine that DDR5 support was/is a big marketing factor - higher numbers being better. I can only imagine talking with someone in line to checkout in Microcenter and how excited they might genuinely be about PCIe 5 and DDR5 support. I've had awkward conversations there in the past. I am sure Dell and HP and the rest like touting some new higher numbers too.

 

[dullard]

Well, newegg has quite a few DDR5, none are ECC

ECC is built into the module itself.

DDR5 has halfway implemented ECC: all DDR5 has ECC for everything that occurs on the memory module. So if a memory chip has a bit flip, it will be caught and corrected. But DDR5 does not have automatic full-system ECC. Meaning if a bit flip occurs during data transmission, that it will not be caught without extra resources.

 

[dullard]

Looks like all the K chips will be based on the 8+8 die. So will the 6 core die be used only for locked, low frequency chips? Will they also bin these chips or will they waste the golden samples? Why?

Do you have a source for that? It seems reasonable that they only are running the 8+8 die right now and will be using the best 6-core chips for high-end mobile. But, they theoretically could have used the 6+8 die for the 12600K and 12600KF. So, is there evidence that they are not doing so?