The first 12th-gen Intel "Alder Lake" CPUs to hit the market will target enthusiasts

[nanoguy]

Highly anticipated: Intel is scrambling to get Alder Lake ready, but the company may only reveal the enthusiast grade CPUs in the new lineup at its upcoming event. The rest of the Alder Lake family will make an appearance at CES 2022, which isn't surprising when you consider that most people wouldn't have a reason to upgrade to the new platform with the current lack of DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 devices.

Details about Intel's upcoming 12th-gen Core CPUs have been scarce, but we do know that Chipzilla is scrambling to get it out into the wild as soon as possible, especially after the lukewarm Rocket Lake release. Intel even forgot to release graphics drivers for Rocket Lake CPUs, and had to adjust prices downward after making them available on the market, even as the chip shortage would dictate otherwise.

Earlier this week at the Intel Accelerated event, the company explained in broad strokes how it plans to advance its process technology over the next three years. Most notably, CEO Pat Gelsinger revealed that Intel is moving away from nanometer-based naming to provide "a more accurate view of process nodes across the industry."

This is Intel's way of making it clear that its 10nm process technology is mostly on par in terms of transistor density with 7nm process technology from the likes of TSMC and Samsung. And it's definitely not just a marketing ploy, as we've seen that Intel CPUs built using the company's 10nm SuperFin technology are quite competitive with AMD's Ryzen CPUs built on TSMC's 7nm process.

Gelsinger said the next big announcements will be made at an upcoming event in October 27. This is where Alder Lake is expected to be unveiled, but according to a report from Igor's Lab this could be focused on the high end, K and KF processors as well as Z690 motherboards. Other CPUs in the Alder Lake lineup are expected to make an appearance later, at CES 2022, along with H670, B660, and H610 chipsets.

The Intel Z690 chipset is expected to support both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, and there are rumors suggesting Alder Lake will be the first platform to support PCIe 5.0. That said, SSD and graphics card manufacturers have yet to come up with hardware that can take advantage of the new spec. Graphics cards have yet to push the limits of PCIe 4.0, and the first PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers won't be ready until next year.

Alder Lake will be Intel's first processors to arrive using a big.LITLE design similar to Arm's, which combines high-powered cores with energy-efficient ones. Intel pretty much confirmed that the new CPUs will be built on an enhanced 10nm SuperFin process node called Intel 7, which is supposed to offer 10 to 15 percent more performance-per-watt compared to the previous generation. Here's to hoping Rocket Lake wasn't made boring on purpose to make Alder Lake look like a big upgrade, but even if that's the case we're still excited to see what Intel has in store with this new architecture.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/90590-first-12th-gen-intel-alder-lake-cpus-hit.html

 

[Lounds]

So it'll be £500 for the CPU and £300 for a motherboard...

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I m waiting till DDR5 motherboards come to market so I may get into Intel Core i9 during the 13th Generation instead.

 

[LinxESP]

PCIe 5 (why do we say .0?) already? How long has 4.0 lasted in servers?

 

[yRaz]

PCIe 5 (why do we say .0?) already? How long has 4.0 lasted in servers?

Because when PCIe 2.0 came out people pronounced it as "two point oh" and the "point oh" has just stuck.

 

[Geralt]

PCIe 5 means faster NVMe's in the near future. Along with internet speeds, disk speed is the only thing that must be improved. Our GPU's and CPU's are already extremely powerful for now.

 

[VitalyT]

I think the word "enthusiasts" is misused here, and in fact means suckers. There won't be anything good from Intel, you can give up all your hope from start...

The way they completely fumbled the 11-th gen was in itself astonishing - the first ever generation that's slower than the previous, quite a feat.

This one will come out even more expensive, with some components, like DDR5 being astronomically expensive, so whoever tries to get into it first will be the top sucker.

 

[Geralt]

I think the word "enthusiasts" is misused here, and in fact means suckers. There won't be anything good from Intel, you can give up all your hope from start...

The way they completely fumbled the 11-th gen was in itself astonishing - the first ever generation that's slower than the previous, quite a feat.

This one will come out even more expensive, with some components, like DDR5 being astronomically expensive, so whoever tries to get into it first will be the top sucker.

I know a solid candidate to be a first adopter

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Because when PCIe 2.0 came out people pronounced it as "two point oh" and the "point oh" has just stuck.

There was a pcie 2.1.

I just figured the .X was just a version placeholder.

 

[Gimp65]

PCIe 5 means faster NVMe's in the near future. Along with internet speeds, disk speed is the only thing that must be improved. Our GPU's and CPU's are already extremely powerful for now.

In the near future ? Where are the NVME's that come even close to utilizing the full bandwidth of PCI-gen 4 ?

 

[yRaz]

There was a pcie 2.1.

I just figured the .X was just a version placeholder.

It does act as a placeholder but I think 2.1 is the only one that made use of it.

 

[Geralt]

In the near future ? Where are the NVME's that come even close to utilizing the full bandwidth of PCI-gen 4 ?

