INTEL CPUs *OC Benchmark & Discussion*

[zjllee]

Thank you so much for the replies. I haven't been keeping up with DIY PC components in a while so it is good to get info from people in the know. Happy lunar new year!

 

[poooooo]

I am coming from a i7-2600k what would be a logical upgrade if I want the enthusiast style overclockability and raw multi processing power for scientific and encoding work? Some light gaming on the side like city skylines and strategy games.

I am asking here as the build thread is dead...very sad.

TIA

overclockability is kinda dead if you compared to q6600 / sandy bridge era chips.

There isn't that much oc headroom for 12th gen or ryzen cpus. At most squeeze a little bit more at the expense of generating a lot of heat and power. Most just work out of the box.

 

[elmariachi]

overclockability is kinda dead if you compared to q6600 / sandy bridge era chips.

There isn't that much oc headroom for 12th gen or ryzen cpus. At most squeeze a little bit more at the expense of generating a lot of heat and power. Most just work out of the box.

Most are focussing on memory overclocks on the Z690 Alderlake. Seems to be much more gains over CPU OC. That being said if you're just gaming, disable your E-cores and you can whack high frequency easily if you have a good chip with sufficient cooling. 5.5Ghz single core with all core around 5.2Ghz-5.4Ghz. Tremendous uplift in games and also reduces your latency as your ring will run at 4.7Ghz as compared to 4.0Ghz stock.

 

[poooooo]

Most are focussing on memory overclocks on the Z690 Alderlake. Seems to be much more gains over CPU OC. That being said if you're just gaming, disable your E-cores and you can whack high frequency easily if you have a good chip with sufficient cooling. 5.5Ghz single core with all core around 5.2Ghz-5.4Ghz. Tremendous uplift in games and also reduces your latency as your ring will run at 4.7Ghz as compared to 4.0Ghz stock.

Why run at stock though? The advertised boosted speed is kinda expected out of the box experience.

 

[elmariachi]

Why run at stock though? The advertised boosted speed is kinda expected out of the box experience.

Stock all-core in games is only 4.9Ghz.
Overclocked via OCTVB with sufficient cooling can get you to allcore 5.2-5.4 in game.
Besides, e-core in games is practically unused unless you are doing some background work then e-cores will be active.

 

[poooooo]

Stock all-core in games is only 4.9Ghz.
Overclocked via OCTVB with sufficient cooling can get you to allcore 5.2-5.4 in game.
Besides, e-core in games is practically unused unless you are doing some background work then e-cores will be active.

And how much uplift does it translate in real life? For examples the game that you plays with your system, using stock(+ auto boosting ) vs manual ocing?

I agree with you on memory ocing helps and e-core not being useful in gaming other than to offload background tasks to them.

 

[elmariachi]

And how much uplift does it translate in real life? For examples the game that you plays with your system, using stock(+ auto boosting ) vs manual ocing?

I agree with you on memory ocing helps and e-core not being useful in gaming other than to offload background tasks to them.

The purpose to disable e-cores is to reduce memory latency. Stock vs Overclocked on CPU with my setup is less than 10-12fps. But the response due to disabling e-cores and increasing the ringbus to 47x drops memory latency. This itself is noticeably responsive.

 

[matique]

Wah.......RTX3090FE is really no joke.

A card which I really want to get for building a GPU server cluster.

Actually the card is just a medium performer due to the 400w limit. Trio/Suprim/Strix/FTW3/Hof all could do better.

 

[obichacha]

G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 2x16GB DDR5 6400 @ S$935 on Newegg SG!

I heard not many mobo is support up to 6400mhz

 

[purpleberry]

If you are into ITX casing, I suppose its not a good time to upgrade? No ITX mobo supports DDR4 except for Gigabyte but that only supports 1 m.2.

 

[watzup_ken]

If you are into ITX casing, I suppose its not a good time to upgrade? No ITX mobo supports DDR4 except for Gigabyte but that only supports 1 m.2.

Yes, but that board appears to have a lot of issues as well based on what I read when I was considering getting this DDR4 board.

I generally feel that Intel's new platform is too expensive and too complex to work on an ITX board. Good boards end up with some daughter boards to attempt to go around the real estate issue. The beefy heatsink for the VRMs are big and close to the CPU plus the increase in height of NVME SSD heatsinks also makes it a challenge to mount big coolers and some AIOs as well, it is too much of a hassle to go with ITX.

 

[UO]

1200 series, overclock ram timings produce improvements like Ryzen?

 

[matique]

Yes, but that board appears to have a lot of issues as well based on what I read when I was considering getting this DDR4 board.

I generally feel that Intel's new platform is too expensive and too complex to work on an ITX board. Good boards end up with some daughter boards to attempt to go around the real estate issue. The beefy heatsink for the VRMs are big and close to the CPU plus the increase in height of NVME SSD heatsinks also makes it a challenge to mount big coolers and some AIOs as well, it is too much of a hassle to go with ITX.

