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And so... I bought Arrow Lake (13700k to 265k), my thoughts.

Sure, no one can sense something in the ns scale, but the accumulation of latency certainly can.
Nevertheless, my point is that people commonly attribute one performance metric to another metric, which is why I said correlation without causation, and where you see Arrow Lake still performs contrary to the "expectation" in the latencies you listed, which illustrates that the common verdict is wrong.

So if I understand correctly, you also understand like me that Benchmark is good data but is not necessarily equivalent to the end user experience. (correlation without causation)
But why these benchmark like those from Gamer Nexus are far from reality? i mean it's not "far" but not representative, in addition people when they see lots of CPUs in a graph and it is towards the bottom = they think it is bad whereas when you compare these actual results, sometimes the FPS varies only 5/10~ depending on the game, it's just that since there are a lot of CPUs, they stack up but have almost the same result.

There are also a lot of things that come into play, like for example often Dx12 has more stutters in games but has better keyboard/mouse latency and vice versa, Dx11 seems slightly slower in terms of "input lag" but has a smoother feeling while having exact same FPS/Frametime (on Apex Legends and Mecha Break that's my feeling) and I have the impression that in what I've tried the 265K handles that better than the 12900k, I know we can't base ourselves on use because I would have to specify absolutely everything but I am very demanding and I pay attention to the slightest thing, a human opinion is also important, we remain buyers.

As a matter of fact, most latencies for memory and caches have gradually increased over the last decade, because they have traded off latency for bandwidth. E.g. DDR5 has generally slower latencies than DDR4, but offsets that with much more bandwidth. Yet, CPUs still get faster, as it's the throughput across workloads that matter the most.

Agreed

People can look at the specs all day long, whether it's timings or logical units in the CPUs, and make qualified guesses, but unless it's backed up by measurements or deep technical knowledge it's usually gibberish. Like on paper Zen 5 should look like a massive improvement over Zen 4, and yet it doesn't quite deliver what most expect except for with AVX-512. Is it a bit of throttling, is it a mishap or is it just as they intended? I would like to know, but we can't always extrapolate performance based on vague specs.

I think you're the most objective person in this thread ! but what do you prefer/what do you use?

I'm going to try the 9800x3D again by running several more in-depth tests, I have just concluded my personal tests and my feelings regarding the 12900k system and indeed, this CPU is very good but is "outdated" compared to other choices and that does not suit me, my final choice will be either 265K or 9800x3D.

I think you may have missed the point, and it wasn't targeted against you. ;)

Sorry, i'm not used to forums generally and english is not my main language.
 
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Ok, cool.

That's not my experience, 12900k run better on 23H2 than 24H2 but it is still not that of course compared to a 265K.
47ns? ok cool but what is your ram?
Windows 10 runs better than 23h2 or 24h2 by a lot, and that's what im using. My ram is a 7600c36 kit running at 7000c28 currently.
 
Windows 10 runs better than 23h2 or 24h2 by a lot, and that's what im using. My ram is a 7600c36 kit running at 7000c28 currently.

That's been my experience as well... something with the latest builds of 24H2 has gone seriously wrong for me
 
Windows 10 runs better than 23h2 or 24h2 by a lot, and that's what im using. My ram is a 7600c36 kit running at 7000c28 currently.
With what components?

I've tested myself that my 12900k system run better on Win 11 23H2 than 24H2 but never tested Windows 10, what Windows 10 is better 22H2 ?

Your setup seems insanely great

I have posted some videos

Win 11


Win 10

Don't get me wrong, i trust you but what's the difference between these 2 videos ? frametime ? latency ? overall 1% low ?
 
Windows 10 runs better than 23h2 or 24h2 by a lot, and that's what im using. My ram is a 7600c36 kit running at 7000c28 currently.
I don't do serious benching 3D on W11. Even for CPU benchmarks.
 
So Microsoft created Windows 11 and made it worse in every way? In games and for working with image and video editing? Is that right?

