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.
coercitiv
Diamond Member
- Jan 24, 2014
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Not sure how these would look in Win10, but performance seems perfectly fine to me for 1TB Firecuda 530:
I'm on Windows 11.
To put it bluntly the scheduler or whatever is making CPU loading decisions is behaving stupidly.
For example, I'm processing raw images with DxO PureRaw, it's a very compute intensive process. At the same time I'm editing those processed raw images in PS. I can generally post process an image in PS in 60 seconds or so. But while PS is on top ONLY the E's are working in PureRaw and it takes them 164 seconds to process an image. Even if I'm doing nothing in PS all 8 P's will sit parked while only the E's work in Pureraw. And of course I'm waiting for the next image to process.
Using process Lasso I set PureRaw to always use 4P+4E, which brings down image processing time to 41 seconds per image. By the time I'm editing an image PureRaw has finished processing so all compute is available in PS and even if it wasn't 4P's is generally sufficient for near realtime performance in PS.
That's my workaround for a couple of my situations where Windows 11 isn't behaving as I'd like.
The Windows 11 Scheduler behavior I don't understand is why when the application that is currently on top is idle or nearly so the rest of the compute doesn't go to background tasks? Or even 80% so the system can feel responsive to the user when they do something during that fraction of a second where the compute resources switch back to the foreground application?
It's seems stupid the way it is behaving but I'm sure I'm missing something and I'm the one who is stupid because there is no way that teams of engineers and beta testers who are all magnitudes of order smarter than me could have missed this.
The same teams of engineers and beta testers who were responsible for the AMD cache latency issues in Windows 11 RTM?
Supposedly it's fixed.
Microsoft Fixes SSD and HDD Write Speed Bug in Windows 11
An issue that's taken Microsoft several months to finally fix
www.tomshardware.com
LENOVO INVALID - Geekbench Browser
Benchmark results for a LENOVO INVALID with an Intel Core i7-1260P processor.
browser.geekbench.com
Core i7 1260P (4+8) Geenbench OpenCL score. This Lenovo laptop includes what might be the mx550 as it has 2 GB of memory (rather stingy IMO).
tamz_msc
Diamond Member
- Jan 5, 2017
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coercitiv
Diamond Member
- Jan 24, 2014
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My understanding is that the issue affects only certain systems, otherwise it would have been easier to spot in time. I simply don't feel like beta testing for MS, little to win on my side especially considering I need to use this machine for work. I purposely built it and installed the OS on Friday evening so that by Sunday I could decide whether the new machine stays in place or I bring back the old system. I'll reconsider a clean Win11 install at the end of the month. The E-core behavior is weird but it won't affect my workflow.
The scheduler behavior is what happens when a major software component development is linked to an arbitrary launch such as Nov 2021 for Alder Lake. It was good enough for review benchmarks, so they shipped. As I said before, I hope Intel puts in serious effort and fixes this for the mobile launch. I plan to disable the E-cores as soon as firmware allows me, but at the same time I also plan to enable them back once team blue figures out how to make E-cores efficient to work with.
Meanwhile Intel managed to bring the DRM situation under control, so I guess that's something.
I was wary of Windows 11 as well. Not so much from the performance quirks but more the messing around with the GUI that MS can't seem to resist. Little things like you can't right-click the taskbar to pull up task manager, you need to right-click over the start icon to do that. I adapted in a week or so and now I don't notice the 11 vs 10 GUI differences so much
Yes, you are right regarding getting it out with good benchmark scores was the priority. As long as the benchmark application is in the foreground (or any app for that matter) then it will receive the full compute of the CPU. I think the fact that the E's and only the E's automatically go to background tasks is more pronounced with the parts that only have 4 E cores. If I had a 12900K and Handbrake or DxO PureRaw was running solely on the E's when running in the background the performance would probably have been adequate for me and made this non-issue for the most part. If Raptor goes to 16 E's then I think for me this issue goes away.
Similarly for 2+8 mobile the current behavior might actually be preferable. Using my 12700K as an example I find that 4E's are roughly 19% "stronger" than 1 P. So, for ultra mobile 2+8, 8 E's should be more powerful than 2 P's and do a good job with background tasks. Since only 2 P's are available they would need to stay with the foreground tasks. The other mobile configurations might get a little dicey though with this issue...
That is truly horrific behavior for a dedicated hardware assistant with no easy / user friendly way to configure it. Suggesting that every ADL customer is their own system administrator ia also just totally tone deaf, but hey...
Let's see what becomes of this in a generation or two. For example, DLSS too has started out as an unintended blur filter after all.
