# Intel 12900k reviews are out



## Hendrixon (Nov 4, 2021)

So what do you all think?


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## isu89 (Nov 4, 2021)

Benchmarks look great; but power consumption could be high (I want a quiet fan system, so that could be a challenging build w/o needing to undervolt or go to a radiator based system which I'm not crazy about).. Really on the fence here between a 5950x and this one (TB4 better compatibility is another factor for the future)


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## Sunny Schramm (Nov 4, 2021)

perfect - team blue is back


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## Sunny Schramm (Nov 4, 2021)

isu89 said:


> Benchmarks look great; but power consumption could be high (I want a quiet fan system, so that could be a challenging build w/o needing to undervolt or go to a radiator based system which I'm not crazy about).. Really on the fence here between a 5950x and this one (TB4 better compatibility is another factor for the future)


power consumption and heat is only high while rendering videos or 3D stuff. at gaming and our music it stays under the 125 w/tdp - so a "good" air-cooler like the bequiet dark rock pro 4 or noctua is still enough. the only thing I can hear while 4K gaming is my RTX3080. my i9 9900K @5Ghz an all cores plus the bequiet drp4 is completely silent. and the new i5 goes far under amd and the i9 in aspects of heat.


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## vitocorleone123 (Nov 4, 2021)

It's good to see Intel not yet rolling over and dying. Hopefully they'll have success and continue the 2, now 3+, competition.

With said competition, an upgrade from a modestly overclocked 9900k doesn't seem as extravagant just 3 or so years later. If only it was possible to get a replacement for my 970GTX that wasn't wildly overpriced. Ah well. It works still, and I do much more music than gaming or video editing.


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

To get the most out of the platform requires W11 and DDR5.
The RAM is currently 50 to 100 percent more expensive.
W11 is arguably still in Beta.
Plus there are issues with the scheduler with it being a hybrid architecture.
Come back in 6 months after things have settled down.
By then AMD will have released their Zen 3 update.
Still a decent effort ignoring the power inefficiency.
Greta has just ordered a MacBook Pro 14 apparently!


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## d.healey (Nov 4, 2021)

12600 seems like the best value. DDR5 doesn't seem to be anything special for most use cases, especially with the lag in current modules. I'll probably stick with a DDR4 system. Also Intel hasn't added any schedule handling for Alder Lake to the Linux kernel yet so I expect performance there can be improved - not that it affects many here.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)




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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Sunny Schramm said:


> perfect - team blue is back



1% difference over a 5950x but massive amounts of heat and power draw…..Hardly…..All this means is that Ryzen 3D V cache will be a clear winner in a few months time.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)




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## cedricm (Nov 4, 2021)

The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity







www.anandtech.com







> The Golden Cove core inside Alder Lake has reclaimed the single-threaded performance crown with an uplift in SPEC of 18-20%, which is in line with Intel’s 19% claim. This puts it ahead of Apple’s M1 Max or 6% (int) and 16% (fp) ahead of AMD’s Zen 3 core.





> Overall though, it’s no denying that Intel is now in the thick of it, or if I were to argue, the market leader. The nuances of the hybrid architecture are still nascent, so it will take time to discover where benefits will come, especially when we get to the laptop variants of Alder Lake. At a retail price of around $650, the Core i9-12900K ends up being competitive between the two Ryzen 9 processors, each with their good points. The only serious downside for Intel though is cost of switching to DDR5, and users learning Windows 11. That’s not necessarily on Intel, but it’s a few more hoops than we regularly jump through.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

5950X Was released November 2020 ….and now the 12900k released 12 months later sits in between 5900x and 5950x 😂​​







The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity







www.anandtech.com



​The Core i9-12900K​When you have your operating system set up just right, and no issues with schedulers, it outperforms AMD’s offering when single core performance matters, and in multi-threaded workloads, it does tend to sit somewhere between a 5900X and a 5950X.


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## d.healey (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> sits in between 5900x and 5950x


And doesn't require a separate GPU which must be factored into the power draw and heat output for me because I have no need for an external GPU for my work.


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

d.healey said:


> And doesn't require a separate GPU which must be factored into the power draw and heat output for me because I have no need for an external GPU for my work.


If your GPU requirements are that low, an inexpensive $50 card will only add about 5W to the total system power.
I added one to my Intel system only because I wanted a better range of outputs.
I think power consumption went up by 3W at idle due to it being so low to start with.
So the extra 5W pushed the power supply into a more efficient part of the curve, meaning the net increase at the wall was 3W.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

d.healey said:


> And doesn't require a separate GPU which must be factored into the power draw and heat output for me because I have no need for an external GPU for my work.


Even if you added a cheap passive low power discrete GPU you wouldn‘t generate that much power draw and heat and could still run faster refresh rates.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Technostica said:


> If your GPU requirements are that low, an inexpensive $50 card will only add about 5W to the total system power.
> I added one to my Intel system only because I wanted a better range of outputs.
> I think power consumption went up by 3W at idle due to it being so low to start with.
> So the extra 5W pushed the power supply into a more efficient part of the curve, meaning the net increase at the wall was 3W.