My goodness, we need to warn this to the more than 600 million Windows 11 users

We need to warn Microsoft about this, this is very serious
 
That's been my experience as well... something with the latest builds of 24H2 has gone seriously wrong for me
I use a specific version of 24H2 which doesn't fud the experience and just performs like 22H2, I got my 3DMark scores back up with that specific version..beyond that build its chaos..hahaha
 
So if I understand correctly, you also understand like me that Benchmark is good data but is not necessarily equivalent to the end user experience. (correlation without causation)
But why these benchmark like those from Gamer Nexus are far from reality? i mean it's not "far" but not representative, in addition people when they see lots of CPUs in a graph and it is towards the bottom = they think it is bad whereas when you compare these actual results, sometimes the FPS varies only 5/10~ depending on the game, it's just that since there are a lot of CPUs, they stack up but have almost the same result.
The relevance of benchmarks varies based on the nature of the workload. Gaming specifically, is fairly doable, especially with good latency measurements. And GN is one of the better ones at that, even though I may have objections to some testing methodologies and conclusions. But also understand there are limits to how precise you can measure in Windows by itself, even long before you approach 1 ms, the system isn't even close to precise enough to measure it correctly, while (some) humans can perceive "microstutter" even below this. (this is relevant to your thoughts on 265K vs 12900k)

Over 10 years ago while writing a rendering engine I compared switching schedulers on Linux ("generic" vs. "realtime"), and while the RT kernel had like ~1% lower FPS, it was noticeably smoother. I also tested a machine with a weaker GPU and RT kernel vs. a more powerful PC and GPU, the lower GPU was smoother while rendering at much lower FPS. I'm saying this because there are areas where we can perceive a difference, but will struggle to prove it without special equipment.

Back to your question; as stated, gaming is doable (with stated limitations), server workloads are usually fairly easy to benchmark, but productive/workstation workloads are usually the most challenging. So what I was referring to in my first post was mostly productive workloads, but also somewhat gaming. Whenever Photoshop, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Blender, etc. are benchmarked, it's a batch job (obviously), but it's not very representative for the time user spends using the tool. The same goes for programming benchmarks, it's usually compiling, and although I've spent tens of thousands of hours coding, I'm pretty confident that less than 1% of that is watching the compiler doing its work. So do you get the disconnect here? The measures we use to determine what constitutes a workstation has little or nothing to do with the real world use case?

And therein lies some of the conclusions I object to in reviews, when it's largely either synthetic or batch loads where you'll see e.g. a 12- or 16-core Zen CPU have an edge over Intel's counterparts. It leads to two logical conclusions; if the user's workload is not a batch load, then disregard those scores, and will probably lead to the 8-core being the one to compare vs. the competitor. On the other hand, users who do truly scale well with many cores should probably skip and go for the Threadripper instead, because if you do work and it scales, then just unleash those threads! (Not to mention such users probably need lots of IO too.)
Most multimedia/content creator "prosumers"/professionals don't sit and watch the screen when doing a batch job, and the same with programmers building or testing their code, so if you're doing a massive batch job you're probably going to offload this to a "server" in order to continue working. So I believe for many actually having two systems is probably the right choice.

There are also a lot of things that come into play, like for example often Dx12 has more stutters in games but has better keyboard/mouse latency and vice versa, Dx11 seems slightly slower in terms of "input lag"…
DirectX 10/11/12 is generally the same architecture with different feature sets. While I haven't investigated what you suggest, and my knowledge is mostly OpenGL and Vulkan (and I'm not up to speed on whether there are underlying IO changes in DirectX 12), I expect it may have more to do with game engine design rather than API version. You'd probably be surprised by how much bloat and abstractions are used in most game engines today. But I'm happy to be proven wrong if you happen to know how to do low level debugging and test your theory. :)

…but has a smoother feeling while having exact same FPS/Frametime (on Apex Legends and Mecha Break that's my feeling) and I have the impression that in what I've tried the 265K handles that better than the 12900k…
I'm not surprised, considering how extremely the clock speeds for Alder Lake/Raptor Lake fluctuate, it is bound to cause at the very least more uneven performance. This also creates havoc on the antiquated scheduler in Windows.
And as games will probably continue to become more demanding going forward, the stronger CPU will only gain advantage over time, and Arrow Lake is in no doubt the stronger one. And a stronger CPU will also age better than one with lots of L3 cache…

I think you're the most objective person in this thread ! but what do you prefer/what do you use?
Greatly appreciated, if anything I'm slightly biased in favor of AMD, and pretty much all of their CPUs from Zen 2 or 3 and on has been fairly good, but so close to being much better. What I mean is if they hit the nail and got the designs more fine tuned, we could see something like Athlon64 vs. Netburst if you remember those days.