Yeah this is true. Only way to handle high power cpu in itx is via custom loops like mine.

 

[Deceased]

Yes, but that board appears to have a lot of issues as well based on what I read when I was considering getting this DDR4 board.

I generally feel that Intel's new platform is too expensive and too complex to work on an ITX board. Good boards end up with some daughter boards to attempt to go around the real estate issue. The beefy heatsink for the VRMs are big and close to the CPU plus the increase in height of NVME SSD heatsinks also makes it a challenge to mount big coolers and some AIOs as well, it is too much of a hassle to go with ITX.

Agree that it’s complex and expensive. But if done well it’s actually quite amazing. Temps are also decent too.

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/26144368

 

[watzup_ken]

Agree that it’s complex and expensive. But if done well it’s actually quite amazing. Temps are also decent too.

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/26144368

It is doable, but generally via AIO cooler setup just as you showed. And not all AIO coolers will fit as well. Tower air cooler is possible, but need to check dimensions very carefully. The picture you showed just show how crammed it is on an ITX board. It has always been cram, but it seems to be getting worst. I may be wrong, but my existing Asus B460i don't look this cram.

 

[purpleberry]

Yeah this is true. Only way to handle high power cpu in itx is via custom loops like mine.

Yes, but that board appears to have a lot of issues as well based on what I read when I was considering getting this DDR4 board.

I generally feel that Intel's new platform is too expensive and too complex to work on an ITX board. Good boards end up with some daughter boards to attempt to go around the real estate issue. The beefy heatsink for the VRMs are big and close to the CPU plus the increase in height of NVME SSD heatsinks also makes it a challenge to mount big coolers and some AIOs as well, it is too much of a hassle to go with ITX.

Very interested in CM NR200 but with the way DDR5 is priced, I might have to wait a bit longer. Quite surprised Asus B660i boards does not come with DDR4 version.

For those into AIO, how is the durability compared to fans? Good for at least 5-7 years? Eyeing Kraken X53 if I decide to.

 

[watzup_ken]

Very interested in CM NR200 but with the way DDR5 is priced, I might have to wait a bit longer. Quite surprised Asus B660i boards does not come with DDR4 version.

For those into AIO, how is the durability compared to fans? Good for at least 5-7 years? Eyeing Kraken X53 if I decide to.

DDR4 boards are really just a stop gap solution due to shortage and high prices of DDR5 memory. I feel it is extra cost to the mobo makers since they need to make both a DDR5 and DDR4 version. I don't believe it is just a simple change of the ram slot that will do the trick. There will be board level changes as well. So not surprising they will just offer a very limited range of DDR4 boards.

I have not used AIO for that long to comment, but I feel if you thinking like 5 to 7 years, air cooling is the safer choice. Fan spoil, just change the fan. And good fans usually don't fail that fast. There are more points of failure with AIO coolers, e.g. pump and liquid evaporation.

 

[elmariachi]

DDR4 boards are really just a stop gap solution due to shortage and high prices of DDR5 memory. I feel it is extra cost to the mobo makers since they need to make both a DDR5 and DDR4 version. I don't believe it is just a simple change of the ram slot that will do the trick. There will be board level changes as well. So not surprising they will just offer a very limited range of DDR4 boards.

I have not used AIO for that long to comment, but I feel if you thinking like 5 to 7 years, air cooling is the safer choice. Fan spoil, just change the fan. And good fans usually don't fail that fast. There are more points of failure with AIO coolers, e.g. pump and liquid evaporation.

DDR4 boards exists because the mid and lower end tier SKU CPUs are targeted to the lower end market where people do not want to pay for new tech and flagship specs. This has to exist because Intel cannot depend on the high end market to sustain. The B660 boards also released shortly after Z690 to capitalise on this. DDR5 prices are coming down though at a slow pace. But the amount of work on ddr5 and progress is mind-blowing. I would expect ddr5 to have a good adoption rate once AMD releases their Zen4 and Intel's Raptorlake. DDR4 would still exist as we know for Intel chipset at least to cater to the budget conscious market who would still like to use their existing memory sticks. But most vendors are already focussing heavily on ddr5 moving ahead so I expect adoption rate to grow towards end of this year.

 

[watzup_ken]

DDR4 boards exists because the mid and lower end tier SKU CPUs are targeted to the lower end market where people do not want to pay for new tech and flagship specs. This has to exist because Intel cannot depend on the high end market to sustain. The B660 boards also released shortly after Z690 to capitalise on this. DDR5 prices are coming down though at a slow pace. But the amount of work on ddr5 and progress is mind-blowing. I would expect ddr5 to have a good adoption rate once AMD releases their Zen4 and Intel's Raptorlake. DDR4 would still exist as we know for Intel chipset at least to cater to the budget conscious market who would still like to use their existing memory sticks. But most vendors are already focussing heavily on ddr5 moving ahead so I expect adoption rate to grow towards end of this year.

