Question Raptor Lake - Official Thread

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Hulk

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Since we already have the first Raptor Lake leak I'm thinking it should have it's own thread.
What do we know so far?
From Anandtech's Intel Process Roadmap articles from July:

Built on Intel 7 with upgraded FinFET
10-15% PPW (performance-per-watt)
Last non-tiled consumer CPU as Meteor Lake will be tiled

I'm guessing this will be a minor update to ADL with just a few microarchitecture changes to the cores. The larger change will be the new process refinement allowing 8+16 at the top of the stack.

Will it work with current z690 motherboards? If yes then that could be a major selling point for people to move to ADL rather than wait.
 
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Wolverine2349

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Do you have any data for streaming results? Admittedly, one would expect big cores to be better. However, without carefully controlled tests (I haven't seen any), it is just speculation. As for productivity, e cores are not a "bit better" as 13900k (8 + 16) is essentially equal to 7950x overall in productivity tasks. So essentially 16 e cores is equal to 8 AMD big cores.

That said, I am not a fan of big.little on the desktop either, but one cant argue with the data that at least with the current software and gaming landscape it seems to work. The real problem with big.little for Intel is that it should allow higher efficiency, but due to core design and a worse process, AMD is still more efficient.

I agree the hybrid arch sucks and is a gimmick and scheduling issue nightmare when we have been in an SMP world for more than 2 decades.

And not saying e-cores are better for productivity than the P cores. P cores on equal count are tremendously better!! Only that Intel is unable to add more P cores in that the e-cores can be good for productivity apps that scale to infinite threads because Intel can just add so many of them to compensate for lack of more than 8 P cores. They need 16 extra e-cores to compete with an 8 additional P cores from AMD because those e-cores are so inferior. And thats factoring in Intel already has 8 Raptor Cove P cores that have better IPC and more consistent clocks all load than AMD Zen 4 cores. Yet they still need 16 e-cores plus their better 8 P cores to trade blows with AMD in productivity apps. Thus no matter how inferior e-cores are, you add enough of them and apps that can scale to infinite threads/CPU cores, will eventually equal performance top much less far superior P cores in raw compute workloads. Unfortunately though most software does not scale to infinite CPU cores, so they are a waste in that regard.[/quote]
 

ondma

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I agree the hybrid arch sucks and is a gimmick and scheduling issue nightmare when we have been in an SMP world for more than 2 decades.

And not saying e-cores are better for productivity than the P cores. P cores on equal count are tremendously better!! Only that Intel is unable to add more P cores in that the e-cores can be good for productivity apps that scale to infinite threads because Intel can just add so many of them to compensate for lack of more than 8 P cores. They need 16 extra e-cores to compete with an 8 additional P cores from AMD because those e-cores are so inferior. And thats factoring in Intel already has 8 Raptor Cove P cores that have better IPC and more consistent clocks all load than AMD Zen 4 cores. Yet they still need 16 e-cores plus their better 8 P cores to trade blows with AMD in productivity apps. Thus no matter how inferior e-cores are, you add enough of them and apps that can scale to infinite threads/CPU cores, will eventually equal performance top much less far superior P cores in raw compute workloads. Unfortunately though most software does not scale to infinite CPU cores, so they are a waste in that regard.
[/QUOTE]
Dont let the data invalidate your preformed conclusions about the e cores. Bottom line is they work, and those 16 e cores use up a lot less die space than another 8 p cores would. Also, RC and Zen 4 big cores are very close in per core performance, so Intel being competitive in multithreaded benchmarks is no longer due to superior big core performance.

Again, I am not a big fan of big.little, but in the current software environment, despite your claims of "scheduling nightmares" it works. My concern about big.little is that eventually more than 8P cores will be needed, and Intel just seems intent on adding more e cores.

(BTW, you dont have to yell and bold your entire post. I only bolded part of your post to highlight the statement that I was responding to.)
 

