Intel Core CPU Clock-for-Clock Benchmark Test

Nice to see the work, but anyone that really pays attention doesn't need to see it because we all knew this gen, along with last gen was nothing more than pretty much the same thing over the past 3 years.

This 14th gen feels mostly feels like busy work. Have the team doing something that looks new, but it's just the same crap wrapped in a new box from last season.

Theinsanegamer said:

Upgrading every few years is a total waste of cash. buy a CPU and mobo, keep it for a decade, then upgrade. Yeah, it doesnt scratch the enthusiast itch as much, but we dont really NEED new CPUs every 2 years anymore. We passed the point of good enough back in the sandy bridge era, if not earlier.

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You might think the author is taking an extreme position by suggesting upgrading every couple of years, but you're taking the exact opposite extreme position of upgrading every decade (or very infrequently).

Theinsanegamer said:

We're just pointing out its a hilarious waste of money. And how does nvidia even fit in here? Their GPUs dont demand new platforms every generation.

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And that is, in fact, the authors point. It would be less of a waste of money if a new mobo was not required. And by supporting 4 real generations of upgrades, you can get people who bought into the platform earlier on upgrading to the last supported CPU at the end of the cycle - AMD got a ton of sales that way. The reason to bring in Nvidia (if AMD wasn't enough evidence) is to show that enthusiasts will upgrade more often at the higher end when, as you pointed out, a platform upgrade isn't required. And that's what the author is saying, the additional barrier of platform upgrade requirement is a missed sales opportunity for Intel.

The author isn't saying you need to upgrade every generation or even every other, but the author is saying that Intel could make it's job easier if you could buy a platform knowing that it would, in fact, be good for the better part of a decade.

human7 said:

You might think the author is taking an extreme position by suggesting upgrading every couple of years, but you're taking the exact opposite extreme position of upgrading every decade (or very infrequently).

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It's not that extreme. The majority of the PC audience are still using 1000 or 1600/2000 era GPUs. Look at the steam numbers sometime. Your average PC gamer does not upgrade every gen, or every other gen, but every third gen of GPUs, which is about 6 years, minimum. They dont upgrade their CPUs any faster either, given how many quad and hex core CPUs are still out there.

Kneecapping a platform by stagnating it for a decade for CPU upgrades isnt going to help sales.

human7 said:

And that is, in fact, the authors point.

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You need to re-read the article.
"This isn't an ideal situation for Intel's customers. While some might argue that not everyone upgrades with every new generation, that misses the broader issue. No enthusiast or customer should be defending Intel's poor platform support, you're just shooting yourself in the foot and making the PC platform worse for everyone else in the process. This is without question the worst aspect of the PC enthusiast crowd and we see this illogical corporate simping for not just for Intel but also with AMD and Nvidia."

The author is claiming that the argument that you dont need intergenerational socket compatibility is "illogical corporate simping" that is also applied to AMD and nvidia. I pointed out that this is total nonsense, as GPUs are literally the opposite and most people do not upgrade their CPUS frequently.

human7 said:

It would be less of a waste of money if a new mobo was not required. And by supporting 4 real generations of upgrades, you can get people who bought into the platform earlier on upgrading to the last supported CPU at the end of the cycle - AMD got a ton of sales that way. The reason to bring in Nvidia (if AMD wasn't enough evidence) is to show that enthusiasts will upgrade more often at the higher end when, as you pointed out, a platform upgrade isn't required. And that's what the author is saying, the additional barrier of platform upgrade requirement is a missed sales opportunity for Intel.

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And as I pointed out, this literally did not stop intel from selling record numbers for years while barely refreshing their hardware, and even now from selling gangbusters. People didnt jump on AM4 because "muh upgradeability", they jumped when they offered superior performance, hence why there are so many builds out there using 500 series boards and very few using 300 series boards with 5000 series procs.

upgrading frequently is still a major waste of capital when CPUs dont need replaced that often. Doesnt matter if you can save money by reusing a mobo, its still a major waste of capital for not much gain, and as I pointed out, simply waiting a few generations brings you faster memory and PCIe standards.

human7 said:

The author isn't saying you need to upgrade every generation or even every other, but the author is saying that Intel could make it's job easier if you could buy a platform knowing that it would, in fact, be good for the better part of a decade.

