Tuesday, July 20th 2021
Intel Core i9-12900K Allegedly Beats AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at Cinebench R20
With qualification samples of the upcoming Intel Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake-S" processors and companion Socket LGA1700 motherboards hitting the black-market, expect a deluge of benchmarks on social media. One such that stands out makes a fascinating claim that the i9-12900K beats AMD's current flagship Ryzen 9 5950X processor at Cinebench R20, which has been AMD's favorite multi-threaded benchmark. At stock speeds, with liquid cooling, the i9-12900K allegedly scores 810 points in the single-threaded test, and 11600 points in multi-threaded.
To put these numbers into perspective, a retail Ryzen 9 5950X scores 641 points in the single-threaded test, and 10234 points in multi-threaded, in our own testing. The i9-12900K is technically a 16-core processor, just like the 5950X, but half its cores are low-power "Gracemont." The "Alder Lake-S" chip appears to be making up ground on the single-threaded performance of the "Golden Cove" P-core, that's a whopping 25% higher than the "Zen 3" core on the 5950X. This is aided not just by higher IPC, but also the max boost frequency of 5.30 GHz for 1~2 cores, and 5.00 GHz "all-core" boost (for the P-cores).Given the multi-threaded scores, it's safe to assume that either Intel or Microsoft has figured out a way to leverage the P-cores and E-cores simultaneously in peak multi-threaded workloads. This is possible when both the "Golden Cove" and "Gracemont" cores have the ISA capability needed by the workload, which in case of Cinebench R20, is AVX. "Gracemont" is Intel's first low-power core to support AVX, AVX2, and AVX-VNNI instruction sets. "Golden Cove" features a more lavish ISA that includes AVX-512 (select client-relevant instructions).
Sources:
OneRaichu (Twitter), VideoCardz
To put these numbers into perspective, a retail Ryzen 9 5950X scores 641 points in the single-threaded test, and 10234 points in multi-threaded, in our own testing. The i9-12900K is technically a 16-core processor, just like the 5950X, but half its cores are low-power "Gracemont." The "Alder Lake-S" chip appears to be making up ground on the single-threaded performance of the "Golden Cove" P-core, that's a whopping 25% higher than the "Zen 3" core on the 5950X. This is aided not just by higher IPC, but also the max boost frequency of 5.30 GHz for 1~2 cores, and 5.00 GHz "all-core" boost (for the P-cores).Given the multi-threaded scores, it's safe to assume that either Intel or Microsoft has figured out a way to leverage the P-cores and E-cores simultaneously in peak multi-threaded workloads. This is possible when both the "Golden Cove" and "Gracemont" cores have the ISA capability needed by the workload, which in case of Cinebench R20, is AVX. "Gracemont" is Intel's first low-power core to support AVX, AVX2, and AVX-VNNI instruction sets. "Golden Cove" features a more lavish ISA that includes AVX-512 (select client-relevant instructions).
155 Comments on Intel Core i9-12900K Allegedly Beats AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at Cinebench R20
U.S. should not have to depend on other countries for this.
In addition to CPUs (and GPUs) that they are working on, similarly to AMD:
- Most notably, they are competing with semiconductor foundries like TSMC ($4B R&D in 2020 and increasing fast) and Samsung (no idea how much foundry spends but Samsung Electronics total is $18.9B).
- They are competing in storage with XPoint/Optane and last year still included NAND R&D before selling it to SK Hynix. For reference, both SK Hynix and Intel's old partner Micron spent $2.6B in 2020.
- Intel is also major player in FPGA. AMD joined in by buying Xilinx in 2020, Xilinx R&D spending was $0.7B a couple years ago. The other big player is Microchip Technologies with R&D spending above $0.8B in 2020.
