We have a new benchmark with an Intel Alder Lake processor, i.e. a 10-core Core i5-12600K in combination with DDR5-6400 memory.
Intel Alder Lake with DDR5-6400 memory tested with high latency
The performance test shows the Intel Core ‘Alder Lake’ processor in Gear 4 mode together with a DDR5-6400 memory kit. The test was performed on AIDA64, which was discovered by @harukaze5719.
Although the memory speed delivered bandwidth of 88-90 GBps, the latency is very high at 92.5 ns for this memory. This latency is very high compared to current and previous generations of Intel processors and is close to the memory latencies of the first generation Ryzen (Zen), which was known to create large bottlenecks at the time.
“Gear” modes were introduced with the Rocket Lake processors, which have two modes: Gear 1 and Gear 2. In the former, the memory controller and RAM are set to the same frequency to reduce latency. In Gear 2 mode, the memory clock is reduced to half the clock rate of the memory controller, i.e. a ratio of 2:1. Some memory latency is sacrificed for higher frequencies and greater bandwidth.
High memory latency often affects game performance, so this is not good news for gamers. However, it is possible that the different types of equipment can mitigate this situation. It also cannot be ruled out that this is an issue with some early Alder Lake models.
The Intel Core Alder Lake processors will hit the market in November with high expectations for performance and the inclusion of DDR5 memory.