Beat me to it…😂


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## khollister (Nov 4, 2021)

Just watched the Gamers Nexus review. Faster on some things than a 5950X, slower on others, but with all cores going 100% it pulls 240W for just the CPU - *2X a stock clocked 5950X!*

Their words were "difficult to cool". I don't have a dog in this fight since I'm a Mac guy, but the heat would concern me if I was thinking of building a Windows DAW. The Intel part is a little cheaper and has a GPU if your needs are modest. However, that may be offset by DDR5 RAM cost at this point plus possibly needing a more expensive cooling solution. 

IMHO, Intel is going to continue to struggle until they get their fab under control with smaller process size to control the heat.


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> 5950X Was released November 2020 ….and now the 12900k released 12 months later sits in between 5900x and 5950x 😂​​
> 
> 
> 
> ...


As a digital 2d artist who spends a lot of time painting in Photoshop, the single core performance of the 12900k looks promising and the benchmarks for the applications I use are better than the 5950x. I don't know the Cubase benchmarks yet. It will probably handle DAW work just fine. Still, I wish Intel had a workstation or X version for extra RAM and PCIE Lanes. I'd be quite willing to pay extra for that and find it odd that I haven't found any mention of a Xeon or X series equivalent in the works.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

khollister said:


> Just watched the Gamers Nexus review. Faster on some things than a 5950X, slower on others, but with all cores going 100% it pulls 240W for just the CPU - *2X a stock clocked 5950X!*
> 
> Their words were "difficult to cool". I don't have a dog in this fight since I'm a Mac guy, but the heat would concern me if I was thinking of building a Windows DAW. The Intel part is a little cheaper and has a GPU if your needs are modest. However, that may be offset by DDR5 RAM cost at this point plus possibly needing a more expensive cooling solution.
> 
> IMHO, Intel is going to continue to struggle until they get their fab under control with smaller process size to control the heat.


What with all this climate change and power consumption….For Intel to release the 12900k 12 months after 5950x all I can say is what a dud of a release.


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## vitocorleone123 (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> What with all this climate change and power consumption….For Intel to release the 12900k 12 months after 5950x all I can say is what a dud of a release.


It's a great release. It's a good processor (sometimes consuming 100 watts isn't a big deal with an eye just on the computer). It will force AMD to continue to innovate, as well. It outperforms AMD's offerings pretty handily in most benchmarks, and the single core performance remains important for making music.

If you remember, AMD pulled ahead of Intel once before and Intel demolished their offerings for several years once they woke up, and it started like this - more performance but more power to get there. That said, as we start to focus more on the world outside the computer box of choice, power consumption DOES matter and high power consumption will become, rightly, a problem for Intel's customers, and therefore Intel, if it doesn't change sooner rather than later. This is where Apple is putting pressure: performance per watt, on both Intel and AMD.

For me, I want the best performance. But price and power consumption are close right up there. I wouldn't buy a chip that 10% better than the competition that takes 2x the power (unless maybe we're talking 10 watts vs 20 watts).


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## d.healey (Nov 4, 2021)

Technostica said:


> If your GPU requirements are that low, an inexpensive $50 card will only add about 5W to the total system power.
> I added one to my Intel system only because I wanted a better range of outputs.
> I think power consumption went up by 3W at idle due to it being so low to start with.
> So the extra 5W pushed the power supply into a more efficient part of the curve, meaning the net increase at the wall was 3W.


I've done it, it doesn't compare. I have a 5900x at the moment, I tried a cheap low power GPU and the performance in GPU tasks like video editing/rendering was terrible.

I did the same on an older integrated Intel GPU and the performance was perfectly acceptable. Currently I have a 1050ti which isn't a power hog but still outputs more heat than an integrated GPU. From what I understand of the Alder Lake integrated GPU it is better than any that came before it and will probably out perform my current GPU for some workloads.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

d.healey said:


> From what I understand of the Alder Lake integrated GPU it is better than any that came before it and will probably out perform my current GPU for some workloads.


It won’t.


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## Nico5 (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> What with all this climate change and power consumption


that would actually speak for a Mac


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

d.healey said:


> And doesn't require a separate GPU which must be factored into the power draw and heat output for me because I have no need for an external GPU for my work.





d.healey said:


> I've done it, it doesn't compare. I have a 5900x at the moment, I tried a cheap low power GPU and the performance in GPU tasks like video editing/rendering was terrible.
> 
> I did the same on an older integrated Intel GPU and the performance was perfectly acceptable. Currently I have a 1050ti which isn't a power hog but still outputs more heat than an integrated GPU. From what I understand of the Alder Lake integrated GPU it is better than any that came before it and will probably out perform my current GPU for some workloads.


Good to see you clarifying in the second post exactly what your particular case is. 
For DAW and general usage, other options may be more appropriate.


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## Hendrixon (Nov 4, 2021)

My thoughts...

I expected the 12900k will seat between the 5900 and 5950.
Its a bit closer to the 5950 then I expected (kudos Intel), in places it trails, others match or exceeds the 5950, but one thing is for sure, its not a quantum leap over it.

