X570 were not cheap when Zen 2 came out. Decent X570 were priced at over 330 euro. So that Ryzen 5 wasn't cheap either. I got my X570 Aorus Pro back then for around 280 euro with over 60 euro discount only thank to Gigabyte promotions.
You don't need a x570 though. I'm running a 5800x with a DDR4 4133Mhz kit on a b550 motherboard i paid 240 CAD with no problem at all. The cpu even boost 50 Mhz more than the spec and all temps are perfectly fine. I also have 2 two nvme drives and 6 sata ssds plugged in. A good b550 motherboard is more than enough unless maybe you are running a 5950x.
it's already decent value, z690 ud board + 4133mhz ddr4 + 12600kf is gonna cost 600eur altogether,pretty good considering it pretty much strolls through gaming reviews,above 5900x/5950x by some margin. seriously,how good is this for a gaming cpu cost is pretty high for a mid-range cpu,but the performance crushes even the last gen high end,let alone mid-rangers like 5600x that cost 299eur too Spoiler Spoiler
Man, this CPU is a little beast! It offers basically the same performance of 12900K in single threaded and gaming performance, only losing on multi-threaded scenarios, something that matters little for this CPU. And the price is not that bad, 335€ right now. It should be closer to the 300€ mark but it´s still good value and the KF version are probably going to closer to that. There are only two problems, power consumption and the prices of MBs. The last one is a really big one because Z690 boards are expensive as hell!!! Like others have said, this is the CPU to get for gaming right now. And suddenly i´m starting to have strange ideas about buying one of these puppies but i must be strong, i must resist the evil temptation... Great review as always!
It's a perfect little gaming CPU but comparing it to the 5900X/5950X or the 12900K is disingenuous. Those CPUs are meant for professional workloads with gaming on the side. If you buy one of those CPUs the assumption is you're making money with them. Intel and AMD can market them how they want, but their niche is what it is. Unfortunately, Intel falling on the job is the sole reason people were fleeced buying the 5600X last year and I am very happy AMD were knocked out cold today. They either have to heavily discount it or kiss any future sales of it goodbye.
B550 was released almost a year after X570 and Zen 2. Sure there will be Intel B660 and H670 in a couple of months as well. And B560 was pretty good. They raised the B lineup from Business into Budget Mainstream. It was a little cheaper than AMD B550, but had builtin 802.11ax, 2.5 GbE LAN, better audio codecs, front type C on most boards, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and support for XMP and RAM overclocking.
Great review bossman! Intel delivering interesting hardware. 12600k looks sweet. I must ask, can you overclock the E-cores only, and if so, how high can they go?
It's a good start.....except for the power consumption. Now let's see how Xe performs. Definitely looking like a possible platform change with 13th Gen..... Need to give DDR5 a little time for prices to normalize before diving in. Supposedly the E-cores aren't overclockable. Only the P-cores.
Great review Hilbert. These CPUs are currently the most powerful but you have to buy motherboard, memory and power supply probably. Whoever already has a decent pc does not need to change at all.
I didn't get what memory configuration was used for the benchmarks. 5200Mhz? If so, it's hard to tell what perf increase comes from the cpu itself and what comes from the memory. Games might or might not be sensitive to latency but all that multithreaded workloads are certainly not. Regardless, a really interesting product if not for the fact that DRR5 prices offset the attractive msrp of the cpu.
Hardware unboxed did 10 game average at 1080p difference between ddr 4 3200 cl14 vs ddr 5 6000 cl36 which basically one fastest ddr5 kits you can purchase presently, difference was 1% as in ddr5 worked out 1% faster but costs like 2.5 to 3 times more than ddr4 3200 cl14 kit. Totally not worth it at present.
I believe Ian over at Anand's has some pretty good comparative benchmarks as well. Basically, for gaming there wasn't much difference, but productivity is a whole different matter. DDR5 had quite the uplift there.
Its worth noting that anandtech used jedec 3200 cl22 for the ddr4 system vs ddr5 4800, so I wouldn't say that ddr5 is necessary get that uplift , as you can buy ddr4 kits in the 4400-5000 range , that are not that expensive and have better timings.