What I prefer is the right tool for the job, and I firmly believe that there (usually) isn't one CPU that's the best option for everyone.
What I currently have; Ryzen 9 5900X ("workstation"), i7-3930K ("old workstation"), Ryzen 7 2700X + RTX 3060 (HTPC), i7-8565U (laptop) and Celeron G1840 (file server), plus some older stuff.
I've also had/used at various jobs; Raptor Lake (current), Comet Lake, Coffee Lake, Skylake-X(X299), Sandy Bridge… (usually high models)

I switched from being a dual-screen user to a dual-computer user some years ago, used to be i7-3930K + i5-4690K(test/entertainment/research machine) until the latter died, and in late 2021 I intended to replace both, and I got a Ryzen 9 5900X for my secondary machine, intending to go high-end workstation for the primary, but as life got in the way, I suspended the plans. Fast-forward some years the 5900X became my "workstation", which it was never intended for, but I didn't do my homework, as the platform IO was insufficient for my needs, and 64 GB which is the most it can do without slower memory is no longer enough for even my secondary machine. So my 5900X will be my first machine ever to be replaced not because it's too slow, but memory and IO. So I will probably go with two new builds within a year or so, both with at least 128 GB ram. AM5 is unfortunately disqualified due to platform IO, so it will probably either two proper workstations, or workstation + Arrow Lake.

While I don't exactly poop money, cost isn't the main concern, and there is nothing more wasteful than replacing hardware prematurely because of stupid bottlenecks. My old i7-3930K has lasted for 12.5 years, thanks to 64 GB ram (a normal build in 2012 had 8 or 16 GB), but it has been unstable for ~3 years. Still 9+ years from a more expensive system isn't bad compared to 3.5 years from a cheaper, especially if it's more productive too.

But I'll probably build a system for someone else before that, and the 265K is a strong contender there.
 
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So Microsoft created Windows 11 and made it worse in every way? In games and for working with image and video editing? Is that right?

My goodness, we need to warn this to the more than 600 million Windows 11 users

We need to warn Microsoft about this, this is very serious
I found Windows 11 more "fluid" in-games scenario, i'm that wrong?
Does i need to re-try Windows 10 then?

The relevance of benchmarks varies based on the nature of the workload. Gaming specifically, is fairly doable, especially with good latency measurements. And GN is one of the better ones at that, even though I may have objections to some testing methodologies and conclusions. But also understand there are limits to how precise you can measure in Windows by itself, even long before you approach 1 ms, the system isn't even close to precise enough to measure it correctly, while (some) humans can perceive "microstutter" even below this. (this is relevant to your thoughts on 265K vs 12900k)

I do have also some objections that's why i always test myself just to be sure.
But yes, actually i would not know how to confirm some things because i don't really have the time to bench everything but it's like the 265K system that i have are 100% compliant to make those 240fps and the 12900k try to interpolate those frames with fake one (don't worry, i don't use FrameGen lmao) because of the constant very little micro-jitter experience (just seeing by panning the mouse quickly), even by having a perfect frametime, the experience is clearly not the same (refresh rate, overdrive on the screen, all imaginable settings are exact same on both settings.)

Over 10 years ago while writing a rendering engine I compared switching schedulers on Linux ("generic" vs. "realtime"), and while the RT kernel had like ~1% lower FPS, it was noticeably smoother. I also tested a machine with a weaker GPU and RT kernel vs. a more powerful PC and GPU, the lower GPU was smoother while rendering at much lower FPS. I'm saying this because there are areas where we can perceive a difference, but will struggle to prove it without special equipment.

Had same experience, a 3700x system for example was quicker but being slower on some task, like...it is slower in terms of raw performance but not in terms of "smoothness" and i think i talk about the same things that you said.

Back to your question; as stated, gaming is doable (with stated limitations), server workloads are usually fairly easy to benchmark, but productive/workstation workloads are usually the most challenging. So what I was referring to in my first post was mostly productive workloads, but also somewhat gaming. Whenever Photoshop, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, Blender, etc. are benchmarked, it's a batch job (obviously), but it's not very representative for the time user spends using the tool. The same goes for programming benchmarks, it's usually compiling, and although I've spent tens of thousands of hours coding, I'm pretty confident that less than 1% of that is watching the compiler doing its work. So do you get the disconnect here? The measures we use to determine what constitutes a workstation has little or nothing to do with the real world use case?

