4 ms·

Looks like the i5-12600K is the real value play for Intel's 12th gen. It essentially beats Ryzen 5600X at similar power consumption. LTT review: https://www.you

Looks like the i5-12600K is the real value play for Intel's 12th gen. It essentially beats Ryzen 5600X at similar power consumption. LTT review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EogHCFd7w0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EogHCFd7w0 That said, the cost of ownership is likely much higher for Intel vs. AMD - due to requiring DDR5 RAM and new motherboard.

zucker42 5y ago
You don't need DDR5 RAM. DDR5 is a halo feature at this point, only for the people for whom money is no issue. There's zero reason to use DDR5 RAM with the 12600k (considering you could be served better by spending the extra money on a better CPU or more capacity). The performance benefit is varied and probably not more than 5% at best. The increased price of Z690 vs B550 and even X570 is significant though.
- Osiris 5y ago
  If that's true, what advantage is there to DDR5 besides lower stock voltage?
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I asked myself the same thing when DDR4 came out. I was looking forward to skipping it, but Ryzen was able to unofficially use ECC ram so that intrigued me. DDR5 will be able to have larger sizes for ram as well if I remember correctly.
    - sliken 5y ago
      DDR4 didn't have much over DDR3, just a bit of bandwidth, and most apps weren't that sensitive. However DDR5 doubles the number of channels vs DDR4, while also having a higher clock rate (more bandwidth), so it's a bigger difference.
  - toast0 5y ago
    DDR5 has more future promise, whether that's lower power, higher bandwidth, higher capacity, maybe lower latency too. There's something about DDR5 requiring ECC, but it's not clear if that includes actual CPU/OS reporting or if it's internally using ECC but with no error reporting. But, I'm not sure how much of that shines through in the first DDR5 product vs mature DDR4 products. Now is the part of the cycle where the old memory is still high volume and the new memory is starting to ramp up; in not too long, we'll have the part of the cycle where they made too much of the old memory and prices drop and it's time to scoop up all the old memory you'll ever need.
    - KuiN 5y ago
      DDR5 include on-die ECC. Which is very different from traditional ECC. But many vendors marketing (and many enthusiasts are talking) as if it's the same. See [0], there's some really good explanations in the replies. [0] https://twitter.com/iancutress/status/1401834748402716672 https://twitter.com/iancutress/status/1401834748402716672
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        Well, does anyone have any stats for how often memory errors happen inside the module vs. in transit? My impression has been that the vast majority are the former, and those are pretty well fixed by on-die ECC. But I will say I'm annoyed that there's no way to get datapath ECC without buying 25% extra chips and dealing with worse prices and speeds. Why can't a tiny chip on the module calculate those 8 bits on the fly?
        toast0 5y ago
        Fake parity ram was a thing back when parity ram was also a thing. Fake ECC ram could also become a thing. It's easy enough to calculate the values on the fly.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        Interesting to look at, though it would have to get really popular again to be worth it. I'll keep my fingers crossed. And to be clear I don't want fake parity. I want it to verify the internal parity and then use those bits to calculate the data bus parity. Instead of paying 25% extra to get two layers of parity. 12% extra to go from zero parity to full parity was a much better offer than 25% extra to go from mostly-parity to mostly-double parity.
  - smolder 5y ago
    One big thing is better resistance to cosmic ray bitflips due to the on-chip error protection. (Different from ECC, all DDR5 gets it.) Hopefully rowhammer style trickery is effectively quashed now.
  - sliken 5y ago
    Twice as many channels so twice as many cache misses in flight. The Anandtech shows significant gains on multi core workloads. So the I9-12900K with DDR4 shows 61.33 int, 59.55 FP. With DDR5 it gets 80.53 Intel and 81.85. Some of that is increased bandwidth, but having more memory requests in flight helps as well. Imagine all the cores generating cache misses and you have 2 channel of memory. When a channel handles a transaction it's unavailable for 40 ns (keep in mind that @ 3GHz with 2 instructions per cycle that's 240 instructions per core). Now with 4 channels you can have twice as many transactions in flight and your cores spend less time idle and waiting on memory. So over a 30% increase in performance when going from DDR4 to DDR5, of course this doesn't matter if your application has a high rate of cache hits.
neogodless 5y ago
Here's the specific segment comparing power consumption: https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=503 https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=503 In Blender, the i5-12600K draws about 125W, while the 5600X appears to draw about 75W. In games, the difference is much smaller. You can also compare the heat dissipation of those two chips: https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=604 https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=604

zucker42 5y ago

You don't need DDR5 RAM. DDR5 is a halo feature at this point, only for the people for whom money is no issue. There's zero reason to use DDR5 RAM with the 12600k (considering you could be served better by spending the extra money on a better CPU or more capacity). The performance benefit is varied and probably not more than 5% at best. The increased price of Z690 vs B550 and even X570 is significant though.

