Ryzen Owners: Is Alder Lake tempting enough to switch to Intel?

[lexluthermiester]

I'll say the 12900k is

Why, because it's a power-hog? Being a power-hog does not make something garbage, especially if it is the top performer, which the 12900k is. Just look at the RTX3090 and 6900XT.

You want first class, grade A power-hog garbage? Look no further than the FX-9590. That was 220w stock, often getting into the 300w+ range under heavy load and still couldn't compete with with Intel's top offerings of the time.

AMD’s 5 GHz Turbo CPU in Retail: The FX-9590 and ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Review

www.anandtech.com

AMD’s 5 GHz Turbo CPU in Retail: The FX-9590 and ASRock 990FX Extreme9 Review

www.anandtech.com

The 12900k is the King of performance ATM. You can call it a power-hog all day long and no one can argue against that with any merit. But to call it garbage is objectively and patently false.

The multi threaded performance between a 5950x and a 12900k is very competitive at trading blows...

As has been said elsewhere, if users are on Zen3, Alder Lake is not going to be a compelling move. But for anyone on Zen1 or Zen2, the move is compelling for certain and it would be up to the individual user to decide if it would be right for them.

 

[Melvis]

Sorry mate, AMD has yet to officially confirm the VCache models for AM4. Don't count on it.

They have actually it was confirmed weeks ago like mama said, you must of missed that video and thread?

As has been said elsewhere, if users are on Zen3, Alder Lake is not going to be a compelling move. But for anyone on Zen1 or Zen2, the move is compelling for certain and it would be up to the individual user to decide if it would be right for them.

No your missing the point its not Zen 3 its the AM4 platform, if your on a AM4 Motherboard that supports up to Zen 3(and possibly higher) then there is no reason to go to a whole new platform at all, period! Regardless if your on Zen 1 or 2, its all about the platform, not the CPU itself.

 

[Chrispy_]

here's some reasons...

- all stuff open, ide's running, vm dev env running, 50+ tabs in browser windows and steam in the background

It's fast... really fast. And cool. And cheap. I haven't even turned off core parking yet.

I don't want to snub what is obviously one of the fastest consumer PCs you can buy right now, but all of those things are trivial for an old, cheap 3700X too.
No, the 3700X wouldn't be as fast, but the seamlessness of the experience is less about how fast each core is and (within reason) how many threads your CPU+OS scheduler can juggle at a time.

I wouldn't recommend buying a 3700X at this point in time over Alder Lake, but an older 3700X is only 5-10% slower than Alder Lake for gaming and the worst-case is something like Cinebench R23 Multi where the 3700X is 25% slower. You'd maybe be able to notice that 25% but I doubt it would be worth the costly upgrade to a new CPU/MB/DDR5 kit.

IMO you buy Alder Lake if you have a burning itch to be at the cutting edge, no matter the cost or the teething troubles, or you have an older Skylake-era build that's lacking cores, IPC, or both.

 

[phanbuey]

I wouldn't recommend buying a 3700X at this point in time over Alder Lake, but an older 3700X is only 5-10% slower than Alder Lake for gaming and the worst-case is something like Cinebench R23 Multi where the 3700X is 25% slower. You'd maybe be able to notice that 25% but I doubt it would be worth the costly upgrade to a new CPU/MB/DDR5 kit.

5-10% slower than alder lake for gaming maybe in the best case -- Alder lake is closer to 50% faster for gaming in the worst case though, and the 3xxx series currently bottlenecks midrange nVidia GPUs at 1440P.

Worst case BF 2042 AI botmatch 128 players:

So I mean yeah, if your use case you don't want/need an upgrade from 3xxx zen then it makes no sense to upgrade. But if you're sitting on like a 1700x/2700x on B350 and a 3070, then either a used B550/B450 and a 56/5800x or a faster alder lake setup will serve you well. Reuse the old DDR4 memory (3200 Gear 1 is amazing performance still) and grab AL, or grab used Zen3 parts for even less are both good ways to go.

The question is... is AL better than used Zen 3 - that I'm not sure there is a right answer to. The price/performance is there but all the AL parts are expensive right now.

 

[Deleted member 215115]

5-10% slower than alder lake for gaming maybe in the best case -- Alder lake is closer to 50% faster for gaming in the worst case though, and the 3xxx series currently bottlenecks midrange nVidia GPUs at 1440P.