Let's see what becomes of this in a generation or two. For example, DLSS too has started out as an unintended blur filter after all.
Every let's do a clear install every week guy should switch to win 11, they make the maturing process a lot faster. Anyone who either wants to Install windows ONLY when switching computers or major parts (me), or anyone who actually needs to do work on their machine (me at work), should avoid newer windows versions like boiling lava 😂Supposedly it's fixed.
Microsoft Fixes SSD and HDD Write Speed Bug in Windows 11
An issue that's taken Microsoft several months to finally fix
That is the experience of my last 20 years as a PC enthusiast. Heck, I even held out on Win 7 till last Spring, when I upgraded to 9900K. Same with XP back in the day... I even endured random crashes on 98 till SP1 came out and I could switch off that stupid mouse accel under XP.
I wouldn't be surprised if you will see 6+8 S at some point but most likely locked. Possibly an S BGA model.
Do you know if the latest iso on the microsoft website will have this fix or does it take a few weeks to a month ?
Just run Windows Update and afterwards check the build number. It should be 22000.348.
guidryp
Diamond Member
- Apr 3, 2006
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Hence why it doesn't exist. That kind of confusing overlapp is best avoided when segmenting a product stack.
I have done some extensive investigation of my 12700K with Cinebench R23. I really wanted to get to the bottom of the E core performance. Isolating P's and E's and then testing does not provide the same results as when they are run together. Probably due to overhead sharing and other unknowns. I have decided that in order to separate P and E performance I would run a bunch of tests at various core configuration and clock speeds and fit the data.
So, the main numbers here are how many CB R23 points a Golden Cove core earns per 1GHz, and the same for Gracemont. HT is on with Golden Cove. This is how they each perform when working together, not in isolation.
I think Gracemont and Golden Cove complement each other very well. Golden Cove has a very high IPC while Gracemont is quite productive for the die space it occupies.
There is still work to be done in Windows 11 with the Thread Director though. For one, when using Process Lasso and you try to constrain an application to using some P and E cores it only behaves correctly when the app is in the foreground. I have tested this extensively with Handbrake. 6P's and 4E's setting will occur when Handbrake is on top, but it will always revert to only E's in the background. Basically there is something going on in Windows 11 where E cores are ALWAYS used for background apps. Let me clarify. If I assign 6 P's to Handbrake and no E's then that is what it will use in all priority cases. But if I assign 6 P's and 4 E's it will use 6+4 in the foreground but only the E's in the background.
Remember that beautiful video/demo of the Thread Director Intel showed a while back? Switching cores for various instructions and loads? Yeah, all well and good for the foreground application but not for the background app, which always get switched to the E's. I don't know what good the Thread Director is going because basically the behavior is use the Thread Director and all of it's smarts to run the foreground app as optimally as possible. As for background apps, just throw them all on the E's.
Yes, it does seems like Intel and Microsoft spent a lot of time and effort on foreground tasks, which is also how CPU's are tested by reviewers.
All that is required to fix the situation is for unused compute for the foreground app to be dynamically allocated to background apps. As I've written before why keep 8 P's on photoshop when I'm using them like 5% capacity (bursts) when I'm editing? Some of them should switch to background apps between bursts and then back to PS when needed. Just keep 2 on the foreground app for responsiveness.
Yes, I'm making a big deal out of a relatively minor issue, I know that. For 99% of people doing day-to-day work it won't be noticed. But that's not how we are in this forum. We find something that bugs us and dive into it. I am really enjoying the 12700K, it's fast and furious and churns though anything I throw at it really quickly. It's just annoying while I'm encoding video in the background while typing in Word ONLY the E's are encoding video! That's silly!
So, the main numbers here are how many CB R23 points a Golden Cove core earns per 1GHz, and the same for Gracemont. HT is on with Golden Cove. This is how they each perform when working together, not in isolation.
I think Gracemont and Golden Cove complement each other very well. Golden Cove has a very high IPC while Gracemont is quite productive for the die space it occupies.
There is still work to be done in Windows 11 with the Thread Director though. For one, when using Process Lasso and you try to constrain an application to using some P and E cores it only behaves correctly when the app is in the foreground. I have tested this extensively with Handbrake. 6P's and 4E's setting will occur when Handbrake is on top, but it will always revert to only E's in the background. Basically there is something going on in Windows 11 where E cores are ALWAYS used for background apps. Let me clarify. If I assign 6 P's to Handbrake and no E's then that is what it will use in all priority cases. But if I assign 6 P's and 4 E's it will use 6+4 in the foreground but only the E's in the background.
