Intel released the 12th generation Core Alder Lake processor in 2021, a new "performance core + energy efficiency core" hybrid architecture design that balances performance and cost, with LinkedIn tel out of the AMD Zen 3 processor and the "shadow" of the 11th generation desktop Core.
Although the 12th generation Core is competitive, it only included 6 desktop CPUs at that time, and did not cover the mid-range desktop and notebook platforms. On January 5, everyone finally waited for the 12th generation Core on the mobile version and desktop side at CES. The mobile version includes 28 new products, and there are as many as 22 new products on the desktop side, covering almost all product lines and full price segments from dual-core Celeron to top i9.
AMD also released a new Ryzen 6000 series mobile processor at CES, and the new processor war for the X86 platform has begun. Will this year be an "Intel Strikes Back" or an "AMD Defense War"?
Desktop: 28 12th generation Core processors and 4 motherboards
Image source anandtech
Including the previous 6 models, the current 12th generation Core desktop product line has 28 products. The i9, i7 and the highest-end two i5 have energy-efficient cores, and further down, the number of core configurations has not changed much:
There are 5 models of the top i9, the whole series is 8 performance cores + 8 energy efficiency cores, 30MB L3 cache, TDP from 35W i9-12900T to 125W i9-12900K/KF, the highest turbo frequency 5.2GHz
The i7 series is also 5 models, all of which are 8 performance cores + 4 energy efficiency cores, 25MB L3 cache, TDP from 35W i7-12700T to 125W i7-12700K/KF, the highest turbo frequency 5.0GHz
The i5 series has 9 models, all of which have 6 performance cores, and the highest-end i5-12600K/KF (2.8-4.9GHz) also comes with 4 energy-efficient cores, 20MB L3 cache, and 125W TDP. The rest includes i5-12400/i5-12400T/i5-12400F, i5-12500/i5-12500T/i5-12500F, i5-12600 and other 7 models
The i3 series has 5 models, all of which are 4 performance cores, including i3-12100/i3-12100F/i3-12100T, i3-12300/i3-12300T
The Pentium has two models, the G7400 and the G7400T, and the Celeron has the G6900/G6900T, both of which have only 2 performance cores.
Note: The overclockable version with the K suffix, the F suffix is the nucleated version, the KF suffix is the nucleated OC version, and the T suffix is 35W TDP (i9-12900T Although it is 35W TDP, the Turbo power is still as high as 106W).
Of course, the most pleasing to players is the H670, B660 and H610 motherboards released together, which can effectively reduce the price of the 12th generation Core Board U kit compared to the previous expensive Z690 motherboard.
In addition, Intel has finally updated the official heatsink, including the RH1 heatsink with RGB lights, a copper bottom, which can press the Turbo power of 202W i9; and the i3 to i7 products are equipped with RM1 heat sinks, which can cope with the CPU of 180W Turbo power, while the entry-level Pentium and Celeron are paired with RS1 heatsinks.
Mobile: 28 new products in 3 series, claiming higher performance per watt than the M1 Max
The mobile side is also very lively, including the Alder Lake-H standard press plate for high-end game books, the Alder Lake-U low-voltage version for ultra-thin books, and the Alder Lake-P series for workstations, a total of 28 products.
Leading the way are the 8 Alder Lake-H standard plate processors, including i5 to i9, all of which are 45W TDP, with a suffix of 50 are all 4 energy-efficient core versions, and the rest are 8 energy-efficient cores:
i9-12900HK, i9-12900H, i7-12700H, i7-12800H are all 6 performance cores + 8 energy efficiency cores (a total of 20 threads), the first two performance cores have the highest frequency of 5.0GHz, and the latter two are 4.8 and 4.7GHz, respectively;
The i7-12650H is 6 performance cores + 4 energy efficiency cores (a total of 16 threads), with a maximum frequency of 4.7GHz;
The i5-12600H and i5-12500H are 4 performance cores + 8 energy efficiency cores (also 16 threads), with a maximum frequency of 4.5GHz
The i5-12450H is 4 performance cores + 4 energy efficiency cores (12 threads) with a maximum frequency of 4.4GHz
Intel says there are more than 100 products that will use 12th generation standard voltage processors, covering different products from 35W to 65W, claiming higher performance per watt than Apple's M1 Max and AMD R9-5900H (here because of the increase in absolute performance and stretched energy consumption ratio). Apple: Can you still compare with my 35W CPU? ), 1080p game performance increased by 28%, content creation performance increased by 44%.