I've seen few reviews stacking it with the 5900, claiming "expected" matching price.
Well that's WRONG, because then they go and test it with DDR5, which alone will put the bundle (cpu+ram) at 5950 price or higher. to that you need to add a HEFTY psu, since at full load this silicon draws double what the 5900 (or 5950) draws, so now the bundle (cpu+ram+psu) takes this to a level far above a 5950 bundle.

If all else in the build is equal? I assume a same spec 5950 system will actually be cheaper
So, we need to compare the 12900k to the 5950.
For gaming? got for the.... ah... who cares 
For our little universe? without updated dawbench numbers saying otherwise, I would still get a 5950.
Sure even in DAWs the single core performance is super important for main thread, but when doing multi tracks, once above a certain tracks count, you will get tracks running on the E cores.
You have no way designating which track goes to which core, so even with a better single (P) core thread, I think the 5950 will perform better.

And some food for thought for us composers (all three of us lol):
There is one benchmark that the 12900k really flops in, and the 5950 explodes at, and that's decompression. keep in mind that all those terabytes of sample libraries you own, they are all in a compressed state, getting decompressed on the fly in real time... all the time.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> It’s no surprise a die-hard AMD fanboy picks this graph to “document” that the power consumption of the AMD chips are lower than the new ones from Intel.


But I have had far More Intel rigs over the years than AMD ones....So your so called Fanboy remark is total BS....

Head over to overclockers.co.uk Forum and read my 39,851 posts on overclocking Intel CPU's under air, water and phase since 2005....

Next....


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

Watts per core is a relatively esoteric benchmark and especially when comparing a hybrid architecture which only has HT on the big cores. 
Performance per watt is a better real world gauge.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> Anyone who passionately defends something in a biased way is a fanboy in my book.


Its 12 months on and the 12900k sits bewteeen 5900x and 5950x while using massive amounts of power and pumping out loads of heat...

Its hardly a game changer on any level.

Im not defending AMD or intel...Im posting facts based on benchmarks and hard data....

As I said...Head over to overclockers.co.uk Forum and read my 39,851 posts on overclocking Intel CPU's under air, water and phase since 2005....


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Nov 4, 2021)

Technostica said:


> Watts per core is a relatively esoteric benchmark and especially when comparing a hybrid architecture which only has HT on the big cores.
> Performance per watt is a better real world gauge.


Is there a review where we can see performance pr. Watt? I agree it’s a better measure.


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## Hendrixon (Nov 4, 2021)

Performance/watt per whole die... no one buys single cores to order


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## Al Maurice (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Its 12 months on and the 12900k sits bewteeen 5900x and 5950x while using massive amounts of power and pumping out loads of heat...


To be honest every time a new generation of chips comes out, I find the older one clocked slightly more out performs the new one. Hence why I usually err on the side of caution and wait a while, before jumping to conclusions about them, and making a decision to make a leap towards them.


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> Its 12 months on and the 12900k sits bewteeen 5900x and 5950x while using massive amounts of power and pumping out loads of heat...
> 
> Its hardly a game changer on any level.
> 
> ...


I don’t have a preference between AMD and Intel - I literally could care less which name is on the CPU in my computer. But I’ve just seen the review by Guru3D and they also have this graph:






I know an application such as Izotope RX only uses a single core (edit: single thread, not core), and I think many other applications do too. AFAIK it’s not always possible to split a task up onto multiple threads. Therefore the graph above is relevant too, to get the full picture of what power consumption is for various CPUs. That’s why I think it’s manipulative to just post a graph displaying the new Intel CPUs as power hogs, which is the same thing you say in your comment above.


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## Bernard Duc (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> I don’t have a preference between AMD and Intel - I literally could care less which name is on the CPU in my computer. But I’ve just seen the review by Guru3D and they also have this graph:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Any audio application I know of uses multiple CPU cores, and I would be very surprised if it wasn't the case of iZotope RX... but I will test and let you know

EDIT: Just tested and RX used 100% of every core when rendering.


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> Is there a review where we can see performance pr. Watt? I agree it’s a better measure.


Some do and some just give wattage and leave it to you to work out the efficiency yourself. 
It will vary by task, as clearly there are big performance swings either way depending on the app. 
Overall, the real world difference in wattage under a demanding load is about 100W.
Whereas the 5950x is still the faster chip, so there's no comparison really. 

Keep in mind that DAWs and games don't push the CPU nearly that hard and they are some of the more commonly used demanding apps outside of video work. 
I would take the Ryzen anyway as it is a mature platform.


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> I don’t have a preference between AMD and Intel - I literally could care less which name is on the CPU in my computer. But I’ve just seen the review by Guru3D and they also have this graph:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The irony is, that your posts are more open to being called 'manipulative'. 
I am not saying that they are, as they seem more uninformed to me. 
Power efficiency at idle and under a single core load are more academic. 
The real issue is under a heavier workload, as that defines cooling requirements and noise issues. 

@easyrider has a rather abrasive way of communicating things for me, but his data is generally on point. 

