An element in which historically the company which now governs Lisa Su has always been behind Intel. In the “favor” of the creator of the x86 ISA, we can say that they have the downside that their desktop processors use a less advanced node, which is initially a downside, but there are other factors, decisions made when designing a processor.
Are Intel Desktop Processors More Powerful?
Currently, Intel Gen 11 desktop processors compete with 10th Gen, Socket Sharing, and AMD Zen 3 processors. And if we had to give a straight answer, the answer would be yes. , but the long answer is yes, but, implying that there is a series of nuances, which does not exempt Intel from this, it is important to know where the related information comes from.
In reality, the consumption measurements that manufacturers give us are an act of faith that we do on our part. But at the same time it is an act of faith that is made on the tools we use to measure energy consumption. It must be taken into account that this is not fixed and fluctuates during temporary periods of increasing clock speed. Therefore, it is important to take into account the way in which the units in charge of measuring consumption operate and whether they are sensing the right moment of the increase.
Are measurement systems failing? Well no, since they do not capture continuous moments, but fluctuations in energy consumption in order to anticipate a possible overheating of the processor. What is happening is that the clock speed boost function in the case of Intel desktop processors is not based on small accelerations to avoid the increase in power consumption, but Intel is betting on longer periods of time.
The reason for doing this? The idea is for the processor to run at the highest possible speed during benchmarks rather than having continuous acceleration and deceleration to keep the processor cool. In order to get the highest possible score.
A deeper explanation
There is a direct relationship between power consumption and clock speed, if power consumption increases, higher voltage can be reached and therefore higher clock speed. Of course, during the design phase of the processor, limits are set in terms of power consumption. To come to think that Intel processors reach a certain power consumption due to a design error is quite naive, it is something that is done on purpose to force the clock speed to the maximum and win in the numbers of the critics.
Remember that Intel’s 10th and 11th processors use two processor power lines called PL1 and PL2. As both work in the LGA1200 socket, it can be inferred that this is a function built into the motherboard. After all, the power for the processor comes from the motherboard. PL1 being the energy it receives when the processor is operating normally and PL2 when it requires a boost. In the case of PL2 mode, the period during which the processor increases its clock speed to the maximum then raises it and decreases it again is 56 seconds, the period during which it remains at the top of the set is close to ‘half a minute.
The problem, as we have already said, lies in the high duration of the PL2 period in Intel processors, and not in its existence. Most apps would suffice with a few seconds of Boost and more complex apps with 10 seconds would suffice. A temporary increase in clock speed above this time ends up producing a huge increase in the consumption of Intel processors.
Will Alder Lake be the end of this practice?
Yes, we know the title of this section is a truism, after all they were the ones who designed Comet Lake-S, Rocket Lake-S and the LGA1200 socket. The really surprising thing? The existence of an architecture like Tiger Lake, which is much more energy efficient, brings us to the following question: what would have happened if Intel had based its desktop CPUs on Tiger Lake-H and not on Rocket Lake-S? ?
What we do know is that Intel will use the same architecture for desktop and desktop in the case of its future Alder Lake, but the two will be subject to different specs and we don’t know if Intel is going to ditch its old ones. energy intake defects. consumption of its CPU voluntarily towards the stratosphere. Keep in mind that Alder Lake-S, which is the desktop version, will use a different outlet than its laptop version.