Remember that beautiful video/demo of the Thread Director Intel showed a while back? Switching cores for various instructions and loads? Yeah, all well and good for the foreground application but not for the background app, which always get switched to the E's. I don't know what good the Thread Director is going because basically the behavior is use the Thread Director and all of it's smarts to run the foreground app as optimally as possible. As for background apps, just throw them all on the E's.
Yes, it does seems like Intel and Microsoft spent a lot of time and effort on foreground tasks, which is also how CPU's are tested by reviewers.
All that is required to fix the situation is for unused compute for the foreground app to be dynamically allocated to background apps. As I've written before why keep 8 P's on photoshop when I'm using them like 5% capacity (bursts) when I'm editing? Some of them should switch to background apps between bursts and then back to PS when needed. Just keep 2 on the foreground app for responsiveness.
Yes, I'm making a big deal out of a relatively minor issue, I know that. For 99% of people doing day-to-day work it won't be noticed. But that's not how we are in this forum. We find something that bugs us and dive into it. I am really enjoying the 12700K, it's fast and furious and churns though anything I throw at it really quickly. It's just annoying while I'm encoding video in the background while typing in Word ONLY the E's are encoding video! That's silly!
| 506 | Cinebench R23 points per 1GHz for a Golden Cove core with HT |
| 242 | Cinebench R23 points per 1GHz for a Gracemont core |
| 109.1% | Golden Cove IPC increase in Cinebench R23 over Gracemont |
| 173.0% | Golden Cove at 4.7GHz increased throughput than Gracemont at 3.6GHz (12700K stock) |
| 46.5% | Gracemont cluster at 3.6GHz increased throughput over 1 Golden Cove core at 4.7GHz |
dullard
Elite Member
- May 21, 2001
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You are correct, but I'd like to add 2 points.
1) I think the vast majority of people actually want their foreground task to have the highest performance. Yes, there are uses like yours where you want an intensive process to go on in the background while you are doing something else in the foreground. But that isn't a highly common use case. When I'm editing videos, my video editor is in the foreground, when I'm editing photos GIMP is in the foreground, when I'm doing heavy software simulations my code is running in the foreground. Your situation is a highly important use case, but just it doesn't apply to most uses. I can see converting videos in the background while I'm browsing the internet in the foreground, and that would be annoying to lose performance. It just isn't that common that I'll need the highest performance in that case.
2) Ultimately, we do want the E cores to be doing the heavy lifting. When there are 16+ E cores, the E cores will best best suited to the situation described in #1. The problem is that Alder Lake just has too few E cores right now. Thus to get better multi-threaded performance, P cores are used. Then you run into the situation of competition with the P cores amongst various programs. With each release of new generations, the problem gets smaller and smaller.
So Microsoft and Intel are left with an edge case that will mostly go away starting with Raptor Lake. I can see why they didn't spend that much time perfecting it.
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I know you have a 12700K, so you can't simulate ADL-P 2+8, but could you try CB R23 with 2C+4c and a limited PL of 15W. I am interested how high It can clock and what is the performance.
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You are absolutely correct in stating that as we move forward and have more E's for the background apps this issue will in effect "go away." I think if I had a 12900K with 8E's that would probably be enough background compute to keep me "fed" with data in my foreground app. Like when I'm DxO PureRaw is processing RAW files to me in PS.
Raptor Lake with 8+16, or even 8+12 would be perfect.
Another simple solution that could be a Windows Control Panel setting would be to be able to "assign" P cores that could "group" with the E's. So for example, E's are currently background and P's foreground (for the most part). Allow two P's to be grouped with the 4 E's. That would still leave me with 6 P's for foreground apps.
Or if the 12900K price drops a bit more at Microcenter I'll simply upgrade and be done with it. It's just hard to wrap my head around the idea of spending $200 for 1 more Gracemont Cluster!
I know, I'm dying to know how Alder Lake is going to do in the ultra mobile space as well. What will the clocks be? Things is desktop boards are just not tuned for ultra lower power operation. CPU package power is 15W idle. We're just not going to know this until Intel spills the beans.
Please wait for 13900K. You spent years on Haswell. You can last another year.
The above is why I believe that Intel should have included an SKU that has 6 P cores and 8 E cores on the desktop, like a 12650k or something. I think that it would have fit your use case perfectly.
DrMrLordX
Lifer
- Apr 27, 2000
- 20,633
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Can you do streaming tests with OBS? Maybe play a lightweight game and then stream it to YouTube Gaming or something? It would be interesting to know if only the E cores are active while the game has the foreground and OBS is running in the background.
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