Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

[guindillas]

I have to try that! Great Tip!!

One thing, is the keyboard is changed, so you have to figure it out where are the symbols, to move ahead, like : \ ..
Take a look for bcfg command use in UEFI shell, for more explanation and examples.

Or the command:

Shell> help bcfg -v -b

 

[Chefkoch]

Hello world!

With the start of my holiday break I finally had the time to join the Alder Lake troupe.

I used @CaseySJ's experimental 0.7.7 EFI with support for P+E+HT, and running a ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4, 12900K, 64Gb Corsair 3600Mhz C18, 6900 XT and after reading the advice here, a new 2tb WD SN850

And because it felt like a fun challenge if I'm going experimental anyhow, I also figured it would be a great time to try my hand at building my first custom water cooling loop. Fortunately the magic smoke has not escaped the components and everything works great

The boot time with this setup is amazing compared to my previous build, and my gosh is everything snappy

Scores below are with Asus's auto-overclocking tool, I'll try my hand at manually tweaking that later. For now I'm just enjoying going "ohhh ahhh" at everything I'm running on this

View attachment 537008

View attachment 537009

Would you mind sharing your EFI folder? I'm trying since two days, but I'm experiencing full-freezes right after boot. My setup is the same besides the GPU.

 

[Middleman]

Thought to share this with you all. It seems that the mobile version of Alder Lake i9 actually beats the Apple M1 Max in performance but at the cost of consuming more power. If you ever wanted to have a powerful hackintosh that also runs Windows/Linux perfectly (or gaming for that matter) it is a really good choice.

Intel's Alder Lake Core i9 Chip Beats Apple's M1 Max in Latest Benchmarks, But Consumes More Power

According to the latest benchmark results, Intel's 12th-generation Alder Lake Core i9 chips are faster than Apple's M1 Max in new MacBook Pro.

wccftech.com

 

[c-o-pr]

Here's another:

Macworld

Fact-checking the benchmarks: Intel's Alder Lake Core i9 vs Apple's M1 Max

Intel's latest chip is faster than Apple's but there are caveats.

www.macworld.com

//What about power efficiency?
PCWorld ran a couple of tests to gauge the power draw of the Alder Lake-equipped laptop. During the Cinebench R23 multi-core test, the Alder Lake laptop was consistently in the 100-watt range, with spikes between 130 and 140 watts. We haven’t tested the power draw of the M1 Pro/Max ourselves, but AnandTech did using Cinebench R23 and found that the M1 Max’s power draw was 39.7 watts versus over 100 for the 11th-gen MSI GE76 Raider.//

IMO This is all superficial analysis.

To me it shows that Intel doesn't know how to market its PC designs anymore. They're just blasting the field so they don't appear to be losing on numbers. In terms of building a better balanced laptop, fit for purposes, they're gamer-bombing.

But that's my cranky downerness...

On upside there was a quip in the article of a rumor of at least one more Intel Mac Pro, so this could redeem all the enthusiasm here for Alder Lake desktops and hope for Thunderbolt etc. Fingers crossed.

If it happens, thanks to great work of key contributers on this thread the door will open, and that will be good stuff for future of hackintoshers.

 

[energy23]

Here's another:

Macworld

Fact-checking the benchmarks: Intel's Alder Lake Core i9 vs Apple's M1 Max

Intel's latest chip is faster than Apple's but there are caveats.

www.macworld.com

//What about power efficiency?
PCWorld ran a couple of tests to gauge the power draw of the Alder Lake-equipped laptop. During the Cinebench R23 multi-core test, the Alder Lake laptop was consistently in the 100-watt range, with spikes between 130 and 140 watts. We haven’t tested the power draw of the M1 Pro/Max ourselves, but AnandTech did using Cinebench R23 and found that the M1 Max’s power draw was 39.7 watts versus over 100 for the 11th-gen MSI GE76 Raider.//

IMO This is all superficial analysis.

To me it shows that Intel doesn't know how to market its PC designs anymore. They're just blasting the field so they don't appear to be losing on numbers. In terms of building a better balanced laptop, fit for purposes, they're gamer-bombing.

But that's my cranky downerness...

On upside there was a quip in the article of a rumor of at least one more Intel Mac Pro, so this could redeem all the enthusiasm here for Alder Lake desktops and hope for Thunderbolt etc. Fingers crossed.

If it happens, thanks to great work of key contributers on this thread the door will open, and that will be good stuff for future of hackintoshers.

I think the power draw on a mobile is a valid point, and when it's nearly 3x the difference, it's significant. Intel based MacBook all got super hot on my lap, to the point where I'd need to take the laptop off my and have my legs cool down. That and the fan noise which is super distracting if your not using headphones to hear whatever on screen.

