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We have already seen what Alder Lake can do on the desktop (see our Alder Lake performance review), and it is quite impressive. However, the hybrid nature of the platform has the potential to be a boon for laptops, with the efficiency cores (E-cores) perhaps helping to extend battery life. We'll see in due time. For now, we're just trying to get an idea of what SKUs will manifest, and to that end there is an interesting benchmark leak highlighting a supposed Core i7-12650H chip. In case anyone is wondering, there aren't any official laptop chips based on Alder Lake, not yet anyway. Unofficially, however, we have seen a few unannounced SKUs show up in benchmark leaks like the one we are writing...
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Never mind that Alder Lake is just now beginning to get its feet wet in the consumer space, it's never too early to look at what is next. And what is next (barring a surprise shift in Intel's roadmap) is Raptor Lake. Perhaps suggesting that everything is on track for a 13th Gen Core processor launch next year, a Raptor Lake chip has made an appearance in an early benchmark leak. Or very early, we should say, because it could be around a full year from now before Raptor Lake releases. Whatever the case might be, an apparent 13th Gen chip showed up in BAPCo's database for its cross-platform CrossMark benchmark. The performance results are unspectacular (which isn't surprising at this early stage),...
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Around a month ago, MSI teased us with renders depicting its stunning MEG Z690 Godlike motherboard for Intel's Alder Lake platform. We're still waiting for it to release. Until it does, we have some delightful photos to feast our eyeballs on, courtesy of a popular leaker who uploaded a small handful of product shots to Twittter. You can see the two main ones above. The actual motherboard is on the left while the retail packaging sits on the right. Or perhaps that is the retail packaging for reviewers only. Zooming into the lower-right corner reveals some interesting text. "MEG CoreLiquid S360 liquid cooling and Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 memory included," the packaging states. We're not aware of...
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In the early going, there is a single chipset available for Alder Lake—Z690, which happens to be Intel's flagship offering. That's not surprising, as chip makers like to put their best feet forward when launching generational products. However, more mainstream chipsets are on the horizon and a fresh leak purports to show how they compare to Z690. It is generally assumed that Intel will flesh out its Alder Lake chipset family with H670, B660, and H610 offerings. While nothing has been announced yet, it would be odd for Intel to suddenly change up its naming convention, even with Alder Lake introducing a different kind of makeup compared to most past releases (save for Lakefield, to some...
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More evidence is piling up to suggest Intel will soon be expanding its Alder Lake universe with mobile chips for laptops. Our best guess is a Consumer Electronics Show unveiling next month. We'll see, but in the meantime, another overseas retailer has posted listings for gaming laptops with unreleased and unannounced Alder Lake laptop chips. There are three of them, all of which are part of Acer's Nitro 5 lineup. The most potent of the bunch (AN515-58) rocks a Core i7-12700H processor paired with a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU, which is another part that could see an unveiling next month (NVIDIA's current mobile Ampere stack consists of the GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, 3060, 3050 Ti, and 3050). Click to...
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If you are looking to build a PC around one of Intel's newfangled Alder Lake CPUs, it's Z690 or bust, as far as the motherboard platform goes. The vast majority of Z690 motherboards that are out so far cost north of $200 (some are far north). That's not unexpected given that Z690 is a top-tier chipset, though if you're looking for a more affordable route into Alder Lake territory, hang tight because B660 is likely right around the bend. Evidence of this can be found in a supposed leaked price list of several MSI B660 motherboards. Assuming the price list is actually real, MSI will introduce at least ten B660 motherboards in the not-too-distant future, with MSRPs dipping down as low as $119. The...
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By all accounts, AMD is back in the game with its Zen architecture, and has especially hit its stride with Zen 3. From the desktop (Ryzen) to the data center (EPYC), AMD has been gaining ground on its rival, and at times has even laid claim to the performance crown. Be that as it may, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has a very interesting perspective on Intel's market share losses and AMD's gains. "I haven't lost share to AMD, I've given share to AMD, because I didn't have capacity. So a lot of this is just catch up to our growing market and years of under investment," Gelsinger said at the 25th Credit Suisse Technology Conference. That's quite the statement. It's also a truncated one in need of context....