Wolverine2349

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Oct 9, 2022
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Dont let the data invalidate your preformed conclusions about the e cores. Bottom line is they work, and those 16 e cores use up a lot less die space than another 8 p cores would. Also, RC and Zen 4 big cores are very close in per core performance, so Intel being competitive in multithreaded benchmarks is no longer due to superior big core performance.

Again, I am not a big fan of big.little, but in the current software environment, despite your claims of "scheduling nightmares" it works. My concern about big.little is that eventually more than 8P cores will be needed, and Intel just seems intent on adding more e cores.

(BTW, you dont have to yell and bold your entire post. I only bolded part of your post to highlight the statement that I was responding to.)
[/QUOTE]


Yes the e-cores are much more die space efficient and they can get more performance out of them than e-cores on their node for apps that can scale to as many cores as you throw at them. Cause they can fit 4 -cores on the die space of 1 P core. And of course the e-cores while much weaker, they are not near weak enough that 4 e-cores provides more performance than 1 P core in apps that can fully parallelize and 100% use as many CPU cores as you can throw at them.

And the scheduling issues are very real especially if you are not on WIN11 which is hot garbage. Though with Process Lasso you can work around the issues in WIN10. Yes it works mostly, but pure SMP scheduling with no big.little is so much easier and better overall.

And yeah there may be need for more P cores than 8 could be very real, but all Intel is doing is adding more and more e-cores which I do not like.

Do you foresee games actually meaningfully benefiting form more than 8 P cores in the next few years assuming no streaming or running heavy background tasks along with the game??
 

Heartbreaker

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Apr 3, 2006
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I agree the hybrid arch sucks and is a gimmick and scheduling issue nightmare when we have been in an SMP world for more than 2 decades.

It really isn't. The E cores don't appear to harm gaming, and enable a big boost in productivity. If you look at the reviews it doesn't really falter in any type of workload.

With Intel, and nearly all ARM SoCs designed like this, it's probably inevitable that AMD will eventually also have multiple classes of cores.
 

Wolverine2349

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Oct 9, 2022
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It really isn't. The E cores don't appear to harm gaming, and enable a big boost in productivity. If you look at the reviews it doesn't really falter in any type of workload.

With Intel, and nearly all ARM SoCs designed like this, it's probably inevitable that AMD will eventually also have multiple classes of cores.


I still do not care for it. For a desktop power user, I want only P cores and fast ones at that. For mobile devices, it makes sense. But not in the desktop space. Plus you need WIN11 to be ensured it works correctly
 
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Kocicak

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I observed how assigning work to the cores works in 13900K and as the thread count increases, it works like this:

1) P cores are getting 1 thread each
2) after P core has 1 thread each, E cores are starting to get work
3) P cores are starting to get work on their second threads only after E cores are highly utilised.

It seems it knows what to do with those cores... I would not worry too much about that.
I wrote this on this topic a while ago.
 
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sze5003

Lifer
Aug 18, 2012
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Picked up a 13900k from microcenter and some 6600mhz G skill DDR5. I'll be running the 3080Ti in this build probably until I can find a msi liquid 4090 or I'll probably wait until the Ti editions are out.

Would love to get it put together and run some benchmarks but I need to wait for Nzxt to ship me an lga 1700 bracket for the x73 AIO.
 

Wolverine2349

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First Linux GB5 Results for 13900K


View attachment 69737


That's impressive. My 5GHz 12700K got like 2052. SO 20% performance uplift. A monster chip disable e-cores and have 8 extremely fast cores on a 13900K with lots more L3 cache.
 

nicalandia

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I don't know, but I always thought that the 13900K and the 7950X were going to Surpass The 5965WX ThreadRipper PRO on MT Workloads, but most of the MT Benchmarks I have seen put The 5965WX at par or slightly ahead.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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I'm not totally sure I really understand the main things differentiating desktop, HEDT, and workstation other than more cores/compute available? Can you give me the really quick points that differentiate them? Also I'm curious as to what you are doing that saturates your PCI-E lanes. To be fully clear, I am not in any way doubting you it's just something I'd like to be brought up to speed on by someone who knows.

