Thread Director is informed by a new microcontroller on the CPU itself, which will feed Windows 11 more detailed hardware telemetry about the current status of the chip and its cores, versus older releases in Intel's desktop line. Information that was previously left a mystery to Windows—think aspects like thermals, power settings, and which threads can take more instructions—is now communicated to the scheduler in microseconds, leaving almost no impact and (in theory) adding considerable performance gains, depending on the workflow and the various kinds of overhead that can be leveraged. Yes, competition is good, but only because it pushes AMD to be even better than if they did not have at all. That's the only part I care about.

All models support up to DDR5-5600, or DDR4-3200 memory, up to 16 lanes of PCI Express 5.0, and up to 4 lanes of PCI Express 4.0.Intel's new single-threaded Efficiency (E) core comes with the Gracemont microarchitecture to improve multi-threaded performance and provide exceptional area efficiency (small footprint) and performance-per-watt. Four small cores fit in roughly the same area as a Skylake core and deliver 80% more performance in threaded work (at the same power). A single E core also delivers 40% more performance than a single-threaded Skylake core (at the same power) in single-threaded work (caveats apply to both). VforV said:I'm glad for competition, but no Alder Lake is not an outstanding success beating Zen3 from A to Z and at everything and anything. Far from that... Note: All of these test runs above were performed on their respective AMD and Intel testbeds under Windows 10.) If you want the "world's best gaming processor" today—as in a desktop processor that just plays any PC game you want—you might want to wait and see how the DRM situation shakes out on Alder Lake. But the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X remains a cost-conscious, fuss-free option that kept its station in gaming in Windows 10. The Core i9 brand was expanded to incorporate mainstream processors in October 2018, following the release of the Core i9-9900K processor, which uses Intel's mainstream consumer platform. [5] Desktop processors [ edit ] Skylake-X (14 nm, 7th generation) [ edit ]

For example, outright thread-punisher tests like Cinebench R23 or 7-Zip will simply max out every resource handed to them, Thread Director or not. This is why we see such similar results between the two whether they're run on Windows 10 or 11, because Thread Director can't be of much help when the only direction on the board is "Give 'er everything she's got." Some programs may also need to be forced to run in the foreground for optimal performance, which Intel advises you can accomplish via the command line using powercfg commands. There's also the more user-friendly Process Lasso that is designed with Alder Lake optimization in mind. That type of intervention isn't ideal for all users, though, especially the casual type, so be aware that Windows 10 could require extra babysitting if you're searching for every last bit of performance.For most users planning on buying an Alder Lake CPU, Windows 11 is the best option. TIE: Intel Core i9-12900K wins for Windows 11 users, AMD Ryzen 9 5950X wins for cost-conscious content creators Thus, we all give or money to those that we think they deserve out money. And we don't give to those that don't.

Testing the Core i9-12900K: Thread Director Just Might Deserve an Oscar

The culprit? All that P-core/E-core stuff we mentioned up above. During the course of our testing—which includes two runs of the popular title Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, one in 1080p and the other in 4K—we found the game would either crash halfway through the test run, or simply not boot in at all. We tried to test as many titles as we could ahead of this review, but time was already a factor with the benchmarking suite we had, let alone following behind Intel's late-stage answer about DRM compatibility with a trail of games that may or may not launch on the first go. That scheduler, then, is a key player, especially when the CPU's resources are much in demand. (And that demand is the point of buying any high-end CPU!) So, speaking of schedulers...meet Windows Thread Director, the ostensible Spielberg of the whole scheme. Windows Thread Director