Ok I’m going to give my two cents here. As someone who recently purchased the 12900k, and has had the 5950x and 5900x in the past, I can say that I was extremely impressed with the performance gains from Alder Lake as it pertains to gaming. I watched the reviews myself and was hesitant but a buddy of mine that works at my local microcenter told me that the review sample build they had running in the back was promising. So I traded in my zen cpu for alder lake.
Most notable when it comes to the sim is the overall smoothness and 1 percent low differences. I performed all test at Seattle in the salty 747 jetliner.
64gb DDR4 3600mhz c16 ram for ryzen and 4000 mhz ddr 4 c18 for intel. Both systems used an RTX 3090. Intel cpu was running at stock settings while both ryzen cpus were running at default pro settings.
All test were performed on the latest version of windows 11 which has the patch for ryzen performance.
The sim was set to ultra settings with terrain Lod and object Lod both set to 200
Surprisingly the 5950x performed the worst interms of average frame rate however it had less stutters and better 1 percent lows than the 5900x. Intel had higher frame rate averages on the ground by up to 20 frames
While at the airport (this included taxing, takeoff and landing, with no stutters when panning the view or during flight at all. Ryzen on the other hand had worse frame time averages than the intel chip with more appreciable stutters. In the air however there were no noticeable differences in frame rate as I was gpu limited at this point. And yes i performed the test at 1080p 1440p and 4K. I personally believe that the Sydney landing challenge is not enough of a gage to determine which cpu runs msfs.
When I initially purchased the 5950x i didn’t think gaming performance could get any smoother however it is noticeably smoother on alderlake. Framerates in war zone and black ops Cold War were also higher on intel than ryzen (not sure why these games are not included in popular review test)
For gaming : Intel at number 1, followed by 5900x and then 5950x subsequently in my test
Now let’s get to the operating system. The 5950x and 5900x both ran windows much better than intel; with the os as a while feeling snappier overall on both the 5900 and 5950x. Don’t get me wrong, the os runs good on intel as well, but things such as opening and closing chrome tabs, unzipping files, playing a game while installing another game in the background, streaming while gaming etc; ryzen performs this better than intels alderlake. Tabs on ryzen open a lot faster than on intels new chip (could this be optimized later on down the run road with updates to the core scheduler for intel? Possibly; but as of right now the os is faster, smoother, and more responsive on zen)
For productivity: 5950x takes the top spot, followed by the 5900x and then the 12900k
Bottom line: if you are on the fence about getting either the 5900x, 5950x or 12900k it really depends on use case scenario. Ignore the mainstream bench results that show no appreciable differences in averages amongst most gaming titles. The 12900k is the new king of gaming, however ryzen is better for overall productivity. If you currently have a 5900x or 5950x i do not recommend upgrading unless money is just no option for you.
I also believe 12700k and 12600k seem very appealing especially when considering their price points and the fact that most reviews have gaming performance and par with the 12900k. Hope this helps and I’m interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this.
Just impressions, feelings… how was the RGB on the new mobo?