Osiris 5y ago
If that's true, what advantage is there to DDR5 besides lower stock voltage?
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I asked myself the same thing when DDR4 came out. I was looking forward to skipping it, but Ryzen was able to unofficially use ECC ram so that intrigued me. DDR5 will be able to have larger sizes for ram as well if I remember correctly.
  - sliken 5y ago
    DDR4 didn't have much over DDR3, just a bit of bandwidth, and most apps weren't that sensitive. However DDR5 doubles the number of channels vs DDR4, while also having a higher clock rate (more bandwidth), so it's a bigger difference.
- toast0 5y ago
  DDR5 has more future promise, whether that's lower power, higher bandwidth, higher capacity, maybe lower latency too. There's something about DDR5 requiring ECC, but it's not clear if that includes actual CPU/OS reporting or if it's internally using ECC but with no error reporting. But, I'm not sure how much of that shines through in the first DDR5 product vs mature DDR4 products. Now is the part of the cycle where the old memory is still high volume and the new memory is starting to ramp up; in not too long, we'll have the part of the cycle where they made too much of the old memory and prices drop and it's time to scoop up all the old memory you'll ever need.
  - KuiN 5y ago
    DDR5 include on-die ECC. Which is very different from traditional ECC. But many vendors marketing (and many enthusiasts are talking) as if it's the same. See [0], there's some really good explanations in the replies. [0] https://twitter.com/iancutress/status/1401834748402716672 https://twitter.com/iancutress/status/1401834748402716672
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Well, does anyone have any stats for how often memory errors happen inside the module vs. in transit? My impression has been that the vast majority are the former, and those are pretty well fixed by on-die ECC. But I will say I'm annoyed that there's no way to get datapath ECC without buying 25% extra chips and dealing with worse prices and speeds. Why can't a tiny chip on the module calculate those 8 bits on the fly?
      - toast0 5y ago
        Fake parity ram was a thing back when parity ram was also a thing. Fake ECC ram could also become a thing. It's easy enough to calculate the values on the fly.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        Interesting to look at, though it would have to get really popular again to be worth it. I'll keep my fingers crossed. And to be clear I don't want fake parity. I want it to verify the internal parity and then use those bits to calculate the data bus parity. Instead of paying 25% extra to get two layers of parity. 12% extra to go from zero parity to full parity was a much better offer than 25% extra to go from mostly-parity to mostly-double parity.
- smolder 5y ago
  One big thing is better resistance to cosmic ray bitflips due to the on-chip error protection. (Different from ECC, all DDR5 gets it.) Hopefully rowhammer style trickery is effectively quashed now.
- sliken 5y ago
  Twice as many channels so twice as many cache misses in flight. The Anandtech shows significant gains on multi core workloads. So the I9-12900K with DDR4 shows 61.33 int, 59.55 FP. With DDR5 it gets 80.53 Intel and 81.85. Some of that is increased bandwidth, but having more memory requests in flight helps as well. Imagine all the cores generating cache misses and you have 2 channel of memory. When a channel handles a transaction it's unavailable for 40 ns (keep in mind that @ 3GHz with 2 instructions per cycle that's 240 instructions per core). Now with 4 channels you can have twice as many transactions in flight and your cores spend less time idle and waiting on memory. So over a 30% increase in performance when going from DDR4 to DDR5, of course this doesn't matter if your application has a high rate of cache hits.

neogodless 5y ago

Here's the specific segment comparing power consumption: https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=503 https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=503 In Blender, the i5-12600K draws about 125W, while the 5600X appears to draw about 75W. In games, the difference is much smaller. You can also compare the heat dissipation of those two chips: https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=604 https://youtu.be/-EogHCFd7w0?t=604