This review looks at power and efficiency fairly closely:








Intel Core i9-12900K Review - Fighting for the Performance Crown


The Intel Core i9-12900K is Intel's flagship processor for the Alder Lake architecture. In our testing, we saw fantastic gaming performance from this new processor. Not only low-threaded tests have improved, the 12900K can even beat AMD at highly threaded workloads.




www.techpowerup.com


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> I don’t have a preference between AMD and Intel - I literally could care less which name is on the CPU in my computer. But I’ve just seen the review by Guru3D and they also have this graph:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


All reviews I have read and watched talk about the heat and power that 12900k uses under load….5950x comes in with a TDP of 105w….and the 12900k 241w


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Technostica said:


> @easyrider has a rather abrasive way of communicating things for me, but his data is generally on point.


The word Fanboi…..winds me up…😂


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## novaburst (Nov 4, 2021)

Intel fighting back


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## novaburst (Nov 4, 2021)

I think this will make it a difficult time choosing a CPU for new machine builders,


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## Henrik B. Jensen (Nov 4, 2021)

Bernard Duc said:


> Any audio application I know of uses multiple CPU cores, and I would be very surprised if it wasn't the case of iZotope RX... but I will test and let you know
> 
> EDIT: Just tested and RX used 100% of every core when rendering.


I trust this 100%, but I also tested in my own RX7, and yes, the CPU utilization is 100%! I don't know how I got the impression that CPU utilization was not 100% and I apologize for posting wrong info 

@Technostica you are spot on - I am not trying to manipulate with anything, not info given nor graphs, I am simply uninformed as you also suspect!


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 4, 2021)

I paint my own album covers and do illustration work. I'm wondering if being able to use more complicated brushes with less lag would be worth the somewhat less DAW performance and higher heat generation the 12900k might have over the 5950x.

My current system is a i7 4930k with 64gb of quad channel ddr3 ram and a modified Titan black.

I think whatever new system I build, if its faster than my current one, it will feel good and get the job done regardless of weather it's the fastest possible or best possible price to performance ratio. In this current market, the chances of buying anything at MSRP is nearly impossible without spending a lot of time watching stock trackers and waiting months for restocks et. I'm wondering if the amount of time spent trying to actually buy something at it's base price, could be spent making music and potentially more mony than I'd save.

I thought my system was super slow and that I'd needed to build a new rig to get any work done without lots of frustration and frequent crashes. My instruments used to take a long time to load. 8dio libraries would sometimes take 10 minutes. Batch resaving didn't help. I bought an NVME PCIE ssd, that didn't help. It's been problem for years. This week I disabled windows defender for my sample library folders. Now everything loads instantly and my DAW hasn't crashed since!


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## d.healey (Nov 4, 2021)

Nigel Andreola said:


> My current system is a i7 4930k with 64gb of quad channel ddr3 ram and a modified Titan black.


I think any CPU from the last few generations and DDR4 RAM + a decent GPU will work for you.


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## novaburst (Nov 4, 2021)

Nigel Andreola said:


> I think whatever new system I build, if its faster than my current one, it will feel good and get the job done regardless of weather it's the fastest possible or best possible price to performance ratio. In this current market, the


I built mine this year, but if i was building now probably go for the Intel as you have the DDR5 ram that seems to be a big game in some circumstances


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## Nico5 (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> The word Fanboi


the perils of passion also sometimes coming across as a bit absolutist, when not regularly acknowledging that different priorities and use cases also may imply different “best” or at least “close enough” solutions


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 4, 2021)

novaburst said:


> I built mine this year, but if i was building now probably go for the Intel as you have the DDR5 ram that seems to be a big game in some circumstances


That makes sense. My system was the last ddr3 generation. DDR5 ram will likely get faster and more affordable as more vendors compete with their kits on the market.


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## Technostica (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> The word Fanboi…..winds me up…😂


I wouldn't have used that term.
It's more like you are on the terraces when your team are four nil up and you are chanting boisterously at the away fans.
It can be fun if you are there, but for a neutral it can get tedious.


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 4, 2021)

Technostica said:


> I wouldn't have used that term.
> It's more like you are on the terraces when your team are four nil up and you are chanting boisterously at the away fans.
> It can be fun if you are there, but for a neutral it can get tedious.


Apparently there is a whole world of washer machine enthusiasts and washer and dryer brand fanboys with YouTube channels and huge dedicated fan groups. I wonder, is there any market that doesn't have fanboys and enthusiasts?


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> I trust this 100%, but I also tested in my own RX7, and yes, the CPU utilization is 100%! I don't know how I got the impression that CPU utilization was not 100% and I apologize for posting wrong info
> 
> @Technostica you are spot on - I am not trying to manipulate with anything, not info given nor graphs, I am simply uninformed as you also suspect!


🥵


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## MartinH. (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> All reviews I have read and watched talk about the heat and power that 12900k uses under load….5950x comes in with a TDP of 105w….and the 12900k 241w





easyrider said:


> What with all this climate change and power consumption….For Intel to release the 12900k 12 months after 5950x all I can say is what a dud of a release.


