I've watched the release with a lot of interest and the performance is fantastic but I'm not entirely sold on it. The temperature on the 12900k is crazy IMHO, the 12600k & 12700k seem like better options but then do you buy a DDR4 or DDR5 board? DDR5 is so expensive but it might be worth it to carry over to your next upgrade. Then there's the high probability that Z690 will only support one more CPU generation. Which leaves a sour taste after getting 4 generations from AM4. Then lastly you either need to buy a new cooler or source mounting hardware for your existing one. Anyone here making/made the switch?
I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. Not because it's bad. On the contrary it's excellent, but its not ready. I have watched all of the reviews and no one seems to be mentioning the horrific FPS lows in certain games. Which to me just screams "New tech". Then I watched Jay's video last night about Denuvo and all of the games that won't run. Like, literally crash out as soon as it switches to E cores. This happens with every new tech. Which is why I did not adopt Ryzen until the 3000 series when I was absolutely sure it would not be a pain in the balls. Have seen reports of XMP problems and such too. Having lived the DDR2 - DDR3 insta adoption and god knows how many other F ups on launch I am now extremely cautious. Like, I bought a TR 1920x and board from Sam on here about ooo, 1.5 years back? out of the box it didn't even work properly. I had to flash on the latest bios. I think I will give it a year or so before even considering this. Early adopters = beta testers and I really don't want to go Win 11 yet. BTW. Even Microsoft have said they are not fixing the game issues in Win 10 until 2022.
I’m not going back to Intel. I’ll be going with AM5, next year or 2023, again in part because I’ll be able to upgrade after 3 years, on the same motherboard.
It's a big investment for sure. The CPUs themselves are really good value, but the motherboard's are pricey, no b550 equivalent and motherboard's in general are just mental money now. Then there's DDR4 Vs DDR5. DDR5 is expensive, you won't see any benefit on games yet and what's available now isn't yet, how do I put it, ripe? Give it a year and it'll be half the price at faster speeds and/or tighter timings. But if you use it for production work that uses a ton of ram it might be worth it. The 3d v cache Ryzen chips due early next year will probably bring the fight back to intel, but the one thing in Intel's got in its favour is that it will mature and performance will improve, like GPUs with drivers. It won't be huge but everything will get ironed out and there will be small uplifts. Like Andy said, anyone who buys into this platform is essentially a beta tester, especially if you go into windows 11. You don't need to for performance, only improved efficiency, if that matters to you. And what your situation is will depend if the upgrade will be "worth it", how old your current platform is and how financially stable you are. You won't be disappointed with the performance. Yeh they're a little hot (as are high end Ryzen 5000) and pretty hungry, but you can keep that in check with the power limits without hurting performance too much. If I was still on the kaby lake system in my sig and I had the money, I'd be seriously considering it.
I waited and got a 5900x why? Because it’s a chip drop and not a full run out of a new system. when your at 4k or 5k, the 5900x is no slower than the 12900k and that’s what matters. Who honestly buys a 12900k and goes 1080p very very few!! I’ll wait for AM5 now, the reality is that alderlake has been released a little early, the tech surrounding it (DDR5, the boards) as mentioned is just too expensive, it’s entering an ecosystem that’s broken (windows 11) and just isn’t mature enough to bother with to be honest. 12600k and £200 ddr4 board is the sweet spot for this tech at this moment. alderlake refresh in a years time will be the one to look at as well as AMDs zen4.
It has more issues than that. Sure, the 12600k looks really appealing but there are significant issues with it. More than people have been letting on. DDR4 and 5 has nothing to do with it. These are serious flaws it has because Denuvo (which every new game has) thinks it is being beaten and crashes. So no matter how the price and performance is tempting there is just no getting around the fact that a pretty long list of games don't work. Sure, some of this can be alleviated by going to Win 11, but certainly not the Denuvo issue. When the CPU switches to the E cores the DRM spazzes and thinks you are running a pirated copy and bombs. I can see why Microsoft have courted Intel here. Both of them want you on their platform. I am usually excited about a new OS but once again due to lessons learned I really don't want to early adopt. Not an OS, or a technology. Even when Ryzen released and gave Intel a good kick in the nuts I was not swung. Even though I prefer AMD to Intel, I stuck with my Broadwell E stuff for over two years before buying anything Ryzen. Simply because like I said, I really don't find troubleshooting and potentially flogging a dead horse very exciting any more. I used to love sinking hours into that. I early adopted a very expensive EVGA motherboard many years ago. It had DDR3, or DDR£ as I called it then. Nothing but BSODs. It really was life ruining having spent so much money. And again, from just taking a two minute look in the CPU forum at OCUK? people are having XMP issues. I've no doubt at all that Intel will sort all of this out. However, I don't like being held to ransom by Microsoft because I don't want to try their new beta OS yet. And with Alderlake you really don't have much choice, or even more of your pre existing game collection won't work. And that is beside all of the DRM issues. I really can't see Denuvo caring enough to want to put out the coin it will take to fix all of those games. BTW just to add. I haven't watched a Jay video in over two years. However last night I was really bored and decided to see if he was doing anything other than rimming Intel. At least someone has spoken out about it. Quite surprised GN haven't really. They harp on so much about getting the truth out there too, and seem to like dragging people across the coals. That said that is probably for views, so no doubt they won't dare go against the grain on this as again, it's for views. I'm currently on the lookout for a 5950x. I will put that in my machine at home, take the 3950x out of it and put that into this second PC. Job done.
