MSI highlights likely Intel Alder Lake availability date

[HEXUS]

Announced CoreLiquid LGA 1700 cooler upgrade kits will be available from 4th Nov.

Read more.

[Tabbykatze]

"Pre-orders" go live a week earlier than the review embargo date.

Errghghhhhh, please people, don't pre-order!

[Corky34]

If taking full advantage of them is tied to using Windows 11 I'm not sure I'd order one, let alone pre-order one, at least not for use on a desktop PC.

[Tabbykatze]

If taking full advantage of them is tied to using Windows 11 I'm not sure I'd order one, let alone pre-order one, at least not for use on a desktop PC.

It's not an "if", it is. The whole major reasoning behind Win11 was a re-do of the scheduling systems to support the hybrid architecture.

[Corky34]

I only really said if as you can never be 100% sure of what the future holds.

If people aren't willing to spend the money to run what seems more like an operating system and hardware designed for mobile computing for use on their desktop PC's i wouldn't be surprised if Wintel back-peddle a bit on things.

[Rubarb]

Would love to see some benchmarks with the new chips paired with a gtx1030 because that about the only gpu thats afordable atm.

[watercooled]

I only really said if as you can never be 100% sure of what the future holds.

If people aren't willing to spend the money to run what seems more like an operating system and hardware designed for mobile computing for use on their desktop PC's i wouldn't be surprised if Wintel back-peddle a bit on things.

There's more to the hybrid design than mobile use as has been discussed in other threads, though I was admittedly sceptical of its advantages initially. The 'small' cores are ostensibly ballpark Skylake performance, at least in certain scenarios. However, being much lower power and importantly more power efficient than equivalent 'big' cores could provide a considerable boost in useful multithreaded performance given how much power is a limiting factor in peak performance with high-end processors.

Just adding more big cores leads to diminishing returns past a point as you are power limited (even if die area/cost is less important), so you have to start backing off on clocks (see server/workstation processors). Past a point, you back off on clocks so much that you're not gaining much by just throwing more cores at the problem, so you have to be smarter about how you use the available power. If the small cores are as efficient as Intel are claiming, they it could be quite impressive in suitable workloads, and it adds credence to the rumours that AMD could be going down the same sort of path in the future.

Obviously, not all workloads will benefit from such a layout, which is why there are still plenty of big cores. But by replacing two big cores with 8 (going by Intel slides) small cores, it could prove interesting in applications that can take advantage of the extra threads.

Some details of the small cores details in Anandtech's overview: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16881...rchitectures/4

[Corky34]

What i said has come across wrong, sorry. I'm not saying the big little thing isn't a good idea, far from it, it's a sensible way to go for the reasons you've stated and probably many more. It's the restricting the use of that to what, IMO, is ostensibly an operating system that's main focus is on mobile computing.

If big little comes with advantages for me on a desktop PC I'll buy into it, if those advantages are only available when i use a particular OS I'll have to consider if those advantages are really worth it, is using the mess that Windows 11 has become (IMO) really worth it.

[Spud1]

I certainly won't be pre ordering one of these CPUs until reviews are our and they can show enough of a performance jump to make it worth it - especially given this effectively needs new ram, motherboard and CPU...but I will be watching with interest and it's nice to know they will be out to order this year (maybe even to get one delivered, if there is any stock).

Still good news MSI are offering the new mounting kit FOC so in the likely event I end up ordering one of these i'll be able to keep the cooler

[Tabbykatze]

I certainly won't be pre ordering one of these CPUs until reviews are our and they can show enough of a performance jump to make it worth it - especially given this effectively needs new ram, motherboard and CPU...but I will be watching with interest and it's nice to know they will be out to order this year (maybe even to get one delivered, if there is any stock).

Still good news MSI are offering the new mounting kit FOC so in the likely event I end up ordering one of these i'll be able to keep the cooler

May not need RAM as they're DDR4 and DDR5 compatible depending on the board purchased.