I was sure my next PC would be an intel but after looking at those benchmarks and prices... I'm now leaning towards A Ryzen 9 5900x. The heat/power/climate change aspect is quite important to me too, and I still need good performance. Any reason (compatibility, stability, whatever) not to go with the Ryzen?





Nigel Andreola said:


> As a digital 2d artist who spends a lot of time painting in Photoshop, the single core performance of the 12900k looks promising and the benchmarks for the applications I use are better than the 5950x. I don't know the Cubase benchmarks yet. It will probably handle DAW work just fine. Still, I wish Intel had a workstation or X version for extra RAM and PCIE Lanes. I'd be quite willing to pay extra for that and find it odd that I haven't found any mention of a Xeon or X series equivalent in the works.


Did you ever look for very specific tests or benchmarks for Photoshop painting? I'm still using CS6 and I paint quite a lot with it. Would be curious to hear what affects PS painting performance the most. My guess is that it's not just raw CPU speed because so much data gets shoved around.


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## easyrider (Nov 4, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> I was sure my next PC would be an intel but after looking at those benchmarks and prices... I'm now leaning towards A Ryzen 9 5900x. The heat/power/climate change aspect is quite important to me too, and I still need good performance. Any reason (compatibility, stability, whatever) not to go with the Ryzen?


None. It’s a stable awesome platform.


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## dozicusmaximus (Nov 4, 2021)

I currently have an 8700k system. Was looking at going with a 5900X at some point. If I can get lucky and score one around the $400 mark at some point I'll do it. Otherwise I'll just use what I have until it takes a dump in 5-6 years, then see what's going on.
I guess these newer intel chips above what I currently have run pretty hot.


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## d.healey (Nov 4, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> Any reason (compatibility, stability, whatever) not to go with the Ryzen


The 5900x has served me well. There is no particular reason to favour the new Intel over the current AMD chips.


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 4, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> I was sure my next PC would be an intel but after looking at those benchmarks and prices... I'm now leaning towards A Ryzen 9 5900x. The heat/power/climate change aspect is quite important to me too, and I still need good performance. Any reason (compatibility, stability, whatever) not to go with the Ryzen?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Puget systems does a lot of work benchmarking specific real work applications including Adobe software. I'd check out their articles here: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...Gen-Intel-Core-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5000-Series-2245/

I chose the i9 12900k. I do a lot of photoshop painting and am looking forward to that extra smoothness with the enormous files and custom brushes I work with for customer's print projects. I think any new high end consumer CPU is going to be fantastic! Unless your working with really huge pixel dimensions, even a lower tier CPU will work great for Photoshop painting.

I've looked at overall benchmarks like the Puget ones and have followed Adobe forums off and on for about 14 years. In the Adobe forms they talk about single core performance being the most important factor when using brushes and painting in Photoshop. While more cores may be great in rendering final compositions in 3D modeling software, I don't use that enough for that to be worth trading the Photoshop brush performance for. Also, I've watched YouTube's that talk about core frequency being the most important factor for lower latency audio processing and recording. More cores does equal more instruments you can load up and play at the same time though but I've seen people say after about 13 cores there is diminishing returns.

Zooming in and out performance relies on your GPU. The more V ram you have, the larger dimensions you can work with while maintaining smooth zooming. I swapped out my new GTX 970, for a cheaper, older (and less powerful in games) used Titan Black because it had 6gb of ram up from the GTX 970s 2.5gb + .5gb configuration. It also had hugely better double precision performance for fractal generation which I was into at the time. Although you'll see a lot of CPU benchmarks for stuff like Adobe Premiere, I would expect most every desktop user is using a GPU for video rending and 3D viewport rendering. The third thing I look at is the more DDR ram you have and faster your scratch disk, the larger file size you can work with. Photoshop doesn't just load data onto your RAM but also onto a scratch disk so using an SSD will help a lot.

I hope this helps.


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## handz (Nov 4, 2021)

I dunno. But isnt any decent processor nowadays already way more powerful than anything like music making can actually need? (the fact some libs can shake CPU usage is more likely bad programming). 

I am doing a lot of 3d rendering depending purely on CPU and there it is absolutely crucial though but I would buy amd if I was on PC and call it a day


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## Nigel Andreola (Nov 4, 2021)

handz said:


> I dunno. But isnt any decent processor nowadays already way more powerful than anything like music making can actually need? (the fact some libs can shake CPU usage is more likely bad programming).
> 
> I am doing a lot of 3d rendering depending purely on CPU and there it is absolutely crucial though but I would buy amd if I was on PC and call it a day


AMD does look way better for 3d rendering right now. Especially those Threadripper parts! Intel has nothing that even remotely comes close to their price to performance.


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## thevisi0nary (Nov 4, 2021)

easyrider said:


> What with all this climate change and power consumption….For Intel to release the 12900k 12 months after 5950x all I can say is what a dud of a release.


A 40% uplift in MT performance in one generation is hardly a dud of a release. Seems like a great proof of concept for big.little that will get better as time goes on, also coming out in a weird spot with DDR5 and Win11 also being new. 

Idc about Intel vs AMD either way, I'll buy whichever is better for what I need.