- Intel is pretty big in NICs and some network solutions, trying to get into IoT, researching a bunch of new ideas, for example silicon photonics comes to mind which they should be one of the leaders in plus whole bunch of other smaller areas that do add up. Scenario 3. Intel continues with their current i9 lineup pricing - i9-9900K and i9-10900K were $500, i9-119000K is €550 - or does a modest increase and undercuts 5950X in price :) Rumors say Alder Lake PL2 is at 228W.
Btw, for comparison 5950X TDP is 105W, power limit is at 140W. Latest rumors of the next lineup (either Zen3 refresh or Zen4) include 120W and 170W TDP (assuming power management continues the same way as Zen2 and Zen3 based desktop CPUs that would mean power limits at 160W and 230W respectively).
I see that lazy argument all the time comparing R&D budgets, it's like comparing a grape to a fruit salad.
Since the little Gracemont cores are Atom class,
Judging by current gen Atom, the TDP of those as a discrete CPU should be ~10W for 4 cores
Bump that to 8 cores ~20W
Double that amount for a desktop application ~40W
Now 228 - 40 = 188 , 188 / 8 = 23.5
So 23.5W per BIG core within a N7FF size die....
Dunno how Intel is gonna handle that heat.
Intel will handle it the way they always do = cooler not included lol
Just use that chiller hidden under a table in the W-3175X event, it would be fine.
Mehhh . . .
Intel doesn't make CPUs either.
Intel does not make the capacitors used within their CPU package.
Intel did not mine their own silicon / copper from the ground, nor brew all the chemicals used in the fab.
Your statement is totally invalid (by your own standard) as you'd be including all the work done at the silicon wafer manufacturer and all the chemical plants which are, obviously NOT own by Intel.
Please understand under some basic thermodynamics
A CPU has no physical work done
so 99.99% of energy going in will turn into heat (rest of it will turn into some form of radiation, which also turn into heat eventually).
So 228W goes in
227.99999W of heat goes out.
Maybe your magical "cobalt technology" could somehow send the excessive energy into the 5th dimension ?
How are you "Don't know how much it turns into heat" ?
Please
Give us an answer other than 100% (or 99.99% if you wanna be precise)
but I suppose if you whant to find out you can take a copper wire 20nm in diameter and transfer power through it, then do the same with cobalt and run some tests :)
No matter you CPU is made of copper / gold / cobalt , or harry potter magic.
As long as it does not have any physical work done during the process.
All of the energy it "consumes" are turning to heat , 99.99%
You don't have to count how many % of it is made of copper or anything.
When it consumes 228W, it gives 227.99999W of heat.
If you can't get the basics right, rest of it are meaningless.
Secondly, we dont know if this is legit or not, and we certainly do not know all of the context in which these numbers were achieved.
Alder Lake absolutely should be faster than a year old Zen 3 and more efficient to boot, its on a denser, more advanced node, anything less would be a disaster.
Ill wait
Most likely it will be some kind of intel trickery whether that is avx512 or higher or something else I just can't see it being consistently double rocket lake !
But we shall wait and see !
Whether Intel actually ended up doing that is not clear. They seemed to be pretty determined but that was at the earlier stages of the 10nm disaster. The suspicion that this cobalt switch may have played a significant part in the failure is not far fetched either - cobalt has not been widely used in this application and the rumors about early Intel 10nm failures were talking about both cobalt and brittle metal lines, sometimes making the connection between the two. Yes. But when you make "wires" out of a material that is a better conductor, you can get by with running less voltage through it. Rocket Lake has only 8 cores. Alder Lake has 8 cores that are 25-30% faster plus 8 cores that are small but pretty unknown in what they are able to do in Cinebench. The second thing is power. Rocket Lake throttles like crazy when power limit is set to TDP and does not run at all that high of a frequency with the 228W PL2. If Alder lake on that 10nm can keep the power something like 30% lower, that gives a bunch of headroom to run the chip faster.
8 cores 16 threads with an "additional 8 cores low quality or not" so seems like we're seeing a 16 core 16 thread chip so multi would be higher if all were working on that r20 render.