Intel’s Alder Lake launch is around the corner. Even though the NDA is still valid it seems this new desktop CPU design will be the beginning of a new era. Featuring a Dual different Core design with separately overclockable cores, being the performant Golden Cove cores (P) and the slower but efficient Gracemont cores (E).

The biggest challenge for HWBot is how to list/rank this new processor generation. We had a long and heavily debated thread at the forum where the community could ventilate their thoughts about the 4 possible propositions.
Most users that chimed in, wanted to keep the new CPUs ranked based on the published cores. The Core i9 12900K would compete versus other 16 core processors..

However we can not only take this feedback into account and have to look at it from a broader spectrum. Also reflecting on the future about other possible big/little processor core configurations, not only from designs by Intel, but also from Team Red.

Also taking into account that the HWBot Engine is slowly being overhauled with new and improved code, meaning that the opted configuration is the easiest for the current Database setup, but most important that it also allows us to be ready for similar future processor innovations.

Therefore, we will list “currently” the K & KF SKU Alder Lake S processors in a “dual” configuration.

Let us take the upcoming Intel flagship, the Core i9 12900K as example:

   - Core i9 12900K competes in the 16 core ranking

   - Core i9 12900K(8P) competes in the 8 core ranking

The latter (12900K(8P) is the same Core i9 12900K CPU but with the efficient Gracemont cores disabled and will compete with the remaining Golden Cove cores versus other 8 core processors.

This will be an interesting test case to find out how popular this HWBot configuration will be and to see if the community can easily adapt to this new way of benching and submitting.

Now what would OC be without the standard portion of the usual drama? A lot of debate is ongoing about this being unfair as one can have the benefit of being twice awarded by HWBot boints with a single processor. We thought about this already and will analyse how big this “double” effect will be a on the existing rankings. Performance numbers, overclockability of each core set, the bandwidth of DDR5 memory, all will have a big influence on the aforementioned.

Validation will possible require showing the clock of each processor set, resulting in an extra CPUZ CPU requirement. Matt is working hard to get his BenchMate benchmarking tool to be Alder Lake compatible, thus to detect and show the proper clocks for both the P and E cores.

Finally we will see and experience true innovation again by Intel in their processor design and it might seriously shake up things at HWBot, but let us not get too carried away before we see the numbers pop up on the front-page, once the NDA is lifted.