DDR4 won't survive for long. I recall LGA 1700 is only meant for 2 generations, and existing Intel boards may be compatible with Raptor Lake. Post Raptor Lake, I doubt Intel will support DDR4 even if DDR5 availability is poor. If AMD is going all DDR5 with Zen 4, then next gen CPUs will likely be the last time we see DDR4.

To me, Alder Lake is a great come back for Intel, but I cannot help but feel that Intel may have messed up the release very badly. The ongoing shortages may have contributed to it, but I think about why Alder Lake is not selling well, and these are some of the reasons I faced when I was planning to get it,
1. No DDR5 - Like I can't even find it late last year. I've not even gotten to the problem of DDR5 price.
2. Because no DDR5, so I looked for DDR4 boards. I was specifically looking for ITX, but not a single one available. The only Gigabyte Z690i on pre-order cost like mid 500s. The review is bad, it is ultra cram and I don't appreciate their poor response on the PSU saga, so hard pass. Options are thin even on MATX.
3. Barely any cooler with LGA 1700 support out of the box. Most require you to send in invoice and wait for them to ship it.
All these are just the hardware aspects of it. The situation has improved, but only slightly better. For software, I feel it is still on mushy ground. It may not be an Intel problem, but since I moved to Win 11 to try it out, the first game I launched, I got an error that shows no message when I stopped the game. Talk about stability. For people trying out Alder Lake with no E-cores, best to stick with Win 10.

 

[elmariachi]

DDR4 won't survive for long. I recall LGA 1700 is only meant for 2 generations, and existing Intel boards may be compatible with Raptor Lake. Post Raptor Lake, I doubt Intel will support DDR4 even if DDR5 availability is poor. If AMD is going all DDR5 with Zen 4, then next gen CPUs will likely be the last time we see DDR4.

To me, Alder Lake is a great come back for Intel, but I cannot help but feel that Intel may have messed up the release very badly. The ongoing shortages may have contributed to it, but I think about why Alder Lake is not selling well, and these are some of the reasons I faced when I was planning to get it,
1. No DDR5 - Like I can't even find it late last year. I've not even gotten to the problem of DDR5 price.
2. Because no DDR5, so I looked for DDR4 boards. I was specifically looking for ITX, but not a single one available. The only Gigabyte Z690i on pre-order cost like mid 500s. The review is bad, it is ultra cram and I don't appreciate their poor response on the PSU saga, so hard pass. Options are thin even on MATX.
3. Barely any cooler with LGA 1700 support out of the box. Most require you to send in invoice and wait for them to ship it.
All these are just the hardware aspects of it. The situation has improved, but only slightly better. For software, I feel it is still on mushy ground. It may not be an Intel problem, but since I moved to Win 11 to try it out, the first game I launched, I got an error that shows no message when I stopped the game. Talk about stability. For people trying out Alder Lake with no E-cores, best to stick with Win 10.

I wouldn't blame the supply of DDR5 on Intel completely. Many thought Alderlake would just be another Intel release with slight improvements so supply side especially PMIC chips were not able to catch up to the massive demand for 12th Gen. Massive demand again means not local context. I mean global.

AMD, if they had released DDR5 first would be in the same position as well perhaps slightly better if people based on Zen3's success. The good thing is that the Intel platform has a headstart on DDR5 tuning and many bugs have been sorted but there is still alot of work for plug and play compatibility as far as DDR5 is concerned. It's a pain in the ass to get stable even on XMP. And the learning curve is steep. But I'm blown away by the potential DDR5 has in the future given the current progress. Too good.

I've been getting my new Hynix 6400C32 kit stable last 2 days and 6400C30 is a great start. People are already 6800/7000 stable with the right setup.

One thing about Windows 11 is that there was a period Microsoft was solving issues for Ryzen's performance for Windows 11 and it broke game stability for particularly AVX games even on Intel CPUs. I had that too in Vanguard and I was advised to change to an earlier Windows 11 build that solved my issue. I think with the latest 469 build everything is back to normal including the performance drop for NVME on Windows 11 which was an issue December last year.

You can use Windows 10 if you're disabling E-cores. I've disabled them on mine as they aren't doing anything during gaming. So I pushed my P-Core to 5.5Ghz and Ring bus to 4.7Ghz which also improved memory latency. But I'm quite happy with Windows 11 now and quite like it even performance wise.

12th Gen is a mixed bag for starters as DDR5 stability even on XMP isn't perfect with some boards. And earlier G.Skills had some issues with their kits and stability which had nothing to do with the board/bios. They came out with a newer one with a slightly looser TRAS timing and 0.05V higher voltage. So those wanting to hop on to 12th Gen, homework is needed it's not blind buy and fix hoping for everything to work.