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Lets look at that. You're implying that it would make less work for intel to support alderlake on ivy bridge era boards? The ones saddled with 1600 mhz DDR3? And SATA III? No NVMe boot? While at the same time supporting DDR4 AND DDR5 motherboards for new builds?

How is that an improvement? Do you not see how that would be a major issue?

Be nice to see more mainstream/averag user CPUs from intel side at least; and for games a far more comprehensive showcase with at least 50 games hitting all major APIs (DX9/11/12/OGL/Vulkan) including far more of the ones most played/largest player base (ex . KOTOR Online, BF 2042, CSGO 1/2, PUBG, Apex, Dota 2,GTA V, WoW, Destiny 2 etc. I'm willing to bet far more average users are using much older CPUs; I mean just looking at the steam hardware survey over 65% are at 6 physical cores or less with less than 4% of all cpus showing speeds faster than 3.7Ghz and less than .8% rocking an RTX 4090/.3% an RTX 7900 XT...meanwhile 46+% have an RTX 3060 or lower . With only the most recent intel CPUs considered it turns into more of an elitist analysis; be nice to have one for the masses in addition..

Theinsanegamer said:

Kneecapping a platform by stagnating it for a decade for CPU upgrades isnt going to help sales.

Lets look at that. You're implying that it would make less work for intel to support alderlake on ivy bridge era boards? The ones saddled with 1600 mhz DDR3? And SATA III? No NVMe boot? While at the same time supporting DDR4 AND DDR5 motherboards for new builds?

How is that an improvement? Do you not see how that would be a major issue?

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Why is supporting upgradeability "kneecapping" the platform? AMD didn't run into that issue, so why would Intel? Sure, there's the occasional issue, but they get worked out. One can get +50% or more improvement in AMD's lineup by upgrading, without having to switch motherboards, which is hardly inconsequential.

This isn't about making it "less work" for Intel. On the contrary, it would require more forward thinking, design, and planning. But the payoffs would be more sales, and, perhaps more importantly, a more forward thinking company in the long term.

Nobody is advocating for supporting legacy platforms, or supporting platforms indefinitely, but it takes a good several years for PCIe, DRAM, and other technologies to advance and become mainstream - plenty of time to support a singular CPU platform within.

I suspect E-cores have been revamped and have higher IPC. The area of the die used by E-cores increased notably from gen12 to gen13. I haven't seen a gen14 die shot yet.

Back to business as usual for Intel with pathetically small IPC improvements across Alder Lake to Alder Lake++. Egregiously high power consumption piled on top of that, makes for a truly deplorable effort.

Whatever happened to the much vaunted DLVR that was supposed to come in Raptor Lake then Raptor Lake+.

Let's be honest. The longer a socket stays viable, the more value it has for the customer. Who in their right mind wants to go through all the pain of ripping out a motherboard if they can simply drop in a new CPU?

Value for a consumer means you pay once for something. You own that item and it retains its utility for many years. Value for a manufacturer means they put you on a subscription model and you have to pay a regular fee. They would prefer you don't own anything.

AMD's choice to support AM4 for a long time was a strategic decision. As the little guy they needed to provide more 'value' to their customers to get them to switch from Intel. People felt that AMD actually 'cared' about them. It also probably lowered development costs.

Intel's strategy is to produce what you call pot boilers. "a usually inferior work produced chiefly for profit". It's a short term strategy to make money, but in the long run it erodes trust in the customer base.

Theinsanegamer said:

"Therefore, it's our opinion that Intel needs to support their next platform for at least 4 generations, and by generations we mean real generations, no straight refreshes."

But why tho? Seriously, why do we need so many? Upgrading sounds nice in theory, but modern CPUs easily last 6-8 years before showing signs of aging. By that point, you'll have significantly faster DRAM, or NVMe, or something else. Imagine popping a raptor lake CPU into an old skylake motherboard, with only NVMe and PCIe attatched to it.

