Intel i9-12900K Alder Lake Linux Performance In Different P/E Core Configurations

[birdie]

Is there a setting somewhere to hide posts by users of my choice? A blocklist. I've seen such features on other forums, it is quite a useful feature. I'll have another look in the settings but haven't spotted it yet. Thanks.

The setting, Ignore List, is at the bottom of the page: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/settings/account

[mr_marmalade]

Is there a setting somewhere to hide posts by users of my choice? A blocklist. I've seen such features on other forums, it is quite a useful feature. I'll have another look in the settings but haven't spotted it yet. Thanks.

[MadCatX]

I've seen tons of reviews and disabling E-cores may at most net you a few % FPS boost. I see no "mess" here at all, more like W10/W11 schedulers could be a tad better.

Having to disable half of your CPU to *gain*performance is nothing short of a clusterfuck IMO.

[Grinness]

I've seen tons of reviews and disabling E-cores may at most net you a few % FPS boost. I see no "mess" here at all, more like W10/W11 schedulers could be a tad better.

On the other hand Linux cannot properly manage ADL CPUs at all, so I'm not sure what is that people are discussing here at all. Linux users currently should just forget about ADL CPUs altogether. So much for "stellar" hardware support in Linux except when it doesn't support something as basic as a 100% x86-64 compatible CPU.

Back in to your rat hole

[MadCatX]

From what I can see it looks like a HT'd P-core has about the same performance as a P-core + E-core combo. While there might be some performance left on the table due to suboptimalscheduling, I wonder if a chip with, say, 12 P-cores wouldn't be a better design than this hybrid mess. It probably wouldn't use much more power that 8P+8E chip, it wouldn't need all kinds of software trickery to work properly and AVX-512 would work out of the box. And considering that Sapphire Rapids will have no E-cores, it'd clearly be doable. I get it that Intel needs something to compete against ARM in the mobile segment but this hybrid core idea looks like a step in the Itanium direction. It *might* be more interesting in laptops.

[Grinness]

they were very successful at showing that...

I am happy those lads made it, good for them. I got bored listening to their videos on the matter

[birdie]

Well, if you look at gaming performance with E cores enabled, it is a mess, as you better disabling them to get more performance ...
what you call a processor that behave like this? a beautiful idea? a wonderful solution?

Again, it would have been great to see direct comparison with 5900X: 24 threads AMD + 24 threads (8P+HT+8E)

Note: I am happy that a new CPU (Intel) is 'better' than an older CPU (AMD) ... let's the when the 'new' becomes 'old'

I've seen tons of reviews and disabling E-cores may at most net you a few % FPS boost. I see no "mess" here at all, more like W10/W11 schedulers could be a tad better.

On the other hand Linux cannot properly manage ADL CPUs at all, so I'm not sure what is that people are discussing here at all. Linux users currently should just forget about them altogether. So much for "stellar" hardware support in Linux except when it doesn't support something as basic as a 100% x86-64 compatible CPU.

A much better "sweet spot" would be to just buy a 12700K. Mostly the same performance while much better power use and cost.

I totally agree with that and many reviewers as well. 12900K is for ultimate overclockers and people seeking performance no matter what. :-)

[smitty3268]

I see an impressive uArch which has the best in the world x86 single- and multi-threaded performance (in terms of performance per core). The temps are a bit high but that can be easily fixed by setting PL1/PL2 limits. A sweet spot for 12900K is around 170-190W.

A much better "sweet spot" would be to just buy a 12700K. Mostly the same performance while much better power use and cost.

[Grinness]

Another one with "the mess". Are you sure you're using the right word here? HW Unboxed has actually praised Alder Lake and put it above Ryzens in their "Best 2021 CPUs":

Well, if you look at gaming performance with E cores enabled, it is a mess, as you better disabling them to get more performance ...
what you call a processor that behave like this? a beautiful idea? a wonderful solution?

Again, it would have been great to see direct comparison with 5900X: 24 threads AMD + 24 threads (8P+HT+8E)

Note: I am happy that a new CPU (Intel) is 'better' than an older CPU (AMD) ... let's the when the 'new' becomes 'old'

[sdack]

... the first few posts were clearly trolls ...

Sorry, but you are wrong.

What users expect from a CPU is that it runs all of their software well and not just some of it. These benchmarks show one has to look much closer with Alder Lake than before and one is possibly forced to tweak BIOS settings on Alder Lake systems in order to get the most out of them.

This is definitely not what users want. Geeks and nerds may enjoy experimenting with BIOS settings, but the majority of users and developers expect that it just works and that it does so well. So yes, it is a mess Intel has created here, and it is left to others to sort it out.