Intel Alder Lake CPUs Launch November 4th, with Up to 8 Big and 8 Small Cores

takyon writes:

Intel 12th Gen Core Alder Lake for Desktops: Top SKUs Only, Coming November 4th

The first things we'll go into are the new CPUs that Intel is announcing today: the overclockable models of Intel 12th Gen Core. As with previous launches, we have Core i9, Core i7, and Core i5, with the key highlights including new support for DDR5, PCIe Gen 5, new overclocking features, and a change in how Intel is promoting its Thermal Design Power (TDP).[*]

Each processor has a number of performance cores (P-cores) and efficiency cores (E-cores). The P-cores have SMT, whereas the E-cores do not, so we're dealing with non-standard numbers of total threads. Inside the system, the P-core threads, E-core threads, and SMT threads are categorized for performance and efficiency, which we'll get to later in the article. But with a new hybrid design also comes with new ways to showcase frequencies, and each set of cores will have its own base frequency and turbo frequency. The way power is marketed and used has also changed, designed to be clearer.

All processors will come with 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 from the processor, and an additional 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 for storage. Memory support is listed as both DDR5-4800 and DDR4-3200, although systems will only support one or the other, for a maximum of 128 GB. The K processors also feature 32 EUs of Intel's Xe-LP graphics, designated as UHD Graphics 770. Prices will start at $264 for the base Core i5 model, up to $589 for the top Core i9 model.

[*] This is the table:

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