PCIe 4.0 is generally x4 in most NVME's. This delivers a maximum speed of 7.88 GB/s. My Samsung 980 Pro reaches 7 GB/s, so it almost saturated the bandwidth. Source: https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/business/asset/KIOXIA_CM6-CD6_FAQ.pdf

 

[Axle Grease]

There's K, KF, and there is also the X (Extreme) skew for those of us who also want more memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes. AMD don't have an equivalent else I would not even consider getting another Intel CPU. The i7-5960X has provided me with excellent performance since 2014.

 

[Geralt]

There's K, KF, and there is also the X (Extreme) skew for those of us who also want more memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes. AMD don't have an equivalent else I would not even consider getting another Intel CPU. The i7-5960X has provided me with excellent performance since 2014.

Ryzen's are overall better chips with more cores, and there is no doubt about it. Intel chips are only for fanboys right now. Expensive CPU's and mobos with an inferior technology for manufacturing them (10 nm vs 7 nm --> moving to 5 nm next year). No way for Intel to catch up with AMD for the foreseeable future. They slept too many years on their laurels after their impressive Sandy Bridge architecture in 2011.

 

[maxxcool7421]

That is terrible news. I am not interested in 4/8 cores of utter mediocrity .. just give me 8 cores with more cache.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Power users literally and metaphorically.

 

[Adi6293]

I'm sticking with my overclocked i9 10850K for good few years

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Intel acts like Apple by releasing a new generation every year. Remember back in the days when processor would be released maybe every 2-4 years. I mean how many years did the pentium 4 last. Now a days by the time the new generation comes out they had already started working on the next lol. Give it some time so people can actually enjoy the performance and take advantage of it. How many of us including myself instead just say, eh I'll wait till the next generation...

 

[umbala]

So it'll be £500 for the CPU and £300 for a motherboard...

What a bargain!

 

[hahahanoobs]

I think the word "enthusiasts" is misused here, and in fact means suckers. There won't be anything good from Intel, you can give up all your hope from start...

The way they completely fumbled the 11-th gen was in itself astonishing - the first ever generation that's slower than the previous, quite a feat.

This one will come out even more expensive, with some components, like DDR5 being astronomically expensive, so whoever tries to get into it first will be the top sucker.

And if it's amazing and everyone is fighting to get it, you'll publicly admit you were dead wrong or what?

Anyone can make a 50/50 prediction, so it confuses me when I constantly see them directed at the same places. Yet one company always seems to get a pass no matter what they do. No thanks. use your "predictions" sparingly and they won't come across as just blabber.

 

[Geralt]

Intel acts like Apple by releasing a new generation every year. Remember back in the days when processor would be released maybe every 2-4 years. I mean how many years did the pentium 4 last. Now a days by the time the new generation comes out they had already started working on the next lol. Give it some time so people can actually enjoy the performance and take advantage of it. How many of us including myself instead just say, eh I'll wait till the next generation...

Still not fully using my 16 cores in the 3950!

 

[Jimbin89]

I think the word "enthusiasts" is misused here, and in fact means suckers. There won't be anything good from Intel, you can give up all your hope from start...

The way they completely fumbled the 11-th gen was in itself astonishing - the first ever generation that's slower than the previous, quite a feat.

This one will come out even more expensive, with some components, like DDR5 being astronomically expensive, so whoever tries to get into it first will be the top sucker.

The first Pentium 4's performed worse than the Pentium 3's...........

 

[Austinturner]

PCIe 5 means faster NVMe's in the near future. Along with internet speeds, disk speed is the only thing that must be improved. Our GPU's and CPU's are already extremely powerful for now.

Now we just need Direct Storage APIs to be broadly adopted, I believe that is the key to getting the performance benefits of even existing NVMe drives by removing the IO bottleneck? Then PCIe 5 performance improvements would actually do something compared to 3 or 4 (or even sata…). https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directstorage-is-coming-to-pc/

 

[3volv3d]

So it'll be £500 for the CPU and £300 for a motherboard...

No those are today's prices anyway.
They must have 3 billion TVs spare on the planet cause they didn't shoot up in price.
Toilet roll didn't shoot up in price.
But PC builders are mugs who love to boast about their builds and the cost. So the more they charge the more dumb them Instagram influencers look an the bigger Intel and the likes bank rolls get.

More evidence that the interwebs is full of interdweebs. The internet is just like real life. Better in the 90s with a smaller population, and less control. Now where's my AoL CD.

 

[texasrattler]

Ryzen's are overall better chips with more cores, and there is no doubt about it. Intel chips are only for fanboys right now. Expensive CPU's and mobos with an inferior technology for manufacturing them (10 nm vs 7 nm --> moving to 5 nm next year). No way for Intel to catch up with AMD for the foreseeable future. They slept too many years on their laurels after their impressive Sandy Bridge architecture in 2011.

May help if you read the article. Intels 10nm will be on par with AMDs 7nm. So no, AMDs 7nm wont be leaving INTEL in the dust like ppl think.
Intel ran with 14nm+++ and it competed with AMD until AMDs 4th gen. Yes AMD are finally good but Intel will be right there in 2022.