The denuvo thing can be got round on most motherboard's by disabling e cores, but not all motherboard's have the option. It is proper shocking how it's not been picked up. I expect a better workaround/fix will be found/developed a bit quicker to save face, but then again they released the 11th gen **** show, so... If anything Jay is more an AMD fanboy than intel, but is really neither, just goes where the performance is. He been slagging intel off for the last few years and all their production/office rigs are on AMD because at the time they were the best. GN are in the middle of moving into their new place, so have been a bit behind getting through everything. I expect they'll have a vid on it once they have over 10,000 hours of test data I think there's a 5950x going in the market place.
The upgrade would be like going from 4 cores with HT to 4 cores without HT plus 8 much higher performance cores with HT. (i7 to i7) Personally, as DDR5 need at least 1 year to 18 months to mature, it's a waiting game. Although Alder lake + DDR4 make more sense now, I wouldn't want to be stuck with old RAM slots on my platform if I had the option. But I'm set for next 5 years, that's what I told my wife when I upgraded to 5800x. It's VR headset upgrade time for me next year.
I bet she'd already started walking away by the time you very, very certainly, definitely, mentioned the "new VR" bit. Go on, spill, am I right ?
That's the strategy isn't it. Bore with CPU details so can sneak in other (often more expensive) future upgrade plan. "I told you last year, follow the plan. You've got to trust me, I've got a plan" - Dutch, RDR2
12700k seems the way to go, what I'm thinking of doing is getting this cpu and Z690 ddr4 board for now as ddr5 is expensive, then when things have caught up going to ddr5.
No, but mainly as I went in on a 10700K in April and have no intention of upgrading a 7 month old computer anytime soon... or at least until the GPU situation is sorted out and can decide then if an upgrade is worth it or not. I do intend on replacing my HTPC and will probably do that when the rest of the 12th Gen range is launched with the cheaper chipsets - that doesn't need the performance but it does need an iGPU and I don't need more than a quad core for a build that will be recording TV only, or otherwise sitting idle. That and 4K Blu-Ray support is also helpful if I decide to go that route (and I believe that AMD still doesn't have the SGX extensions required for 4K Blu-Ray decode). It depends on how Intel are on motherboard compatibility going forward. Consider that for the last decade Intel motherboards support 2 generations of CPU only (except for OG Haswell boards like my Z87 board not supporting Broadwell CPUs, only OG Haswell and the Devil's Canyon refresh). I assume what I'm about to type isn't the plan you have in mind, but buying a DDR4 Alder Lake board only to replace it for a DDR5 Alder or Raptor Lake (13th gen) board doesn't make sense. Assuming that Intel stick to the 2 gen cadence, I'd either do one of the following: By a DDR4 Alder Lake board now and build around it, with a view to going DDR5 when replacing the lot when 14th gen launches (assuming the 2 gen replacement motherboard cycle that Intel has done for the last 10 years)... or switching to AMD. Buy a DDR5 Alder Lake board and get the cheapest RAM sticks you can find, with the intention of going for faster RAM down the line when the prices drop. (which I did for my OG build in 2008 - bought 2x1GB 1.8V DDR3@1,333 MHz sticks before eventually replacing them for 4x2GB 1.65V DDR3 @1,600MHz). From past experience Intel tends to offer 2 generations of boards that can support 2 versions of ram - DDR3/DDR4 boards available on both Z170 and Z270 for Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs - same for X38 and X48 for the final LGA775 boards (specifically the boards for 65nm and 45nm Core 2 Duo/Quads) and DDR2/DDR3. I'm assuming Intel will stick with 2 CPU Gens per socket - back when AMD announced that B450 wouldn't support Zen3, the suggestion was that Intel start over every 2 CPU generations to avoid the problem of having to support a huge range of CPUs on a BIOS ROM chip (i.e. OEMs can supply a smallish BIOS ROM chip knowing that it will only need to support a specific number of CPUs). I still suspect that AMD will have chipsets that offer support for more CPUs than Intel but only across 3 CPU generations as that appeared to be the intention on B450 pre-backtrack to avoid the BIOS microcode being too big. By chance I found an old Anandtech article about my old motherboard but it briefly mentions the DDR2 vs DDR3 question of 2007 and the advice then is probably the same advice I'd give now on the DDR4 vs DDR5 question of today - if price is the main factor, go for DDR4, otherwise go for DDR5 if you can afford it (and find it). Right now the performance benefit is negligible though I think I saw a GamersNexus video a few days ago where one benchmark (maybe 7-zip decompression?) had a 29% uplift on DDR5 vs DDR4, using (if my memory is correct) DDR4 that they've heavily tuned in the BIOS vs DDR5 at stock. That was it though. Clearly DDR5 pricing needs to drop but that was the case with DDR3>4 and with DDR2>3. I jumped on a DDR3 board simply because it was my first build and I didn't want to buy into DDR2 when improvements weren't going to be likely with a new memory platform available on the market, despite the cost. I don't regret it but I understand that cost is a factor. In your case I'd probably go with a DDR4 if you have existing sticks, and upgrade the lot in a few years time, or just jump on the DDR5 wagon now (assuming, of course, that you can find some to buy).