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## colony nofi (Nov 4, 2021)

Oh this is tasty news.
Red V Blue is back to help push performance ahead at paces not seen in 10 years. Its a win for anyone who needs more CPU cycles in relatively (compared to expensive HEDT/server based workstations) cheap systems. Oh the next round of dawbench will be fun to see.

For team AMD, it is now up to them to bring some innovation to the table to compete again.


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## colony nofi (Nov 4, 2021)

Nigel Andreola said:


> AMD does look way better for 3d rendering right now. Especially those Threadripper parts! Intel has nothing that even remotely comes close to their price to performance.


Threadripper is a completely different class of chip. Different market segment. Apples and Oranges.
Closest AMD chip is 5950X


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## Hendrixon (Nov 5, 2021)

Here are a few more info nuggets:

The reason Intel went for the BigLittle formation comes from 2 reasons.
First, their P cores are TWICE the size of AMD cores, yes, even on their "7" (10nm) process. for some reason they really have a bloated design compared to AMDs. at the die size they use they simply can't compete with AMD for high core count chips. knowing the mass market is driven mainly by gamers, a 8-10 core chip is really enough.
Second reason, Intel believes their true competition is not AMD but Apple, and that's the direction Apple takes (BigLittle), with GREAT success.
So bottom line? an 8P+8E form factor ticks both boxes... at this stage.

Intel still don't threat AMD at the TOTL chip (16 core 5950) because they know that EVEN if they will somehow make a 16 Pcore chip with huge investment, which is impossible right now, but lets just assume they will, then AMD will EASILY make a 24 core (3 chiplets of 8cores) without any needed for more R&D. the Ryzen die can support it right now.

Another interesting bit of info is that an Intel Pcore has exactly the same IPC as AMD's core.
The performance gain Intel gets comes from their ability to clock higher (hence the higher wattage) and DDR5 bandwidth. once AM5 socket will be out, AMD will be able to put more wattage on their cores and it will support DDR5.

Next Intel chip (13 gen Tiger Lake) will be 8P+16E. *Edit: 13 gen is Raptor Lake*

Next Zen 4 is planned still at 16 cores top but with IPC uplift like from Zen 2 to 3 or even higher.
A 24 core Ryzen maybe paper launch, for benchmarks, unless they will think Raptor Lake is a real threat.

There is another core design that AMD calls Zen 4D, from the word "dense".
This has somewhat lower IPC cores but in a 16 core monolithic chiplet. that one is designed for servers upto 256-512 cores. these cores should perform like under volt Zen 3 cores.

With that said, Zen 5 expected to also go BigLittle with Zen 5 cores as the P and those Zen 4D as little 



Oh mammy....


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## d.healey (Nov 5, 2021)

Hendrixon said:


> 13 gen Tiger Lake


Tiger Lake was 11th gen mobile.


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## Hendrixon (Nov 5, 2021)

d.healey said:


> Tiger Lake was 11th gen mobile.


Sorry, Raptor Lake


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## Technostica (Nov 5, 2021)

The last time Intel introduced a desktop chip on a smaller fabrication node was over 6 years ago.
They used to do this every 24 - 30 months, so a gap of 77 months shows how far off track they have been, so it's no surprise that this node doesn't seem that impressive.
The knock on effect is that if you don't know what node you will have next year, how can you design an architecture that is optimised for it to a degree?

On top of all this, AMD and TSMC have both been executing very well for years, so caught up with and passed Intel.


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## easyrider (Nov 5, 2021)

thevisi0nary said:


> A 40% uplift in MT performance in one generation is hardly a dud of a release. Seems like a great proof of concept for big.little that will get better as time goes on, also coming out in a weird spot with DDR5 and Win11 also being new.
> 
> Idc about Intel vs AMD either way, I'll buy whichever is better for what I need.


All this proves is that Intel has been sat on this technology for sometime….While being complacent Since 6700k times….No meaningful upgrades paths…..drip fed ticks rather than meaningful tocks….Rinsing the consumer for every last penny….My last Intel rig was a 6700k….7700k was a meaningless upgrade, 8700k was a meaningless upgrade and then I finally upgraded to a 9900k….again massive amounts of power and heat…had That a few weeks then thought I’m being fleeced here….So I ditched it and built a Ryzen 3900 system…wow….more cores, more performance same cost….and what is beautiful is that I knew I could just plop in a 5950x down the line into the same motherboard with a bios update…no meaningless socket changes like Intel creating more landfill on perfectly good hardware….

And now we have 12900k that still is only trading blows with a 5950x 12 months later while using 100w more power and pumping out heat left right and centre….

What is beautiful is in early 2022 I can give my nephew my 5950x to replace his 3900x I gave him and plop in a new fab 5950x with 3D cache that will beat the 12900k outright no new motherboard….no landfill….just a bios update….

That is innovation….then we have the 5nm Ryzen chips….