Not to mention the incompatibility issues. Does nobody remember the AM4 fiascos? Motherboards that couldn't handle the microcode updates, missing features on older chipsets, hell the 5000 series STILL does not have full support on x370 boards. And how many people are upgrading to, say, a 5800x3d on a x370? The vast majority of 5000 builds, and even 3000 builds, you see out there are using 500 series chipsets. So what was the point?

Upgrading every few years is a total waste of cash. buy a CPU and mobo, keep it for a decade, then upgrade. Yeah, it doesnt scratch the enthusiast itch as much, but we dont really NEED new CPUs every 2 years anymore. We passed the point of good enough back in the sandy bridge era, if not earlier.

"This isn't an ideal situation for Intel's customers. While some might argue that not everyone upgrades with every new generation, that misses the broader issue. No enthusiast or customer should be defending Intel's poor platform support, you're just shooting yourself in the foot and making the PC platform worse for everyone else in the process. This is without question the worst aspect of the PC enthusiast crowd and we see this illogical corporate simping for not just for Intel but also with AMD and Nvidia."

This is a very emotional argument right here. There is plenty of logic in not upgrading every few years. From both a fiscal and performance perspective, upgrading every 2-3 years is an absolute waste of time. Nobody is stopping you from spending $400 on every generation of AMD CPU. We're just pointing out its a hilarious waste of money. And how does nvidia even fit in here? Their GPUs dont demand new platforms every generation.

"A more pressing concern for Intel might be their inconsistent platform commitment. This inconsistency has likely been detrimental for a while, leading to missed sales opportunities."

This is absolutely hilarious to read. The same intel that dominated in sales for YEARS, is being held back by platform? Mate, they were selling 95% of enthusiast chips at one point, it took till ryzen 3000 for AMD to finally put a dent in it, and intel's CPU division STILL outsells AMDs. WHAT detriment?

Performance sells. Not promises of future upgrades. The author is clearly an enthusiast whom likes upgrading. That's fine, but you dont need to get so mad as to make terrible takes that are factually incorrect.

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Some of us remember how it feels to upgraded our cpu from pentium4 511 (945p/g) to core2 e7500, just bios update & plug it in.. mind me, from middle range cpu to lowish.. but hell, the performance difference...

Theinsanegamer said:

Lets look at that. You're implying that it would make less work for intel to support alderlake on ivy bridge era boards? The ones saddled with 1600 mhz DDR3? And SATA III? No NVMe boot? While at the same time supporting DDR4 AND DDR5 motherboards for new builds?

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how about making 1851 that would support ARL since alderlake? with only ddr5 support of course...

As someone who owns a couple of AM4 gaming PC's.. being able to incrementally swap and upgrade components is a very happy place. I can move to a newer CPU on one PC, or upgrade the amount of DDR4, wait a while, then upgrade the other at cheap cost as they slash the prices - all while keeping with the same memory architecture and motherboard. Selling off the things I no longer need which still can be useful to somebody who wants to save a bit with an AM4 build.

Having decent resale on the 2nd hand market is great for whom that can simply slot the new (my old) processor into their current motherboard, I can flog off some smaller DDR4, or I sell my motherboard for a few bucks to help them upgrade to AM4.

AM5 mucks with all of that, but if they continue to support it for a while, I'd still rather help AMD over Intel, that for a decade or more shafted everybody by only offering minimal upgrades. Hate to think what Intel would be offering now without the AMD's resurgence!

I don't really care about the bleeding edge as that is expensive, but in the mid-level I still am a big fan of AMD over Intel right now.

The actual benefit comes in the form of enhanced overclocking. The variance in stock performance from 12th through 14th generation is not a big deal, and not something people that are focused on overclocking care about. We don't run our CPUs stock, don't care much about that, so zero performance improvement stock is not a big deal if you can push your newer CPU harder and farther with the same or less voltage.

user556 said:

I suspect E-cores have been revamped and have higher IPC. The area of the die used by E-cores increased notably from gen12 to gen13. I haven't seen a gen14 die shot yet.