System idle consumption looks pretty good on Alderlake from reviews, looks better than Ryzen which is already pretty good on the 5 series, I've not seen any reviews cover the iGPU performance specifically though but even the old Intel stuff was good enough for that. Course how much that mattes to you I don't know, my NAS with Ryzen 4650 in sits at 40w (7w of that is the BMC IMPI module) which is pretty high for a 24/7 machine, I do wonder how much would Alderlake improve that, or whether the higher load consumption would be an issue when running gameservers.
I do want to like it and I'm very tempted to give it a go just for giggles but it seems very wasteful since I game at 1440P and already have a decent AMD system. I'm already seeing them for sale used which perhaps tells it's own story
I'm planning a new build in January next year to replace my very long-in-the-tooth i7 920 rig, I've already bought a 1TB 980 Pro NVM SSD in Amazon Black Friday deal (return window in end of Jan). I was going to go for Ryzen 5800X but the pricing of the i7-12700 is very tempting, though I don't want to have to wait for mid-range Z690 mobos to appear and I'd also rather not go for a first-gen tech so I'm hoping Alder Lake will mean significant price drops that'll put a Ryzen 5900 within budget or at least make the 5800X a good bit cheaper.
Hi Giskard, I’m the same but really thinking about the 12600k, been looking at the Aorus Z690 elite DDR4 board. Seems a good balance. Will let you know if I get the purchase soon. P.s love the fact your still running a 920 I had that for years currently on a Z440 HP workstation.
I have. Against my better judgement. I heard that all of the DRM issues are now fixed. There may be one or two, but that doesn't matter much to me as long as PUBG Battle eye doesn't freak out. Sadly mine has been delivered to Matalan in the middle of nowhere. So right now I am praying I can go collect it Tuesday, or I will have to get onto OCUK because once DPD drop something there that's it. If we go into lockdown? they will have to refund me. I did all I could do before hand. Spent hours upon hours reading and watching videos. Sadly my largest gripe of all came into play yet again. IE - no one reviews the boards people actually effing buy. They review all of the boards that you would either need to be insane to buy, or, desperately need all of the features from. Which when you boil that down? that's hardly any one. I know it doesn't stop people spending £800 on a motherboard but it pisses me off that no one reviews the boards most will want to buy. As such I had to basically look at the next board up in the pile which is pretty much the same but with a seg display and some buttons and possibly better power phases (Gigabyte do not specify, that's nice of them) and so on. It's the BIOS I am concerned about, but as of the 18th Gigabyte launched one that seems to be very good. Now I am just hoping my 4133mhz ram will boot the PC in some shape or form (even at 2133) so I can get in there. I think it has BIOS flashback, but again from what I have been reading it's not very good. Other than that? I think it will pan out to be a much better purchase for me than the 5900x. Mostly because on the PC I am putting it in all I do is game. And I never, ever usually buy "Gamer" CPUs. I always want something more all round. However, the 12700ks seems to be just that and was a good price IMO. The board too was a good price. £229. £20 more than I paid for my X570 TUF, tons more features and a crap load better looking IMO. A lot of people have been complaining about Z690 price, but now the more realistic boards seem to be coming in they're really not bad at all. I am also going to go Windows 11. Only on that PC. If I really like it? I will think about it far more for the machine I do still use for everything as well as gaming. If not? I am sure I can put up with it long enough to double click Steam and open a game. Which is all that matters on that rig.
BTW, as BT no longer reports news. Corsair has released some standoffs that allow you to use most of their modern coolers with AL. https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categ...nts/Cooling/LGA1700-Retrofit-Kit/p/CW-8960091 Free shipping. Mine arrived within 48 hours via DHL. Do note though that you need one of the coolers listed. Not all have the back plate with the shifting hole things. Thankfully I had a H100i RGB Platinum sitting in a box.
