 Intel is back. It's not quite the way we all expected when Ryzen first hit the scene back in 2017 But I don't think we could have hoped for a better outcome than this Not just for the consumer but for the entire industry 12th gen core code named Alder Lake is like nothing we've ever seen on the PC to date and I'm getting some Serious Ryzen or maybe bulldozer vibes from the lateral thinking it took to put it all together So let's talk about the who the what the why and how this return to competition is so good for everybody You know what else is good our sponsor origin PC origin PC laptops can be customized with Intel core processors and Nvidia GeForce RTX 30 series graphics with Max-P design backed by a 24-7 support team. You can check out origin PC at the link below Intel's performance claims for Alder Lake are mostly comparing against their own last-gen product, but make no mistake They are still coming out swinging against AMD in gaming They say Alder Lake gets equal or up to 30% better performance than Ryzen 5000 depending on the game and up to 50% better than 11th gen core processors. This is Huge although there are some Concerns about their methodology Intel's graphs mention running Windows 11 for all of their testing and that's a problem because if you've been keeping up with the tech news You'll know that Windows 11's new scheduler had a little problem with AMD processors that took a big toll on performance It's patched now But when they tested it definitely wasn't which means that all of these numbers need to be taken with a veritable Pillar of salt and that's not even considering the potential impacts that this new hybrid architecture is going to have on older DRM or Anti-cheat technologies that use CPU detection while providers for these technologies have already begun to roll out fixes Older games and apps may never receive any breaking compatibility But what makes it so different that DRM and even Windows 11 scheduler might break It's more like Apple's M1 processors with dedicated performance and efficiency cores P and E cores for short Those allow for tasks to be intelligently delegated between the cores that that best suit them This is fueled suspicions that Windows 11's problematic new scheduler was developed specifically for Alder Lake and I can see why Intel claims that each cluster of four of the E cores fit in the same space as a single 6th gen Skylake core But each are more capable per watt and I should point out despite their age Skylake cores are very Capable and usable to this day. So that's saying a lot still that ultimately means that if all the P cores are full Sending a task to the simplified E cores might actually be faster than using brute force hyper threading to split the P cores on that note Hyper threading is only available on the P cores So we'll have to see for ourselves what that means for heavily threaded tasks like rendering or code compilation My guess is each E core cluster will roughly equal one or two additional P cores if not more depending on the task But how do you even use these new cores enter thread director? Which detects what kind of work an app is doing and provides feedback to the operating system telling it which cores? Those apps are best suited for it works kind of like speed shift or preferred core does except It's got the CPU directly talking to the operating system. No extra drivers required Windows 11 already has support baked in for thread director But this should also work with Linux and if Microsoft were to grace us with an update to Windows 10 It would work there too Not that I'm holding my breath on the platforms that do support thread director. It's gonna be a pretty big deal Background tasks like say a virus scan or a Windows update are gonna be pushed on to the efficiency course Which not only reduces the impact on foreground tasks like gaming or content creation But can also reduce power consumption and heat output while those tasks are running which on future mobile chips will mean better Laptop battery life. We don't have any info on those products right now But what we do know is that the case series desktop i5s i7s and i9s will all have a TDP of 125 watts in this generation which sounds ridiculously confusing because how can a core i5 have the same TDP as a core i9 But what Intel's doing here is such a breath of fresh air compared to previous releases What used to be called TDP is now processor base power or PbP And this is how much power the CPU is assured to have available to it in sustained workloads And now Intel is also advertising the maximum turbo power or MTP Which is how much the CPU can use during boost with that information being disclosed now You can finally make informed decisions about your cooling setup Not only that but case series CPUs are shipping with a sustained boost mode where PbP equals MTP effectively turning on multi-core enhancement by default and letting the CPU boost forever So now there's finally a reason to buy a case series CPU I mean aside from overclocking which hey may actually be a thing again Intel wouldn't say how much headroom there is but their new extreme tuning utility is shipping with a one-click overclock function That adds a fixed 100 megahertz across all cores So while that's a mild OC it definitely shows a lot of confidence in their silicon And they may have good reason to be confident not only does 12th gen core have a larger footprint in the updated LGA 1700 socket. It's also built on Intel's long-awaited 10 nanometer superfin process now called Intel 7 because thanks to