Intel Core i9-12900K Puts AMD Ryzen 9 5950X to Shame in New Single-Core and Multi-Threaded Benchmarks

[Tsing]

Image: Intel



Intel fans are hoping that the company’s next flagship processor will overshadow the performance of AMD’s current champ, the Ryzen 9 5950X. Luckily for them, things definitely seem to be leaning that way.



New benchmarks for 12th Gen Core i9-12900K “Alder Lake-S” processor have appeared on Geekbench that suggest Intel’s upcoming flagship will not only perform faster than red team’s Ryzen 9 5950X, but beat it by a pretty substantial amount.



Intel’s Core i9-12900K managed a single-core score of 1,893 and multi-core score of 17,299 in the test. AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X, in comparison, only features scores of around 1,691 and 16,723 in Geekbench’s averages, respectively. The implication is that Intel’s Core i9-12900K will boast around 11 percent faster single-core performance and around 4 percent faster multi-core performance than AMD’s Zen 3 chip...

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[hubaduba]

As soon as I saw the headline, I knew it would be Geekbench.

 

[Dan_D]

Supposedly there is a substantial uptick in IPC with Alder Lake-S. That said, we've seen this sort of thing only apply to edge cases like Geekbench before.

 

[Brian_B]

I would hope it would, being over a year later and the benefit of hindsight

 

[Burticus]

Sure. But will it have a 500w tdp?

 

[Paul_Johnson]

Sure. But will it have a 500w tdp?

I need a new oven!

 

[Dan_D]

I would hope it would, being over a year later and the benefit of hindsight

That's not how things work in the semi-conductor industry. CPU's take around 3 years to design and produce. It's why we always see either AMD or Intel take years to bring competitive processors to market when they are significantly leap frogged by their competitor.

 

[Grimlakin]

Yep we need a bit if a back and forth between the big desktop cpu vendors. It will help encourage innovation and pricing. Lisa Sue Crack that wip and get those engineers answering this!!

 

[LazyGamer]

Yep we need a bit if a back and forth between the big desktop cpu vendors. It will help encourage innovation and pricing. Lisa Sue Crack that wip and get those engineers answering this!!

AMD has been extremely lucky to have had TSMC able to get volume production on cutting edge processes, and be able to accommodate AMDs CPU business.

If Intel really does have a competitive part in the wings, and they can produce it to scale, I wonder if AMD has what it takes to stay in the game.

 

[Zarathustra]

If we can get back to the state where they can keep leapfrogging eachother that would be the best possible outcome for the consumer.

 

[Zarathustra]

If Intel really does have a competitive part in the wings, and they can produce it to scale, I wonder if AMD has what it takes to stay in the game.

Well, Lisa Su is no idiot. She has had to know that it was a combination of the development resulting in the Zen architecture AND Intel's 10nm fiasco that allowed them to catch back up.

From what I can tell AMD has been quite profitable for the last 4 years since launching Zen.

If they were not reinvesting a significant chunk of that revenue into R&D to be ready for the day Intel starts manufacturing at a current process node again, they have REALLY dropped the ball. I'm talking about expanding their CPU engineering group by a factor of 10 over where it was, and spending big bucks on getting in the industry's top talent.

AMD fanboys aside, the fact that Intel's temporary manufacturing woes allowed AMD to be in the position they now are should not have been lost on anyone. Intel was always going to come roaring back when they sorted out their manufacturing. Either they have been preparing for this day for 4 years straight, or they should be taking their ball and going home now, as it has all been for naught.

 

[Dan_D]

If we can get back to the state where they can keep leapfrogging eachother that would be the best possible outcome for the consumer.

We have never been at that state in the last 30 years. Intel dominated the vast majority of that time. AMD had roughly five years of dominance or so back in the Athlon/Athlon 64 days and that was about it. From Phenom through the 1st and 2nd generation Ryzen CPU's. It wasn't until the 3rd generation Ryzen that core counts, clock speeds, and IPC was sufficient to dethrone Intel completely. It was competitive in the HEDT market, but didn't crush Intel until it introduced 24 and 32 core parts in the space.

Prior to the Athlon, AMD never truly held the performance crown. CPU design simply takes too long to bounce back and fourth between each generation. We don't see that from NVIDIA and AMD on the GPU front either and we never have. It's one or the other for a period of time with one occasionally eclipsing the other. Generally, this battle has favored NVIDIA for the bulk of the last 20 years.

 

[Zarathustra]

We have never been at that state in the last 30 years. Intel dominated the vast majority of that time. AMD had roughly five years of dominance or so back in the Athlon/Athlon 64 days and that was about it. From Phenom through the 1st and 2nd generation Ryzen CPU's. It wasn't until the 3rd generation Ryzen that core counts, clock speeds, and IPC was sufficient to dethrone Intel completely. It was competitive in the HEDT market, but didn't crush Intel until it introduced 24 and 32 core parts in the space.

Prior to the Athlon, AMD never truly held the performance crown. CPU design simply takes too long to bounce back and fourth between each generation. We don't see that from NVIDIA and AMD on the GPU front either and we never have. It's one or the other for a period of time with one occasionally eclipsing the other. Generally, this battle has favored NVIDIA for the bulk of the last 20 years.

Fully understood. I was there.

For those short few years from 1999 to 2006 though, it was a beautiful thing. Seemingly every few months there was a new top end chip, and you could often buy the best CPU on the market for a street price under $400. (At least until AMD took the clear lead, and then again prices wen unreasonable and Athlon 64 x2's became crazy expensive for the time)

And it could have continued that way had Intel not used illegal business practices to try to keep AMD out of the OEM's. Intel could have leapfrogged AMD again with Core 2 in 2006, and then AMD, ahd they had sufficient funds to dump into R&D, could have instead of launching a rather disappointing Phenom leapfrogged them again with a better design.