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Increasingly potent gaming laptops running a combination of Alder Lake and Ampere hardware appear to be right around the corner. As it pertains to the former, Intel has not yet introduced any mobile CPUs based on its 12th Gen Core Alder Lake architecture, but it's only a matter of time before it does. And while we wait, retailer listings for gaming laptops wielding unreleased components have begun to pop up. According to multiple retailer listings, MSI is getting ready to introduce Raider GE76 (17.3-inch) and GE66 (15.6-inch) models with upgraded hardware, once Intel and NVIDIA get around to announcing their upcoming mobile CPUs and GPUs, respectively. So far that includes the Core i9-12900HK,...
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If you read our Alder Lake performance review, then you're already familiar with how Intel's upper-tier 12th Gen Core processors handle themselves in a variety of workloads (Spoiler: really well). But what about the other end of the spectrum? We can't say for sure until Intel fleshes out its lineup with more SKUs and we've had a chance to test them. But in the meantime, someone managed to get their mitts on a Core i3-12100 engineering sample and ran a bunch of benchmarks with it. To be very clear, the Core i3-12100 does not officially exist yet. Meaning, it is not a part that has been announced. At present, this is what Intel's Alder Lake stack looks looks like... Intel Alder Lake SKUs - Click...
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You want to have a look at the non-overclockable versions of Intel's Alder Lake 12Th Gen Core desktop CPU lineup? Well, there they are, pictured plain as day right above this text. Have a gander, if you want. These pictures come to us by way of a post on Zhihu, which is a Chinese social media site that is sort of like someone stuck Twitter and Yahoo Answers in a blender. Poster DDAA117 slapped up these images along with a snarky remark mocking foreign (to China) Tech press and commenting that the chips are already "rotting in the street" over in China. These do appear to be legitimate photos of Intel's mainstream 12th-generation desktop processors, and assuming that they are legitimate, they're...
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Judging by the way many people talk about them, it seems like a large contingent of folks don't realize that 12th-generation Intel Core desktop processors based on Alder Lake have actually been released. They're out there; you can go buy them right now, along with compatible motherboards and premium-priced (at least for now) DDR5 memory. What hasn't hit the market yet are Intel's 12th-generation mobile processors, but it looks like they're on the way. Late yesterday, the EVP and GM of Intel's Client Computing Group Gregory Bryant tweeted a collage of photos of Intel employees standing outside the company's Haifa, Israel complex holding the aforementioned 12th-generation...
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There is a lot to digest in the latest GPU shipment report from Jon Peddie Research, which really highlights the fact that we are in a unique time period. Silicon shortages abound and it is next to impossible to find a graphics card in stock. Yet shipments of discrete GPUs continue to climb, while overall GPU shipments both rose and fell. Say what now? Let's start with overall GPU shipments. As a whole, the GPU market reached 101 million units in the third quarter of 2021, which represents a sizable 18.2% decrease from the previous quarter. If we hone in on the individual players, AMD saws its overall GPU shipments decline 11.4% sequentially while Intel's shipments plummeted 25.6%. Only NVIDIA...
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As we wait for Intel to introduce its first modern discrete desktop graphics cards, the leaks and questions are starting to pile up. For example, will Arc Alchemist in flagship form give AMD and NVIDIA a run for their money in the high-end GPU space? What will inventories look like, and what price points are we looking at? We won't have concrete answers until next year, which is in part what makes benchmark leaks so interesting in the meantime. Even ones that land with a whimper. Such is the case with a series of leaks that popped up over at Geekbench. An apparent test platform wielding what purports to be an Arc Alchemist GPU with 512 execution units posted some rather lethargic scores, compared...
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Alder Lake and benchmark leaks have gone hand-in-hand, and that continues to be the case now that Intel has launched its initial batch of 12th Gen Core processors. The leaks keep coming because there are more Alder Lake CPUs on the horizon, both on the desktop and the first mobile/laptop parts. Regarding the latter, a Core i7-12700H has for the first time been spotted in a Cinebench benchmark leak. We have seen this chip make unofficial appearances before, including recently—just last week we highlighted a Geekbench entry in which the Core i7-12700H hitched a ride with a Gigabyte Aorus 5 XE laptop and proceeded to crush the competition in multi-core performance. This latest benchmark leak...
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You can bet your bottom dollar that more Alder Lake CPUs are coming. We don't have confirmation on what the full stack (or a fleshed out stack) might look like yet but if past and present leaks are on the money, the Core i5-12400 will be one of them. One of the newest benchmark leaks hints it could give the Ryzen 5 5600X some serious competition in the bang-for-buck space. There are caveats that go along with that suggestion but before we get to those, let's go over the Core i5-12400's presumed specifications and leaked performance data. While Alder Lake is making waves for its hybrid design, the Core i5-12400 will purportedly roll solo with Golden Cove cores—it's said to feature six of...