It's like "showing numbers of FPS and knowing the raw performance but not how you feel (yes again) those frames in your games"
Because of the great example of correlation / causation (that's how i understand and think) but benchmark are obviously good data.
DirectX 10/11/12 is generally the same architecture with different feature sets. While I haven't investigated what you suggest, and my knowledge is mostly OpenGL and Vulkan (and I'm not up to speed on whether there are underlying IO changes in DirectX 12), I expect it may have more to do with game engine design rather than API version. You'd probably be surprised by how much bloat and abstractions are used in most game engines today. But I'm happy to be proven wrong if you happen to know how to do low level debugging and test your theory. :)

Mmmh i see, indeed, I can only give a perception of my "feeling" (xD), I base myself on Apex Legends a game of which I know how the engine itself behaves, my muscle memory, the animations, everything, I know how this game behaves and I have extreme habits in addition to being sensitive to variations and others (although server side this game is a disaster and can distort perception) I recognize when there is a difference in fluidity which is not linked to the servers but due to Windows/PC/Components etc and effectively, Dx11 feels much better on keyboard/mouse, meaning it's smoother and it's like you're suddenly playing without V-Sync BUT cause more stuttering in my case than Dx12 (i'm not the only fan to have this experience on this game specifically)
I'm not surprised, considering how extremely the clock speeds for Alder Lake/Raptor Lake fluctuate, it is bound to cause at the very least more uneven performance. This also creates havoc on the antiquated scheduler in Windows.
And as games will probably continue to become more demanding going forward, the stronger CPU will only gain advantage over time, and Arrow Lake is in no doubt the stronger one. And a stronger CPU will also age better than one with lots of L3 cache…

I personally use the Bitsum power plans with ParkingCore software, it means that the CPU have always maximum frequency.
Arrow Lake will age better than x3D competitor but just because it have more clock speed and more cores or there is no relation?
Because, if we only look at raw performance (for gaming, due to 3DV Cache) x3D CPUs are the most powerful, right? so does x3D will age better?

Greatly appreciated, if anything I'm slightly biased in favor of AMD, and pretty much all of their CPUs from Zen 2 or 3 and on has been fairly good, but so close to being much better. What I mean is if they hit the nail and got the designs more fine tuned, we could see something like Athlon64 vs. Netburst if you remember those days.

What I prefer is the right tool for the job, and I firmly believe that there (usually) isn't one CPU that's the best option for everyone.
What I currently have; Ryzen 9 5900X ("workstation"), i7-3930K ("old workstation"), Ryzen 7 2700X + RTX 3060 (HTPC), i7-8565U (laptop) and Celeron G1840 (file server), plus some older stuff.
I've also had/used at various jobs; Raptor Lake (current), Comet Lake, Coffee Lake, Skylake-X(X299), Sandy Bridge… (usually high models)

Ok ! that's a lot !
 
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…I recognize when there is a difference in fluidity which is not linked to the servers but due to Windows/PC/Components etc and effectively, Dx11 feels much better on keyboard/mouse, meaning it's smoother and it's like you're suddenly playing without V-Sync BUT cause more stuttering in my case than Dx12 (i'm not the only fan to have this experience on this game specifically)
Just to be clear, are you talking about just input lag on IO, or actual perceived stutter in rendering as a result from you using the keyboard/mouse?
Because if IO somehow affect frametimes, then that sounds very much like "poor" engine design to me, that different threads are somehow waiting for each other. And there are differences in how DirectX 11 and 12 dispatches rendering queues btw.
And even though I haven't played that game, it seems to me to be a multi-API game, which usually means an abstraction layer that is common to cause such things.

Do you observe the same tendency in games that are made purely for either DirectX 11 or 12?

I personally use the Bitsum power plans with ParkingCore software, it means that the CPU have always maximum frequency.
Arrow Lake will age better than x3D competitor but just because it have more clock speed and more cores or there is no relation?
Because, if we only look at raw performance (for gaming, due to 3DV Cache) x3D CPUs are the most powerful, right? so does x3D will age better?
Firstly, Arrow Lake does have higher IPC, so running it at locked clock speeds it will outperform Zen 5 in raw computational performance. (except AVX-512 loads)

As for L3 cache, having more of it doesn't add computational performance, it only helps to keep the CPU fed. As anyone proficient with low-level coding could tell you, adding more L3 primarily helps with bloated software, as cache-hits in L3 are primarily instruction cache hits. So in applications where the computational density is lower vs. software bloat, then the relative performance gains will be higher. If you optimize the code to get rid of abstractions and make it denser, then the "advantage" of more L3 will actually dissipate. Many would think this is a bad thing, but on the contrary, code should be as scalable as possible. The perceived advantage of more L3 cache is usually the greatest in unrealistic edge cases, such as gaming at 720p or low with the most powerful GPU. But, they are not clarifying real differences, no, they are in fact introducing or amplifying bottlenecks that real users will never see. And especially, as new games tends to get more demanding, any such "imaginary" bottleneck will only become less relevant as your system ages. The tendency of absurd benchmarks isn't new though, and I've complained about it for over a decade. Along with emphasis on synthetic benchmarks and very cherry-picked outlier games (like AotS for a while), this has skewed recommendations for buyers for a long time.