Using illegal means Intel essentially prevented AMD from profiting the way they should have from the time they were competitive and/or on top, resulting in them needing to sell their fabs to stay alive, and resulting in there being wholly insufficient R&D funds available for the development of subsequent CPU generations (Phenom, Phenom II and especially Bulldozer).

Sure, Intel settled with them for $1B, but that was nowhere near enough to undo the damage that was done.

It didn't help that AMD was also distracted with APU's at the time, which further took funds away from CPU arch development. In the long term though APU's may be what helped save the company, as it allowed them to get their foot in the door with Microsoft and Sony for the XBox one and PS4. These were low margin sales for sure, but large volume baseline sales like this helped stabilize the company to where they could afford to hire a proper team to develop the Zen architecture.

It took both the effort behind Zen AND the fact that Intel stumbled with 10nm for them to be able to catch back up.

I'm hoping that unlike last time when both the effort behind K7/Athlon AND the fact that Intel stumbled with Netburst/P4 allowed AMD to be competitive, this time they have made sufficient revenues to reinvest in R&D and remain in a competitive position going forward.

 

[Dan_D]

It was more than just illegal business practices that held AMD back. It was its own management. They mismanaged funds thinking the gravy train would never end. The company also had an internal working environment which caused major talent in the R&D group to leave the company in droves. AMD was its own worst enemy thanks to their poor leadership and subsequently an inability to properly leverage their own success.

 

[Zarathustra]

It was more than just illegal business practices that held AMD back. It was its own management. They mismanaged funds thinking the gravy train would never end. The company also had an internal working environment which caused major talent in the R&D group to leave the company in droves. AMD was its own worst enemy thanks to their poor leadership and subsequently an inability to properly leverage their own success.

I was not at AMD in the 90's and early 2000's (or ever) so I cannot add anything to that, but I do think that if they had been free to sell to the likes of Dell, HP, IBM and Gateway things may have been different.

Also, keep in mind, it is much easier to maintain a good work environment and keep talent if you are deep in the black than it is if you are operating in the red.

 

[LazyGamer]

I was not at AMD in the 90's and early 2000's so I cannot add anything to that, but I do think that if they had been free to sell to the likes of Dell, HP, IBM and Gateway things may have been different.

As much as I have and do support AMD - when it comes to corporate purchases, it seems pretty apparent that they lack the level of understanding that Intel has in terms of catering to those customers. Those companies weren't prohibited from buying AMD, but moreso Intel's backroom 'leveraging' was just enough pressure in addition to AMDs own product blunders to prevent AMD products from building real inertia.

And I say that because it's still true to various degrees today. While I've had a hard time finding Intel products to recommend for enthusiasts since the Zen+ / Ryzen 2000-series stabilized, I can't say the same for corporate systems whether talking about laptops or servers, where things like price and performance take somewhat of a back seat to compatibility, stability, and support.

I'll even throw in an old personal anecdote: while Netburst wasn't great, it also wasn't bad when paired with DDR (vs. RAMBUS), and Intel-based boards were worlds better to work with than the stuff that was available for the first several series of Athlons. I used those until AMD put out their 64-bit CPUs with integrated memory controllers, after which it just wasn't really a contest, and didn't jump back to Intel until Core 2. And then AMD deepthroated a bullet with Bulldozer...

 

[Zarathustra]

As much as I have and do support AMD - when it comes to corporate purchases, it seems pretty apparent that they lack the level of understanding that Intel has in terms of catering to those customers. Those companies weren't prohibited from buying AMD, but moreso Intel's backroom 'leveraging' was just enough pressure in addition to AMDs own product blunders to prevent AMD products from building real inertia.

And I say that because it's still true to various degrees today. While I've had a hard time finding Intel products to recommend for enthusiasts since the Zen+ / Ryzen 2000-series stabilized, I can't say the same for corporate systems whether talking about laptops or servers, where things like price and performance take somewhat of a back seat to compatibility, stability, and support.

I'll even throw in an old personal anecdote: while Netburst wasn't great, it also wasn't bad when paired with DDR (vs. RAMBUS), and Intel-based boards were worlds better to work with than the stuff that was available for the first several series of Athlons. I used those until AMD put out their 64-bit CPUs with integrated memory controllers, after which it just wasn't really a contest, and didn't jump back to Intel until Core 2. And then AMD deepthroated a bullet with Bulldozer...

I think that is fair, and it is also reasonable to expect. They were new to that market, and were still figuring it out.

I remember - however - back then being very happy my my AMD systems and looking around for good AMD based prebuilts to recommend to friends and family (at least those I was unwilling to build a system for) and being incredibly frustrated that there were next to none to be found.

There would have been a market there had Intel not threatened the OEM's with losing key "discounts" for not being Intel exclusive that would have made them unprofitable compared to their competitors.

 

[Burticus]

I will never forget this from one of my prior datacenter jobs. We had just purchased several dozen of the brand new HP 585 AMD Opteron servers.... really AMD's first real server chips. Not too long after we racked those monsters and put them into service, we had to do a secret nighttime maintenance. There was some design problem with the Opteron CPUs that couldn't be fixed in firmware. So one night an HP and AMD rep came onsite with giant boxes of CPUs and we had to swap out every single one, under supervision. And they took those cpus back with them, they did not want to leave evidence behind. They never did tell us why.

What does this have to do with the article? Not much really. I like AMD and support them. I have been in both camps. But I tell you what... I've never had to do bulk Intel CPU replacements like that cloak and dagger maint night.