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The E-cores are the same, Raptor Lake just has twice as many across the product stack.

Theinsanegamer said:

hell the 5000 series STILL does not have full support on x370 boards.

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What is missing? Apart from PCI-E 4.0 and some newer PBO?

videogame57 said:

The E-cores are the same, Raptor Lake just has twice as many across the product stack.

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I've not seen any comparisons between any E-cores. 12 series, 13 series or 14 series.

Well kidz, I think you've missed the point of the purpose of a rapid "new generation cycle". Besides, it isn't for you anyway. It's for OEMs, so that every year or so, they can tout their "off the rack" machines as being, "the latest and greatest'.

Y'all won't be the ones walking into Walmart to buy your kid a new laptop. You'll just give him you old one. But for those people who do, they'll want the insurance that it's "14th generation Intel", and "the best Windows ever, Windows 11", or they'll go someplace else to buy it. (God help them if they are driven to Best Buy). But then again, they won't get waited on there either, nor will the, "hired last Saturday", sales clerk know squat about the product..

New cars and trucks are released yearly. But, you can get financing for up to 72 months. That should tell you something.

The motor trade doesn't retool completely every year either. So, your new car is basically a, "Skin Job". As a matter of fact, GM used to keep its basic tooling for three full years. You could stuff a 1955 Chevy door, onto a 1957 Chevy, no problem. It looked like sh!t, but you could still do it.

Simply put, a desktop is basically the new car of the electronics world. Sure, the Joneses down the street may have a newer one, but your old rattletrap will still get you where you're going.

13 is an unlucky number for some, maybe that's why Intel want to move on. Personally, I think its unlucky to be superstitious...

My two cents here but I really don't care about multi-platform support. The author talks about people defending companies who don't have this, I'm not defending them, it would be better but I might still buy their products. I dont want my old motherboard if im buying a new CPU!

pugsthomas said:

Some of us remember how it feels to upgraded our cpu from pentium4 511 (945p/g) to core2 e7500, just bios update & plug it in.. mind me, from middle range cpu to lowish.. but hell, the performance difference...

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To remind, LGA775 motherboards from Pentium 4 era didn't support Core 2 CPUs. You needed motherboard launched After Core 2 was released to have Core 2 supporting motherboard.

user556 said:

I've not seen any comparisons between any E-cores. 12 series, 13 series or 14 series.

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They all have same E-cores (clock speeds may be different) so there is nothing to compare.

"Ideally, they also need to make a good step forward from Raptor Lake to justify the socket change and any associated compatibility issues."
Removing DDR4 support seems like a decent justification.

Like some other people, I personally don't really care about long platform support, while it can be beneficial, I would call it at most a bonus to the platform, not the almost must have that Steve thinks. Mainly because I don't trust neither Intel or AMD to actually keep their plans, and we never know when a Bulldozer is going to happen.
Also even though the cores themselves didn't change much, there was a massive increase in multithread performance from the E-core count increase, and a decent efficiency improvement when comparing the 12900K to the 13700K, with the 13700K being able to achieve 12~15% better performance at the same power as the 12900K, so for the most part I'm okay with how LGA1700 went, even though I would've liked more improvements in the lower end.

HardReset said:

They all have same E-cores (clock speeds may be different) so there is nothing to compare.

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Physically, the 13 series E-cores have larger proportion of die area than the 12 series. In the 12 series it was almost exactly four E-cores to each P-core in die area. That changed notably with the 13 series. It's more like 3-to-1 there. They aren't the same.

user556 said:

Physically, the 13 series E-cores have larger proportion of die area than the 12 series. In the 12 series it was almost exactly four E-cores to each P-core in die area. That changed notably with the 13 series. It's more like 3-to-1 there. They aren't the same.

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Architecture wise they are exactly same. There may be something with ring bus and/or cache but still cores itself are same. So nothing to compare there.

Yet the size is a lot different. Maybe it was just the caches a lot bigger. Seems to me there is more to compare between the E-cores than there is between the P-cores.