Thursday, October 21st 2021
Intel Alder Lake Doesn't Look Like an Overclockers Dream
Another day, another Intel Alder Lake leak, although this time it seems to be the same Core i9-12900K retail CPU that is being tested in China. Some additional details have been provided on its ability to overclock and although it's perfectly possible to overclock these upcoming CPUs from Intel, it's going to be hard to cool them, even for very small gains in clock speeds.
An all core P-core overclock, with the E-cores at default requires quite the Voltage bump as well, since according to the leaked information, going from 4.9 GHz and a power draw of 233 Watts, with a CPU Voltage of 1.275 V to 5.2 GHz, sees a jump of almost 100 Watts. The CPU Voltage also has to be bumped to 1.38 V in the sample used. However, pushing the CPU to 5.3 GHz requires 1.44 V and pushes the CPU power to a massive 400 W, which is high-end GPU territory. That said, we're hearing that not all CPUs need this high Voltage to hit 5.2 GHz, although we also understand that 5.3 GHz is not a speed that will be easily attained. Apparently the best way to get the most performance out of these news CPUs will be to tune the turbo settings, rather than to try and overclock them.
Source:
@OneRaichu
An all core P-core overclock, with the E-cores at default requires quite the Voltage bump as well, since according to the leaked information, going from 4.9 GHz and a power draw of 233 Watts, with a CPU Voltage of 1.275 V to 5.2 GHz, sees a jump of almost 100 Watts. The CPU Voltage also has to be bumped to 1.38 V in the sample used. However, pushing the CPU to 5.3 GHz requires 1.44 V and pushes the CPU power to a massive 400 W, which is high-end GPU territory. That said, we're hearing that not all CPUs need this high Voltage to hit 5.2 GHz, although we also understand that 5.3 GHz is not a speed that will be easily attained. Apparently the best way to get the most performance out of these news CPUs will be to tune the turbo settings, rather than to try and overclock them.
62 Comments on Intel Alder Lake Doesn't Look Like an Overclockers Dream
When i see News like this on 300W only in the CPU it really shocks me!
Plus I´m not bored with hardware, I´m just bored with hardware discussions nowadays. You know, discussions like this one or seeing ppl on forums using 100 watts more on their CPUs/GPUs for 4 fps more, and PBO with 1,5v for 1% improvement. Or people judging a CPU by its AIDA64 FPU + max possible almost unstable super overclock power consumption, etc. It´s just boring man, and this kind of news only feeds that poor mentality
That may be, but your attitude said otherwise. Feel free to discuss away, I am all for it, but don't start calling people shills and the like just because they chose one company over another. That isn't directed entirely at you btw, so don't feel singled out. I will be more choosey with my words the next time, today I am a bit tired.. late night.
There is nothing wrong with this idea in that it gives the user the most possible performance out the the hardware within its design limits. However, that means that peak power consumption needs to be taken into account. It’s becoming a key differentiator in how these companies are reaching peak performance with their products. If one company requires 400W to outperform a competitor, that has to come into account when you are specing your parts for a system build. If you don’t plan to need this performance, then it’s a lot of expense for nothing. Energy isn’t getting cheaper or more abundant. It’s getting more scarce and more expensive. I’m honestly a little bit surprised we are seeing this approach to achieve more performance. I guess the assumption is most folks don’t buy the highest end products.
Ppl used to make a big deal about Ryzen 5000 power consumption compared to Intel, but then if you play a game a compare a 10700k vs 5800x power usage, you will see like 15w-20w more on the Intel side, while you will see 150w more on Aida64. Useless, irrelevant.
Point being even under clocked as mine always are, flat out 24/7 requires a chip that sips(100watt max) or the price of a f£#@&£ GPU spending on cooling, as I have.
And trust me don't go cheap unless your a casual gamer.
Incidentally my entire system uses about 400watts to fold and crunch , down clocked a bit but GPU/CPU loaded up.
There are wayyy better options for that kind of stuff.
So, I guess there's a way around it, especially for gamers.....
Other then that; the above does'nt suprise me. Intels TDP is'nt the TDP your getting at AMD. The PL stages is what make these CPU's so damn hungry. And on top of that the small node pretty much makes it very hard to cool. Lapping, liquid metal, high end watercooler for example, thats the region you need to start looking for if you want marginal improvements over stock. I mean we came from era's where your 300Mhz CPU could be oveclocked to 450Mhz. Or your Athlon 600Mhz just a rebranded 750Mhz was. Or the FX from 3.2Ghz up to 5Ghz if your cooling and board allowed it.
Now it's just ramp up large cooling and let the chip decide whats best for it while keeping silicon health in place. This is how AMD boost works pretty much. Keep it constant under 60 degrees and that boost will be in there a life time.Well, in order to get passed 4.4Ghz ~ 4.5Ghz your board had to support the current the chip needed, and be free of any AMD pre-determined overcurrent limits. If i'm correct it was 25A on the 12V line or so. Higher end boards could yield all the way up to 35 to 40 amps or so. The whole FX line where great overclockers. Not just core-clock wise but also the CPU/NB which was responsible for the L3 Cache / speed as well. That is something most reviewers never really highlighted, but that was the money shot in relation of overclocking in cranking those minimum FPS in games up.
FX's where just badly timed really in a era where single core still had the crown in applications. You can tell because the FX still holds to this day in various games while running a higher end graphics card.
4.4 was without a Vcore increase. I needed more cooling before I even felt like giving it a run with x.264 2-pass encode. I think I had the Sabertooth 990 FX R 2.0 set to aggressive VRM settings.
Just got home from work, here's my old ZM-MFC3. Still working (barelly), 3 of the 4 temp sensors are dead. 39ºC on the Exaust. CPU Die at 51°C with lightwork and 78ºC Full load.