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Intel Alder Lake-S Desktop CPUs Reportedly Coming in November w/ PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 Memory

According to a report from WCCFT, Intel will be launching its 12th Gen Alder Lake-S processors in November this year, with support for the latest memory and I/O technologies such as DDR5, PCIe 5.0, etc. The outlet states that the Santa Clara-based chipmaker is presently briefing its board partners about the new launch and that it’d be up to them to decide whether their motherboards would be supporting the newer DDR5 memory interface or stick to DDR4. (Valium)

In all likelihood, as reported earlier, the budget H610 and B660 boards will retain DDR4 memory while the higher-end Z690 lineup will transition to DDR5. This means that the Core i3 and lower-end Core i5 SKUs will mainly be using DDR4 memory while the Core i7 and i9 parts will leverage the faster DDR5 memory. The same can be said about PCIe 5.0 support, as it requires an increased number of layers.

Since the company is switching to a newer LGA1700 socket with Alder Lake-S, the existing coolers will once again not be compatible, and users upgrading will have to make a new purchase on that front as well. In terms of the core architecture itself, as you might have heard several hundred times, Alder Lake will feature a hybrid core architecture with a high-performance (Golden Cove) core cluster and a low-power (Grace Mont) core cluster. Its main test will be on the software side, as older applications may not be able to distinguish between the two different clusters, leading to less than ideal performance.

Considering Intel’s influence in the PC market, most mainstream applications and games should be quick to optimize and properly support the new processors. Considering that Grace Mont is going to be more or less on par with Skylake (albeit at lower frequencies), this should somewhat alleviate the core count delta between AMD and Intel. However, since AMD is still using a homogeneous core design, it should retail its lead in the multi-threaded performance segment.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
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