Worst case BF 2042 AI botmatch 128 players


So I mean yeah, if your use case you don't want/need an upgrade then it makes no sense to upgrade. But if you're sitting on like a 1700x/2700x on B350 and a 3070, then either a used B550/B450 and a 56/5800x or alder lake will serve you well. Reuse the old DDR4 memory (3200 Gear 1 is amazing performance still) and grab AL, or grab used Zen3 parts for even less are both good ways to go.

I agree, though I think it would make more sense for older Zen owners to just swap their old CPU for a Zen 3 since their motherboards probably support it. If they don't, then sure, Alder Lake is an option since they'd need a new motherboard anyway.

I just checked US prices and Alder Lake costs about the same as Zen 3. In Europe, Alder Lake is a bit cheaper. Not bad at all.

 

[ERazer]

not for me

Even if I'm looking to upgrade it not worth being beta tester for Intel and MS (win11), prolly my age but waste of time to mess with it.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

If you have the cooling and don't really want to tinker too much the 12700K is awesome, if you want a fun chip to play with 12600K seems much more OCable - OC'd 3 12600K's so far, and 2 12700Ks and... man what a difference - each 12600K had no issues hitting 5.1-5.3 getting a 12700K above 5.0 is a bit like seeing how much energy one can pump out of Chrenobyl. Just leave it alone and pump ring and ram, maybe go all core on the boost or up the boost multiplier - still the stock 12700k is a monster.

The 12600Ks remind me of the E8500's a bit - 25%-35% uplift in performance from a full (core/ring/ram) OC is pretty sweet.

The more I play with CPUs the more I lean towards the 5600x/8700k/12600k series. The midrange parts just seem to run better from both companies.

And on topic if you own any Ryzen from the last two years move along, nothing to see here.

You and lex are turning this into a brand war thread, it isn't one , a simple question got asked TO RYZEN OWNER's how's about you let other opinions be known without constant Intel pedaling.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Well i am being gifted a I7 12700K and a z690-A wifi D4 board, so i see no reason not to go for it. Sure i could probably stick a 56/5800 in my B450 board, but i see no reason to when i can have a free AL upgrade, and sell my 2600x/b450 pro s stuff for probably £250?

 

[phanbuey]

And on topic if you own any Ryzen from the last two years move along, nothing to see here.

You and lex are turning this into a brand war thread, it isn't one , a simple question got asked TO RYZEN OWNER's how's about you let other opinions be known without constant Intel pedaling.

I am a ryzen owner. Well, was.

How am I turning this into a brand war exactly? How about you not accuse people and try to mom the thread, mom?

 

[Psychoholic]

I switched from a 10850K to the 12900K... and its been flawless, zero issues and actually runs really cool despite reviews.

I can also say my old 3900X system is pretty rock solid too though.. Still running now as a server, it hasn't been rebooted in 60 days.

I mainly switched because i'm a geek and love new tech (the 3900X was also a release day/week purchase) but if you're on a 3000 or 5000 series ryzen, i don't see why the average person should upgrade.

 

[Chrispy_]

5-10% slower than alder lake for gaming maybe in the best case -- Alder lake is closer to 50% faster for gaming in the worst case though, and the 3xxx series currently bottlenecks midrange nVidia GPUs at 1440P.

As true as that may be, that's the unrealistic benchmarking requirement of testing all/unlikely combinations. Realistically Alder Lake absolutely smokes old Zen2 by an embarrassing margin at 720p low settings with a 3090 - but again, nobody actually games like that - it's merely an academic test in CPU benchmarking to demonstrate where the differences potentially lie. If you aren't actually GPU limited in your gaming then you either need to upgrade your monitor to stop wasting your expensive GPU, or you need to turn your settings up and enjoy the eye candy you've already paid for.

Nobody sensible is going to be buying a $1200-3300 GPU in the current climate to bottleneck it by an old CPU - the 3700X for example is worth about five times less than even a vanilla RTX 3070.
My assumption (the obvious one) is that if you have a 2019 CPU you likely have a 2019 GPU too, and if you were willing to pay 2021's 3-4x MSRP for a GPU, buying the latest CPU platform is basically a negligible cost, AKA chump change.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I am a ryzen owner. Well, was.

How am I turning this into a brand war exactly? How about you not accuse people and try to mom the thread, mom?

By continuously arguing against other people's opinions on why they won't swap.

Does it matter?!.

Is there other thread's with that already?

What's the question of the OP again?

Mom, it's f£#@&g boring reading the same shit in five thread's is all but do go on I'll choose not to read them but lots to skip here.

Oh and I am not hating on or trying to belittle you so chill with the personal shit

 

[lexluthermiester]

They have actually it was confirmed weeks ago like mama said, you must of missed that video and thread?