The new Alder Lake-P series processors, designed specifically for workstation platforms, have a total of 6 models, and the core specifications are the same as the Alder Lake-H standard press, but the frequency is reduced in pursuit of energy efficiency, and the TDP is reduced from 55W to 28W.
There are 14 models for the ultra-thin Alder Lake-U low-voltage version, 15W TDP (named "12X5") and 9W TDP (named "12X0") 7 models each, mainly the frequency difference, here is the main mention of the former:
2P+8E 12 threads i7-1265U and i7-1255U (both with 96EU GPUs), i5-1254U and i5-1235U (GPU only 80EU, frequency is also lower)
2P+4E total 8 threads of i3-1215U, 64EU CPU
The Pentium 8505 and Celeron 7305 are both 1P+4E with a total of 6 threads
AMD Ryzen™ 6000 Series Processor Mobile: High Frequency CPU+ Doubles Core Display Performance
Also at CES, AMD also released a new Ryzen 6000 series mobile processor, with TSMC 6nm process, a new "Zen 3+" architecture CPU, and RDNA 2 architecture nuclear display. The new processors include 2 low-voltage versions of the U-Series (15W to 28W) and 8 standard-pressure versions of the H-Series (35W+ and 45W+).
Zen 3+ architecture is mainly to increase frequency and improve power management: R9-6980HX and R9-6980HS the highest frequency rush to 5GHz, AMD claims that the R7-6800U multi-threaded performance is increased by 130% (but AMD's 6800U is 28W, not 15W); reduce idle and high-frequency power consumption, improve the battery life of mobile devices, AMD claims to reduce the power consumption of web browsing and playing videos by 15%-40%.
Other CPU improvements include support for DDR5 memory (DDR5-5200 and LPDDR5-6400), support for PCIe 4.0, USB4 native support (can run Thunderbolt 3) and AV1 hard solution.
Compared with the improvement of the CPU part, the GPU part is much more exciting. RDNA 2 is the strongest nuclear manifestation in AMD history, directly doubling its performance. RDNA 2 core display has 12 sets of CUs, the frequency is also increased from the previous generation of 2.0GHz to 2.4GHz, the cache is doubled, the raster performance is doubled, the rendering backend is doubled, and ray tracing is supported, Awesome!
Compared to the previous generation R7-5800U (15W), AMD claims that the R7-6800U (28W) has 1.8 to 2 times the gaming performance, and 1.2 to 3 times the performance of competitors in 1080p games. Combined with AMD FidelityFX technology, it is announced that the game frame rate can be increased by another 20%-60%. In addition, the 35W standard voltage platform and AMD graphics card can use SmartShift Max, allowing the CPU and unique display to dynamically adjust power to improve performance.
AMD said that the new products equipped with the mobile version of the Ryzen 6000 series processors will go on sale in February, and more than 200 related products will be available in 2022.
The 2022 notebook mobile processor war is unveiled
After years of squeezed toothpaste development, the X86 platform processor in recent years, whether it is desktop or notebook mobile, has made great progress. Especially in the CPU part, the X86 platform is advancing much faster than the ARM platform. At a time when Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek all encountered bottlenecks because of ARM's public CPU architecture, the X86 platform has a year of Ryzen 5000, this year there are 12 generations of Core and Ryzen 6000, Intel and AMD are fighting happily.
On Intel's side, the hybrid architecture introduced by the 12th generation Core is more like Apple's "performance core + energy efficiency core" (P core and E core), rather than the "size core" of the Android camp / public ARM, which stacks the core to improve multi-core performance through a smaller energy efficiency core, while the single-core performance is pushed by large-scale performance cores, which can continue to extend and straighten the energy consumption ratio curve of the processor.
If there is any obvious disadvantage of the 12th generation mobile version, that is, the design of the "performance core + energy efficiency core" and the massive product SKU make it exponentially higher to understand the difficulty of understanding the product specifications, and even players are easy to see the blindfold.
AmD, with TSMC's strong process advantages and the support of Zen architecture, Zen 3+ architecture can continue to push up frequency. Judging from the performance of the previous desktop 12th generation Core, the CPU performance of the mobile version of the 12th generation Core may be above the mobile version of the Ryzen 6000 series. But the biggest feature of this generation of 6000 series Ryzen mobile editions is actually the RDNA 2 GPU with double performance, which can greatly reduce the entry threshold of AAA masterpieces.
It is not yet known whether 2022 will be "Intel Counterattack War" or "AMD Defending The War", but the notebook mobile processor war has begun to be unveiled, and it is no longer recommended to buy the previous generation of products before the 12th generation of Core and Ryzen™ 6000 series notebook products are sold in a large area, so as not to have the tragic story of "49 years into the national army".