marketing Nanometers have lost all meaning in chip making. Ice Lake was the first to use this process But suffered from frequency issues that Tiger Lake largely resolved Can I just say that it's it's really fitting that it would be under Intel's new CEO Pat Gelsinger That the new process would finally be ready for the desktop He was the chief technology officer back in 2008 when Intel first spoke about 10 nanometer Like it's it's like they kept the seat warm for him with six generations of 14 nanometer chips They could have you know, just used a water bottle from LTD store comm would have been a lot cheaper for sure Right the new v2 ones even have an Intel inspired design There's more to the platform than just nanometers and cores though Intel is shipping the first consumer CPU to use PCI Express gen 5 which Feels really soon after gen 4 doesn't it? Although it was kind of like this with gen 1 through 3 It just took a long time for gen 4 to come around to the consumer market the benefits of PCI Express gen 5 though Aren't super clear just yet but as with gen 4 it doubles the bandwidth over its predecessor and Once cards are available to take advantage of it. It could allow for far more flexible lane arrangements for things like bifurcation Because here's the thing eight lanes of gen 5 is equivalent to 16 lanes of gen 4 or even 32 lanes of gen 3 Man, we are firing on all cylinders now It's kind of like the innovation that we missed out on in the 2010s is all just hitting us at once now This is great 12th gen core CPUs are going to ship with a combination of PCI Express gen 5 and gen 4 perhaps the most useful improvement for right now Though is the upgraded gen 4 link to the new 600 series chipsets which is double the bandwidth of both the outgoing 500 series and AMD's x5 70 platform not only that but the chipset now supports up to 28 gen 4 lanes taken together this should make it a lot easier for Z 690s new integrated Wi-Fi 6e and standard 2.5 gig ethernet to coexist with things like 10 gig ethernet and 20 gig USB ports Additional storage and more also it's not common But Intel is curiously supporting a dedicated clock generator for more reliable base clock overclocking Wouldn't expect to see these outside of enthusiast boards though because who actually does that Alder Lake is also the first x86 CPU to ship with support for DDR 5 now like many transition chips the memory controller on Alder Lake is compatible with both DDR 5 and Last generation DDR 4 but it should be noted that you can't run both at the same time DDR 5 could end up being one of the most interesting things about Alder Lake because it is a huge departure from Just about everything we know about computer memory. I've got a full deep dive on what is different about it It went up yesterday. You guys are gonna want to check that out the TLDR though Is that internal bottlenecks have been removed the power management has been moved on to each dim and it provides much more granular overclocking control Intel's XMP 3 memory overclocking spec also allows manufacturers to include up to three separate profiles now and includes two user specified profile blocks with descriptive names for things like high bandwidth mode or low latency mode including per Module voltage control each of the profiles are CRC checksum. So if anything should happen to corrupt one The system will actually know about it instead of happily moving that decimal point and letting out the magic smoke as for the hardware vendors Self-certification is free of charge which should speed up adoption of XMP 3 perhaps even among lower-end memory kids That's not all Intel's doing with memory though where 11th gen core brought the ability to toggle XMP Manually after the PC has been booted dynamic memory boost is a new feature that can automatically toggle it based on load It's something like turbo boost but for RAM This means that you can save on power and thermal output while retaining the benefits of high-speed memory when you need it Which might not be a big deal for desktops, but for laptops, this is gonna be huge There's no software operating system support needed for it either. It's entirely handled by the CPU and the BIOS So even something esoteric like temple OS can use it Intel says that it's also usable with DDR4 So you don't even need to buy in on expensive DDR5 right away to use it either This will depend on BIOS support though and Intel says it'll be rolling out shortly after release Which will be November 4th when we'll be validating Intel's performance claims and checking out the rest of the platform The core 912 900k is gonna be priced at an eye-watering $589 that's a fair bit less than the leaks suggested but it is still $50 more than the 11900k and $40 more than a Ryzen 9 5900x a CPU that has no efficiency cores just performance cores and 50% more of them There's gonna be some spicy benchmarks coming your way next week Like I've been getting goosebumps thinking about all the innovations that AMD and Intel are gonna have to make over the coming years Now that they are at each other's throats again properly and we finally got an engineer back in charge at Intel AMD for their part are expecting their next-gen Ryzen processors with vcache to get up to a 25% gaming improvement and a 15% improvement overall if that is true Intel and AMD may end up neck-and-neck in terms of gaming performance by the end of the year And it'll be AMD's turn once again to pull off a little magic trick. Don't you love the CPU leapfrog? 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