That I was unaware of, got a link?

if your on a AM4 Motherboard that supports up to Zen 3(and possibly higher) then there is no reason to go to a whole new platform at all, period!

That is what I've been saying, almost verbatim.

 

[phanbuey]

By continuously arguing against other people's opinions on why they won't swap.

I posted my reason and then responded to two people commenting on that post. That's not "continuously arguing against people's opinions of why they won't swap" or "trying to start a brand war". Don't make things up pls.

 

[mama]

That I was unaware of, got a link?


That is what I've been saying, almost verbatim.

Here you go. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?.../videos/search?q=5+years+of+ryzen&FORM=HDRSC3

 

[Awwwyeahhhbaby]

Honestly, for most people the gains are minimal in many areas. I'm not upgrading, simply cannot justify the price of new mobo, chip and maybe memory for a couple percent gain in my use scenario. But I'm sure someone can justify the move because there are some applications where it's Alder Lake is an absolute beast. I'll probably skip AMD's 3d cache refresh too unless it's epic and compatible with my hardware, may be better to just wait for the 6000 series. I'm more excited for the Radeon 7000s though, need more horsepower for higher res gaming and my CPU isn't the true bottleneck there anyway.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Here you go. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=5+years+of+ryzen&&view=detail&mid=46A92B5210FDD59C0ED446A92B5210FDD59C0ED4&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=/videos/search?q=5+years+of+ryzen&FORM=HDRSC3

Perhaps I wasn't specific enough. When I asked for a link, I was asking for one that acts as a citation for the claim that AMD has stated that they will be bringing VCache CPU's to AM4. I ask not because I don't know how to use a search engine but because I looked and couldn't find anything from AMD which specifically states that VCache CPU's are coming to socket AM4.

 

[Kovoet]

Went to AMD for the first time ever with this 5900 and going to stick with it for a while as I'm quite enjoying it and it's not to slow either in games

 

[Deleted member 24505]

i think if anyone got offered a free i7 AL and Strix board they would take it, hence why i am. If not i was just going to get a 5600x. Now i will sell my old stuff and use the cash towards a better GPU.

There's no denying AL is pretty good, fair it has foibles but it's not like Ryzen didn't when it appeared. A few drivers updates, and bios updates and it will settle down as Ryzen did i'm sure.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Well i am being gifted a I7 12700K and a z690-A wifi D4 board, so i see no reason not to go for it.

i think if anyone got offered a free i7 AL and Strix board they would take it, hence why i am.

Nice! Score!

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Nice! Score!

A gift from a very good friend.

 

[dragontamer5788]

There's no denying AL is pretty good, fair it has foibles but it's not like Ryzen didn't when it appeared. A few drivers updates, and bios updates and it will settle down as Ryzen did i'm sure.

I think that's a good way to put it. This power-consumption thing is a problem for sure, but it proves that shoving a bunch of watts into Gracemont cores does work, and that Windows11 can schedule big.LITTLE style in practical applications. There's more work to be done, but as a 1st gen product of a revolutionary design change, its pretty good. Its better than last generation for sure. Here's to hoping that Intel adds their biggest advantage to the chip soon: AVX512.

Maybe we'll figure out the proper mix of performance vs efficiency cores too. It very well could be that 4-performance cores + 32-efficiency cores would be a better tradeoff, for example.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I think that's a good way to put it. This power-consumption thing is a problem for sure, but it proves that shoving a bunch of watts into Gracemont cores does work, and that Windows11 can schedule big.LITTLE style in practical applications. There's more work to be done, but as a 1st gen product of a revolutionary design change, its pretty good. Its better than last generation for sure. Here's to hoping that Intel adds their biggest advantage to the chip soon: AVX512.

Maybe we'll figure out the proper mix of performance vs efficiency cores too. It very well could be that 4-performance cores + 32-efficiency cores would be a better tradeoff, for example.

I could very well end up running it with E cores disabled. Also i have a custom loop ready to cool it, so i am not so fussed about keeping it cool.

 

[Why_Me]

I have a 5800x and I am not spending 1000 dollars for ddr5 memory + Z690 motherboard + 12700k for 5 to 10% increase.
If AMD does things right AM5 will be amazing.

If only they had DDR4 boards for Alder Lake.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I could very well end up running it with E cores disabled. Also i have a custom loop ready to cool it, so i am not so fussed about keeping it cool.

There's the rumored 6P+0E die that might be launching soon?

Rather than buying E-cores and then not using it... maybe it makes more sense to just not buy E-cores in the first place?