I want Intel to innovate…if they bought a chip out that was decent…I’d buy it…


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## thevisi0nary (Nov 5, 2021)

easyrider said:


> All this proves is that Intel has been sat on this technology for sometime….While being complacent Since 6700k times….No meaningful upgrades paths…..drip fed ticks rather than meaningful tocks….Rinsing the consumer for every last penny





easyrider said:


> And now we have 12900k that still is only trading blows with a 5950x 12 months later while using 100w more power and pumping out heat left right and centre….
> 
> What is beautiful is in early 2022 I can give my nephew my 5950x to replace his 3900x I gave him and plop in a new fab 5950x with 3D cache that will beat the 12900k outright no new motherboard….no landfill….just a bios update….
> 
> ...


Yeah of course, they were completely asleep for half a decade and greedy as hell with pricing, but it’s good to see they are getting it together because competition is good. Shows how poor of a leader Bob Swan was. 

The DDR5 and Win11 transition can’t be dismissed but with that aside, if you’re building a new system the 12600k overtakes everything in the Zen 3 stack up until the 5900x, which is only 20% faster in MT at nearly double the price, making that kind of pointless to consider instead of a 5950x. V-cache isn’t going to close that much of a gap with the bottom skus, and Raptor Lake this time next year doubles the E cores which is what gave ADL that 40% uplift. If you already have a Ryzen system though obviously just dropping in Zen3+ is the better choice, Intel would be wise to adopt that practice.

Power draw is still high and the 12900k has zero appeal to me, but this is definitely a good showing for a new direction. Someone referred to ADL as a Zen 1 moment, and it’ll be cool to see where they take this.


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## vitocorleone123 (Nov 5, 2021)

It's really impressive what Intel can do given their (largely self-inflicted) constraints. They still "have it" in the talent department, it seems, though their leadership has sucked. AMD would rightfully want to be concerned and very focused on executing their plans, because once Intel makes the real jump to a smaller die, the game is ON. Again. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Intel is once again on top vs AMD in a year or two (they'll certainly at least be fully competitive if they don't screw up again), as it seems to do the tick-tock thing in the industry, as well.

But now Apple has entered the ring and is throwing down.

Between now and when AMD releases their next thing, I'd choose the new Intel. Likely that won't take long for AMD, and then I'd choose AMD


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## Technostica (Nov 5, 2021)

vitocorleone123 said:


> It's really impressive what Intel can do given their (largely self-inflicted) constraints. They still "have it" in the talent department, it seems, though their leadership has sucked. AMD would rightfully want to be concerned and very focused on executing their plans, because once Intel makes the real jump to a smaller die, the game is ON. Again. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Intel is once again on top vs AMD in a year or two (they'll certainly at least be fully competitive if they don't screw up again), as it seems to do the tick-tock thing in the industry, as well.
> 
> But now Apple has entered the ring and is throwing down.
> 
> Between now and when AMD releases their next thing, I'd choose the new Intel. Likely that won't take long for AMD, and then I'd choose AMD


Intel are stuck on a monolithic large chip, whereas AMD have been using small chiplets for years with great success.
This gives AMD great flexibility which is why they can produce 64/128 core/thread chips for High End Desktop which consume not much more power than Intel's 16/24 chip.
AMD are still using a TSMC's 7nm process which was superseded just over a year ago with a 5nm node.
So the future looks brighter for AMD in the short term, but beyond that is a guess.
At least Intel have a new CEO with an engineering background, which bodes well for 2 or 3 plus years ahead.


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## colony nofi (Nov 5, 2021)

Hendrixon said:


> Here are a few more info nuggets:
> 
> The reason Intel went for the BigLittle formation comes from 2 reasons.
> First, their P cores are TWICE the size of AMD cores, yes, even on their "7" (10nm) process. for some reason they really have a bloated design compared to AMDs. at the die size they use they simply can't compete with AMD for high core count chips. knowing the mass market is driven mainly by gamers, a 8-10 core chip is really enough.
> ...


Could you give any refs for some of this info? V interested!
Some gels with press I've read, other with things I've spoken to reps about. But there's a few choice bits of information there which I haven't heard from the normal sources. Especially the BigLittle AMD direction, which I thought was ruled out by the CEO not long ago...(not that that means much)

Also - interesting to read the info on intel treating apple as a bigger threat than AMD. My understanding is the B2B / Server market is much bigger $ and profit wise than consumer chips, and here AMD and ARM are the direct competition, with Apple showing no signs of entering.


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## Trash Panda (Nov 5, 2021)

What was the power consumption on the CPU used to design the knife y’all are splitting hairs with?


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## Hendrixon (Nov 5, 2021)

colony nofi said:


> Could you give any refs for some of this info? V interested!
> Some gels with press I've read, other with things I've spoken to reps about. But there's a few choice bits of information there which I haven't heard from the normal sources. Especially the BigLittle AMD direction, which I thought was ruled out by the CEO not long ago...(not that that means much)
> 
> Also - interesting to read the info on intel treating apple as a bigger threat than AMD. My understanding is the B2B / Server market is much bigger $ and profit wise than consumer chips, and here AMD and ARM are the direct competition, with Apple showing no signs of entering.


The Zen 5 BigLittle info I picked from a guy call "moore's law is dead", he has a track record of being very reliable.
Regarding Intel two former army buds of mine work there so obviously we talk tech over dinners  
Yup the sever silicon market is way more important and the assumption is that Apple works its way towards it, now that they see their success with their own silicon.
Intel work with the assumption that AMD has Ryzen 24 core prototype on the shelve.