In all honesty, the real reason to buy Zen 5 would be AVX-512 support, which is massively powerful, if your application benefits from it. It will unlikely be of significant use for games though. And such things are one of the few cases where the hardware will "mature with age".

Ok ! that's a lot !
It's enough that I have to keep a large spreadsheet to keep track of it. :)
And to answer your question better;
Up until about ~2020, I've used enough hardware to know that for my use case (which is mostly coding, some multimedia and gaming), Intel have consistently been much more responsive. While I suspect that may still be the case with Arrow Lake vs. Zen 4/5, I'm not going to claim that before I've compared it. The reason why I have both Zen 3 and Zen 1 too, is to verify software.


But one thing I would like you and others with access to Arrow Lake and relevant Zen 4/5 CPUs is the following;
- Run your browser with 5-10 medium-to-heavy tabs for at least a week.
- Then, without closing the browser, test gaming and/or productive applications to see whether you can detect some kind of input lag or stuttering vs. a fresh boot with just the game or application.
This sort of test would probably be more useful than anything to determine a real world use of such systems. And pretty much any "prosumer" I know (incl. those I build systems for) continue to run their browser while doing other stuff.
 
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The worst thing is that Zen 5 was not re-tested after Win11 fixes were released. It was done for Arrow Lake only.

Arrow Lake release was rushed as hell. It was one huge sack of bugs at the time of release, man it even failed to boot OS installation.
Still, there's 1-2 microcode updates per month releases by Intel. There's a design flaw which increases memory latency.
265K is probably the most reasonable SKU from the Arrow Lake lineup.

What's the biggest problem of Arrow Lake is that Intel marketing painted it to be something fabulous, amazing, breath-taking.
In the end, it could not even beat previous generation at some cases. This is exactly what happens when you rush things, an unpolished product emerges.
It's clearly a sign that Intel managers don't care about what do engineers say on the topic. Intel caught a Boeing disease.
Focus on delivering on time rather than delivering expected results is a bad approach. Whole 5 nodes in 4 years theory was bad approach.

As for 9800X3D, it provides the most smooth gaming experience thanks to it's large L3 cache which dramatically raises 0.1% and 1% lows in games.
In other words, 9800X3D is much less sensitive to RAM speed thanks to large pile of L3 cache which compensates for memory speed and/or latency drawbacks.
Many reviews, as well as the fact that there's roughly non-existent memory scaling on X3D chips, prove this logic.
 
The worst thing is that Zen 5 was not re-tested after Win11 fixes were released. It was done for Arrow Lake only.

Arrow Lake release was rushed as hell. It was one huge sack of bugs at the time of release, man it even failed to boot OS installation.
Still, there's 1-2 microcode updates per month releases by Intel. There's a design flaw which increases memory latency.
265K is probably the most reasonable SKU from the Arrow Lake lineup.

What's the biggest problem of Arrow Lake is that Intel marketing painted it to be something fabulous, amazing, breath-taking.
In the end, it could not even beat previous generation at some cases. This is exactly what happens when you rush things, an unpolished product emerges.
It's clearly a sign that Intel managers don't care about what do engineers say on the topic. Intel caught a Boeing disease.
Focus on delivering on time rather than delivering expected results is a bad approach. Whole 5 nodes in 4 years theory was bad approach.

As for 9800X3D, it provides the most smooth gaming experience thanks to it's large L3 cache which dramatically raises 0.1% and 1% lows in games.
In other words, 9800X3D is much less sensitive to RAM speed thanks to large pile of L3 cache which compensates for memory speed and/or latency drawbacks.
Many reviews, as well as the fact that there's roughly non-existent memory scaling on X3D chips, prove this logic.
Intel found that nobody cares about arrow lake, so they reduced the 265k's price to 1999$, cheaper than 14700kf(2500$), 9950x(3680$) and 285k(4399$), only 200$ more expensive than 9700x, thus making it not a 3199$ trash.
 
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