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If you can remember when the Intel 4004 debuted, don't forget to take Ibuprofen for your backache. Recognized as the world' first commercially available processor, the Intel 4004 is now 50 years old after having launched back in November 1971. How do you celebrate 50 years? By stripping down and showing you still got it, of course! Okay, maybe that's not how everyone commemorates 50 years. But that's the kind of party extreme overclocker and the CEO of HWBot Roman "der8auer" Hartung decided to throw for Intel's first processor, a 4-bit wonder (at the time) that proved complex integrated circuits could fit on a chip no bigger than a human fingernail. "[Looking back at] 1970, it was clear that...
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If you thought the launch of Alder Lake on the desktop would mark the end of the 12th Gen Core benchmark leaks, think again. Not only are there more desktop chips undoubtedly coming, but there will be a mobile launch at some point too. Regarding the latter, an unannounced Core i7-12800H has jumped into the leaked benchmark ring and put its eventual predecessors in a headlock. This was a tag team bout with its partner being a Gigabyte Aorus 15 YE4 gaming laptop that will evidently employ the future chip. The two unreleased parts landed at Geekbench. According to the benchmark listing, the Core i7-12800H is a 14-core/20-thread processor with a 2.8GHz base frequency and 24MB of L3 cache. Here's...
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Prior to the retail launch of Alder Lake, early engineering and qualification samples (ES and QS) had traded hands in China by way of sale posts in various forums and other outlets. Now they are starting to appear on eBay, but if you are considering buying one be advised that they may not work with your motherboard. That's just one of the issues that makes buying ES and QS chips generally a bad idea. Technically these are early processors provided on loan to OEMs and other entities and are not supposed to be sold, even though they sometimes are (as is happening now). They belong to Intel and do not come with a warranty or support. "Engineering sample processors are pre-production units and are...
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A patent application filed by Intel suggests its next-gen Raptor Lake processors could implement a rather clever mechanism to reduce power usage by as much as 25 percent. Intel actually filed the patent back in January of 2020, but what it describes is not present on its 12th Gen Core Alder Lake processors that released to retail earlier this month. What typically happens when shifting to a smaller node is the resulting product brings with it better power efficiency. Architectural tweaks not directly related to smaller nodes can have the same benefit. Looking ahead to Raptor Lake, however, Intel's patent application hints it could implement a Digital Linear Voltage Regulator (D-LVR) for further...
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In our Intel 12th Gen Core Alder Lake review, the latest desktop silicon from Chipzilla lived up to the hype, managing some clear wins in a bunch of benchmarks. Our overall evaluation of the Core i9-12900K and Core i7-12600K is a little more nuanced than that, but simply put, Intel is back in the fight. What about in the mobile space? We still only have benchmark leaks to go by, but things are looking promising in laptop land as well. This time it's a Gigabyte Aero 5 XE equipped with a Core i7-12700H processor that is making laps in the leaked benchmark circuit. Over at Geekbench's track, it posted a decent single-threaded score and a much more impressive multi-threaded score, the latter of which...
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The only chipset that's been announced for Intel's 12th Gen Core Alder Lake processors so far is Z690. Intel is getting things started at the high-end, with Z690 supporting all the newfangled technologies that Alder Lake is embracing, and especially DDR5 memory and PCI Express 5.0. But what about the rest of the stack? It's possible that Intel's more mainstream chipsets will stick with PCI Express 4.0 for another round. Nothing is for certain, but assuming Intel follows its own precedent, at minimum there will be H670, B660, and H610 chipsets added to the mix to address the home consumer market. What makes this is a unique launch that leaves some things up to guesswork is that Alder Lake is a...
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It seems a little funny to already be talking about Raptor Lake when Alder Lake has only just arrived to retail. But that's how the beat of the technology drum goes. So what do we know about Raptor Lake? It's expected to be a less dramatic architectural upgrade next round, and will in all likelihood even retain support for DDR4 memory, just like Alder Lake. Alder Lake, as you're probably aware, supports both DDR4 and DDR5 memory. We have not yet taken an in-depth look at the performance comparison between the two memory types, but a glance around the web suggests that opting for DDR5 offers only a negligible advantage in certain applications (like gaming), while having a more substantial impact...
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