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## novaburst (Nov 6, 2021)

easyrider said:


> and what is beautiful is that I knew I could just plop in a 5950x down the line into the same motherboard with a bios update…no meaningless socket changes like Intel creating more landfill on perfectly good hardware….


This


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## Nico5 (Nov 6, 2021)

One of the things that alternatingly amuses and annoys me, is that in today’s media landscape so much mildly interesting news seems reported and analyzed breathless screaming played up to extremes. With equally predictable forum commentary in tow.

I would never make it in today’s media , since my article might be more like this:


Intel releases their next gen CPU with moderate overall performance gains​
Interesting firsts include:

BigLittle architecture for x86
PCIe 5 capable
While initial benchmarks show moderate performance gains, longer term impact on real world application performance, power draw and resulting thermal implications will take a while to fully shake out, while other hardware, operating systems and applications get optimized for x86 BigLittle and PCIe 5.

After having seen the arrival of the latest Apple and Intel offerings, reviewers and tech customers are now looking forward to the next round of products by AMD, to complete their near term picture.

The new CPU may not trigger significant shifts in market adoption at this time, but will be on immediate shopping lists for high performance application developers and hardware manufacturers as well as Intel enthusiasts looking to stay at the leading edge.


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## Andrew Aversa (Nov 6, 2021)

I think the talk about all-core max power consumption is kind of misleading. Most users do not have operations that would max out all cores for an extended period. Synthetic benchmarks are very far off from how people typically use PCs, even audio professionals.

As an example I have been running my computer with a 9900k for days without restarting. During this time I've done things like: compression and decompression of large numbers of files, video recording, video editing, video rendering, audio production, audio rendering, Photoshop, etc. I have all cores boosted to 4.7ghz at all times, but not overclocked. 

Thanks to HWMonitor, I can view my processor's temperature over time and compare average to max. My average temperature is about 48c across all cores on air cooling. Max is about 72c. So during my actual, real workloads, *including rendering, *72c is the max recorded.

If I run Cinebench, I immediately hit temps in the 90s within 10 seconds.

Synthetic benchmarks are help in comparing apples to apples, but you have to keep in mind what you *actually plan on using your processor for *and how demanding those operations are. I was actually surprised that even full renders in REAPER, FL Studio, VEGAS (etc) lasting 10+ minutes did not compare anywhere near cinebench.

I think this is doubly important to think about for the new Intel architecture, because it is *really not designed *for all-core loads. The e-cores are not designed or optimized for being blasted with heavy loads. The whole point is to have heavy, more intense operations on the p-cores, while background tasks sit on the e-cores, which should actually balance power consumption far better than synthetic benches would suggest.


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## easyrider (Nov 6, 2021)

No meaningful performance Advantage with 12900k and Windows 11


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## ogrim1 (Nov 6, 2021)

from this post more or less flawed test but nonetheless interesting

i9 running with 6P-cores + 8E-cores NOT 8P-cores-8E cores
35W (cores, 44W SoC)
14288 Cinebench score

M1 Max:
30W
12326 Cinebench score

From quick search- the numbers below may vary:
Ryzen 5950x (PBO on)
160W (180W SoC)
Cinebanch Score +- 28500

Edit: also another quick search:
Intel Core i9-12900K 
overclocked probably way over 200W
Cinebach score 27198

So please shut up already about watts as the power gain is not even close to linear and you won't see these 200W numbers on your PC ever
w8 for a real world test, check the prices, check the drivers, check the system, check the daw and then buy whatever you want and I bet 12600k would be enough for at least 90% of this forum (at least for music related stuff).
Upgrade path is also highly overrated.


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## Pictus (Nov 6, 2021)

easyrider said:


> No meaningful performance Advantage with 12900k and Windows 11



Win 11 has more bloat, but after removing/disabling and tweaking it is nice.

To remove the bloat
https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/msmg-toolkit.50572/ (check the video guide)
or
https://www.ntlite.com/

Tweaks
https://forums.mydigitallife.net/th...fications-overview.83744/page-20#post-1687577
+
https://github.com/builtbybel/ThisIsWin11
+
https://www.w10privacy.de/english-home/
or
https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

More stuff
https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v1-6/
+
https://www.sordum.org/9480/defender-control-v2-0/
+
https://www.binisoft.org/wfc.php
+
https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/
or
https://www.ghisler.com/
+
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns
+
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer


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## Jeffrey Peterson (Nov 10, 2021)

d.healey said:


> 12600 seems like the best value. DDR5 doesn't seem to be anything special for most use cases, especially with the lag in current modules.


There is lag in the current modules?


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## Jdiggity1 (Nov 10, 2021)

Certainly much higher latency figures than I'm used to seeing.
As somebody who has been told how important the CAS latency is when it comes to choosing memory modules, I also don't think I'm ready to jump into the DDR5 camp just yet.
Though I _am_ going to build a 12900k system very soon. I've waited long enough...


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