Workstation.... basically rebranded Enterprise Class CPU.
These Chips were not overclockable... Intel had the Designation W- in front. 3rd Gen ThreadRipper Pro, would also qualify as a workstation and not HEDT. Has typically double the PCI-E Lanes of regular consumer CPU's.

HEDT - fully overclockable, Enterprise CPU.
Intel had 1 or 2 of them in the lineup. They started as dual socket overclocking server boards, skulltrail 2, eVGA SR-2.
ThreadRipper (non pro) for 1 2 and 3rd gen. 4th Gen Thread Ripper Pro also qualifies as HEDT as they allowed overclocking on 4th gen.
Also has double the PCI-E Lanes of CPU's.

I saturate my lanes because i run 2 video cards, which drives 3 monitors + 1VR Headset. (Rift-S which uses DP port and not HDMI or USB-C.)
3090 is my dedicated gaming card, along with a alienware 38 Ultra wide with the Rift S.
3070ti to drive the others, which incudes 1 32inch 4k, however I will probably replace the other non 4k into a OLED 42inch C2 LG.
I also have 3 x nVME's.

32+12 = 44 which is where i am at max'd out....

I would want more lanes so i can add a 10gbe card onto this system, however current platform doesn't allow for it unless i run 1 of my GPU's in 8x.
Which my OCD will not allow, as i did not get those expensive cards to run them @ 8x.
 
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nicalandia

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Workstation.... basically rebranded Enterprise Class CPU.
These Chips were not overclockable... Intel had the Designation W- in front. 3rd Gen ThreadRipper Pro, would also qualify as a workstation and not HEDT. Has typically double the PCI-E Lanes of regular consumer CPU's.

Have you seen the numbers posted by The 5965WX? Those can be Overclocked to 5 Ghz All Cores too on Water and just trample over the 13900K/7950X.. But they are $2,500 a pop and 1K Mother Board.
 

aigomorla

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Have you seen the numbers posted by The 5965WX? Those can be Overclocked to 5 Ghz All Cores too on Water and just trample over the 13900K/7950X.. But they are $2,500 a pop and 1K Mother Board.

I was.
That was the platform i almost hit the trigger on, until i realized, that will probably be the price of the 5th gen Thread Ripper, or a RaptorLake-S.
And with 5th Gen TRPro and RL-S, i get PCI-E 5.0
So i am playing that dog chases tail game right now, in the infinite loop of lets wait and see.

But originally i was going to get that setup, and roll down my current setup to my server box, but i ended up getting surplus EYPC with 256GB ECC RAM + 7601 + Board for less then HALF what that cpu costs alone, and went that route instead to replace my aging server.
 

Hulk

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Driving by my local Microcenter today and stopped in to see if they had any 13900K's. They did and I impulsively bought one. As you can see by my system specs I have a pretty wimpy power supply. I mean Seasonic makes great a great PS but I value noise so I have a 450W fanless. With mobo settings on stock our Handbrake test or CB R23 MT will immediately overload the PS and cause a restart! Okay time to put this CPU on an electron diet.

I set the long term power level at 200W and short term at 250W with a tau of 10 seconds. CB R23 MT scores 36,500 and ST scores 2150 with these settings. I'm losing a little performance but it's still an upgrade from my 12700K. This is the first time I've ever purchased the flagship CPU. I figured I'd treat myself for once.
 

pakotlar

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Aug 22, 2003
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Driving by my local Microcenter today and stopped in to see if they had any 13900K's. They did and I impulsively bought one. As you can see by my system specs I have a pretty wimpy power supply. I mean Seasonic makes great a great PS but I value noise so I have a 450W fanless. With mobo settings on stock our Handbrake test or CB R23 MT will immediately overload the PS and cause a restart! Okay time to put this CPU on an electron diet.

