Wednesday, October 20th 2021

Retail Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K Pictured
Here are some of the clearest shots of retail (non-ES) production versions of the upcoming Intel Core i9-12900K and i5-12600K "Alder Lake-S" desktop processors. Posted to the web by "DDAA117" on Chinese social media Zhihu, the pictures reveal the long and slender packages, with their S-spec codes: SRL4H for the i9-12900K and SRL4T for the i5-12600K. Based on what we know from older reports, the i9-12900K maxes out the "Alder Lake-S" silicon, featuring all 8 P-cores, and 8 E-cores. The i5-12600K, on the other hand, features 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores. Other areas of segmentation between the two include clock speeds, and possibly boost algorithms. The chips will be open to pre-orders from October 27, and generally available from November 4.
Source:
HXL (Twitter)
32 Comments on Retail Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K Pictured
I can understand why Alder Lake Laptop has - 8 E cores cuz battery. But why does desktop Alder Lake / Alder Lake P have 8 E cores?
Now that I've thought more about it, the explanation is rather simple:
i9 11900K - 8 cores
Ryzen 5950X - 16 cores
i9 12900K - 16 cores*
*8 high perf cores + 8 low perf cores
Yay for more marketing confusion!
Just think of the MASSIVE amounts of people out there not turning their PC's off when they leave it for a bit, heck every workplace has their PC's running from 8 to 5 because they constandly have to half work with them.
E cores doing all the needed background tasks instead of P cores >COULD< save a substantial amount of energy and with the world how it is and where its going....that is meaningful, so I am all for it myself.... IF it works.
+4 E-Cores would unlikely justify the price hike.
At least that's my understanding.
I used an old Atom (J1900, Bay Trail) for network/semi-office machine for a long while. Atoms are enough for a quote lot of use cases.
Also, Atom cores are small. Really small. Lakefield die shots can be found in internet - 4 Tremont cores almost fit in the same space as 1 Sunny Cove Core.
With Alder Lake the exact sizes will change somewhat with Gracemont being quite a lot improved from architecture standpoint - although that applies to Golden Cove as well so we will have to wait and see. Intel Alder Lake block drawings have been showing the cores roughly in the same 1 to 4 ratio, so it should still be close enough.
www.anandtech.com/show/15877/intel-hybrid-cpu-lakefield-all-you-need-to-know/3
:laugh:
They need to satisfied all kind of users and their expectations(high single core boost, high all core performance, acceptable power consumption) and also marketing department :D:kookoo:. Therefor we see alder lake as a hybrid architecture, but I guess for desktop it will be only tempoprary solution, because performance cores when idle consume ridiculous small amount of energy and when 100% they can complete task very quick. In desktop PC saving few watts does not make sense.
Actually, when it comes to current chiplet designs monolothic should be the preferred way. Maybe 3D Cache changes that equation but we'll have to wait and see.
Lets not try to think E cores are sensible for desktop idling. P cores clock down too as they have for years. The real purpose on desktop is... marketing.
The actual purpose of E cores beyond desktop use cases is that improve mobile chips and battery life. Marginally. And, again, Marketing.
In real life scenarios this whole gen is trying real hard to make it look like its somehow achieving a Zen like progression when its really not - full blast P Cores are going to require the same water chiller plus nuclear plant as before and will royally exceed rated TDP.
E cores are not even present in half the desktop stack.
It is going to be interesting in any case.
Atleast from the leaks it seems like a succesful approach. Intel increased multicore performance by 60-70% in a single generation. I doubt they could've reached 5950x MC performance wihout E-cores. There's no way 2 P-cores would outperform 8 E-cores. Most likely AMD will do the same thing in the future as it's the most efficient way to increase multicore performance. AMD can just delay it because their cores are much better in terms of performance/W than Intel's cores.
Yeah, in mainstream AL(if it had only P cores) will beat ryzen 5800x. But that probably will be not enough for 5900x and as we saw from leaks, it will definitely not beat 5950x. Therefor we see E-cores as addition.
Beat in my words mean sum of (what perf. + at what consumption + for what price).
So for the intel future chiplet design will be necessary to beat AMD 2/3/4 chiplet designs on one die, otherwise one of the metrics in the sum I mentioned will definitelly fail.
Guys, if the improvements were that significant, Intel and AMD would have done it long before ARM. They are engineering firms. Why would they not use an idea if it made engineering sense? Do you think AMD and Intel like that their laptops don't have better battery life?
My 10500H consumes about 2 watt at idle according to ThrottleStop. If it had 8 E cores I won't be saving more than a watt of power at best.
You guys seem to misunderstand why Apple is kicking so much butt with M1. Their big cores are just that ridiculously power efficient. They consume 50+% less power for the same level of performance.
Think about it, M1 Pro/Max have only 2 E cores, yet the new Macbooks claim 17/21 hour battery life.
Frankly this is why I wished Apple that M1 Pro/Max had only 8 P cores instead of 8 P + 2 E cores. Have a fair fight with the 11980HKs and 5980HSs of the world and let the reviewers/journalists decide who is more powerful and energy efficient.