My opinion on Alder Lake is don't be fooled, this is yet another 8 core CPU from Intel. Granted the low power cores will help run simple background tasks leaving the powerful cores to tackle the hard stuff more freely, so absolutely it will be faster than simply 8 Cyprus Cove cores just on their own but by how much is a very tough call. I guess if Alder Lake has a big performance lead in single thread over Zen 3 then an 8+8 CPU would make for a great gaming chip, but how it will do against Zen 3+ and Zen 4 is another story.
But it's the other use case scenarios that are very thread heavy where I see Intel losing very badly. I don't buy into the need for low power / low heat cores when talking about desktop CPUs, I'm sure the big.LITTLE design will work well for laptops and other highly power sensitive devices but not mains powered, high performance desktop machines. Modern CPUs can already down-clock and under-volt significantly when not in use or not being pushed hard so I just don't see how these little cores are going to be all that useful for anything really.
My reasoning for why I believe big.LITTLE designs won't compete performance wise much past the number of big cores is seen in Apple's M1 benchmarks. This amazing chip has fantastic single thread performance, up there with the very best chips on the market today and easily beating one of AMD's current top mobile chips the 4900HS (I know 5000's are almost here) but when it comes to multi threading the 4900HS totally destroys the M1 chip because the M1 is only a 4+4 chip and the 4900HS is a real 8 core chip. So Intel can bring 8+8 but I am pretty sure 5900X will be faster in work loads that use 12 threads or more, then we have the 6000 refresh which will only increase this gap and then Zen 4 will like make a 8 core CPU look very much entry level.
I think we all know the real reason Intel can't produce much more than 8 big cores in the mainstream and that is because of the aging ringbus design they are still using. Clearly AMD caught them by surprise with how quickly they caught up and then how far they have pulled away. Intel simply hasn't had the time nor FAB performance to react yet. I dare say if everything was running smoothly for Intel we would already be well into 7nm Meteor Lake chips right now and would be wondering if Zen 4 might close the gap to Intel in 2022. But that is not the situation and in my opinion Intel still needs to realise this, they need to price their products better to reflect they are only mid-range now and they desperately need to move to or licence TSMC's nodes if at all possible. I know the rumours are that Intel is meant to be using TSMC for 5nm CPUs this year then 3nm CPU next year but I will believe it when I see it! I just don't see how TSMC has the capacity to help Intel when it can't produce enough wafers for it's current long term (more important) customers.
Anyway, at the end of the day this 8 core CPU (with an extra few little cores) is meant to see Intel through 2022 and I believe into 2023, at the same time AMD will be giving us 24 high performance cores in the top end Zen 4 chips. I just don't see how Intel can put up any kind of fight again anything more than an 8 core Zen 4 chip, meanwhile AMD will be offering 12 core, 16 core, 20 core and 24 core options, plus Threadripper which will be up to 96 cores!
I just really hope Alder Lake has a massive single thread performance improvement over Zen 3 to give it the edge in many sparsely threaded allocations like Photoshop, Lightroom, etc and probably more importantly in gaming too. This should, if priced right, mean we have attractive options depending on what your usage needs are and crucially some competition so prices don't get out of hand in a monopoly again.