I set the long term power level at 200W and short term at 250W with a tau of 10 seconds. CB R23 MT scores 36,500 and ST scores 2150 with these settings. I'm losing a little performance but it's still an upgrade from my 12700K. This is the first time I've ever purchased the flagship CPU. I figured I'd treat myself for once.

What’s your temp?
 

aigomorla

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This is the first time I've ever purchased the flagship CPU. I figured I'd treat myself for once.

LoL... its gets very addictive at the top... and Greed's sweet evil whisper becomes more seducing.
Trust me, ive been fighting them demons for a very long time, and always end up losing.
 

Hulk

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I still do not care for it. For a desktop power user, I want only P cores and fast ones at that. For mobile devices, it makes sense. But not in the desktop space. Plus you need WIN11 to be ensured it works correctly

Keep in mind the E cores are there for area efficiency, not power efficiency. If you don't want them in your desktop then you wouldn't want them in your mobile device. The P's when clocked down I believe are more efficient than the E's. It's just that when it comes to Intel's bottom line it's cheaper for them to produce a chip with a higher performance rating with E and P's rather than P's alone because of the E's area efficiency. After all they're not paying for the additional electricity, we are!
 

AdamK47

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
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Driving by my local Microcenter today and stopped in to see if they had any 13900K's. They did and I impulsively bought one. As you can see by my system specs I have a pretty wimpy power supply. I mean Seasonic makes great a great PS but I value noise so I have a 450W fanless. With mobo settings on stock our Handbrake test or CB R23 MT will immediately overload the PS and cause a restart! Okay time to put this CPU on an electron diet.

I set the long term power level at 200W and short term at 250W with a tau of 10 seconds. CB R23 MT scores 36,500 and ST scores 2150 with these settings. I'm losing a little performance but it's still an upgrade from my 12700K. This is the first time I've ever purchased the flagship CPU. I figured I'd treat myself for once.
I checked the stock online for the Columbus Micro Center. At launch it showed 25+ for the 13900K. Today they have none. Still 25+ for the 7950X. Could be that stores got much more Zen 4 compared to Raptor Lake.
 

poke01

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Keep in mind the E cores are there for area efficiency, not power efficiency. If you don't want them in your desktop then you wouldn't want them in your mobile device. The P's when clocked down I believe are more efficient than the E's. It's just that when it comes to Intel's bottom line it's cheaper for them to produce a chip with a higher performance rating with E and P's rather than P's alone because of the E's area efficiency. After all they're not paying for the additional electricity, we are!
So the reason Intel's e cores exist is because their P cores are very big compared to AMD and Intel?
 

itsmydamnation

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I checked the stock online for the Columbus Micro Center. At launch it showed 25+ for the 13900K. Today they have none. Still 25+ for the 7950X. Could be that stores got much more Zen 4 compared to Raptor Lake.
i wouldn't be surprised if the binning for the 13900K is as much lower % of usable dies vs 7950 , Zen4 has a 350mhz spread between 7600x and 7950x and intel has 700mhz between 13600k and 13900k.
 

TheELF

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Dec 22, 2012
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So the reason Intel's e cores exist is because their P cores are very big compared to AMD and Intel?
Yes p-cores are very big for both intel and amd, and amd has to pay for 16 of the big ones for one CPU while intel only has to use 8 of them and fills up the rest with much smaller and thus much cheaper cores.

If you are not running a server but instead run a big amount of multitasking you will have a lot of things running that only need small amounts of compute and a lot of things that need a lot of compute, so it's also more efficient to run one category on the e-cores and the other one on the p-cores, it will take some time for the thread director to be improved enough for this to work well enough but it will be worth it in the end.

At some time we only had single core CPUs and we had to deal with windows issues for a long time until it could handle dual cores well enough, this is the same thing.