Also!! Can you do me a small favour and check this out:

Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

No offense meant! :oops: But with the state of affairs reported by Master @CaseySJ, and knowing that work on Maple Ridge is currently on hold, pending a hypothetical last Intel Mac (Pro) with Maple Ridge and official support in macOS, it seems difficult to recommend onboard Thunderbolt with...

www.tonymacx86.com

Thanks!!!

 

[c-o-pr]

I think the power draw on a mobile is a valid point, and when it's nearly 3x the difference, it's significant. Intel based MacBook all got super hot on my lap, to the point where I'd need to take the laptop off my and have my legs cool down. That and the fan noise which is super distracting if your not using headphones to hear whatever on screen.

Also!! Can you do me a small favour and check this out:

Z690 Chipset Motherboards and Alder Lake CPU

No offense meant! :oops: But with the state of affairs reported by Master @CaseySJ, and knowing that work on Maple Ridge is currently on hold, pending a hypothetical last Intel Mac (Pro) with Maple Ridge and official support in macOS, it seems difficult to recommend onboard Thunderbolt with...

www.tonymacx86.com

Thanks!!!

Here are the results of the Handbrake test you requested. I added VideoToolbox Encoder (VTE) performance for grins, including a no-audio run.

(For anyone new to this subject, VTE uses Intel Quicksync HW encoder built in to the processor to offload CPU.)

Some notes / takeaways:

• One of the tricky aspects of using VTE is setting a bitrate. In this case, I used the output of the CPU-only run as a guide. Changing output compression doesn't change transcoding speed.
• The Ave. Thread load is based on poking at iStatMenus while the task runs and noting its report.
• The audio workload is negligible for this task; a small fraction of a core
• About 1.5 cores never get utilized. Occasionally util gets close to 100%. Maybe RAM-bound? The task should not be I/O bound. Idk why it's limited.
• VTE is worth about 4-cores for this transcode (single-pass encode). If you count the time saved, it's more like 6 cores. — This assessment assumes the output quality of the codings are equivalent. I've read Intel's encoder is good, but idk.

 

[energy23]

Here are the results of the Handbrake test you requested. I added VideoToolbox Encoder (VTE) performance for grins, including a no-audio run.

(For anyone new to this subject, VTE uses Intel Quicksync HW encoder built in to the processor to offload CPU.)

Some notes / takeaways:

• One of the tricky aspects of using VTE is setting a bitrate. In this case, I used the output of the CPU-only run as a guide. Changing output compression doesn't change transcoding speed.
• The Ave. Thread load is based on poking at iStatMenus while the task runs and noting its report.
• The audio workload is negligible for this task; a small fraction of a core
• About 1.5 cores never get utilized. Occasionally util gets close to 100%. Maybe RAM-bound? The task should not be I/O bound. Idk why it's limited.
• VTE is worth about 4-cores for this transcode (single-pass encode). If you count the time saved, it's more like 6 cores. — This assessment assumes the output quality of the codings are equivalent. I've read Intel's encoder is good, but idk.

View attachment 540542

HOLY SMOKES! THANK YOU!

Ok, so this is GREAT insight, mainly because it gives us real world results as to how fast Alder Lake CPUs perform compared to previous gen CPUs.

So to summarize the encode times:
4790k: 1,369 seconds
10900k (CPU): 507 seconds
10900k (VTE): 306 seconds
12700k (Mac OS 12.2.1): 399 seconds
12700k (Win 11): 392 Seconds
12900k: 341-394 seconds (depending on adjustments)
MacBook M1 Pro (10 core 8+2 efficiency): 554 seconds

Raw CPU performance in this scenario from the 10900k to the 12900k is anywhere between 28.6%-48.6% difference. That's significant.

However, when utilizing the iGPU with VTE, the 12900k falls behind anywhere from 11.4%-28.7%

That's actually pretty incredible seeing how the iGPU from 2 generations ago CAN outperform the 12900k depending on the case. I just wonder if going with the 10900k for the sake of the iGPU is reason enough over the 12900k.

***IMPORTANT UPDATE Feb 16***

Apple's Video Toolbox (VTE) in Handbrake can't be used as a comparison. While VTE does speed up encode times BY A LOT, it does not give the same result. Ie; Handbrake cannot use RF values with VTE and instead has to use a fixed constant bitrate. This potentially inefficient; a complex scene may require higher bitrate, but something a scene as simple as a solid blue sky won't need much of a bitrate at all.

Having said that, the 12900k is clearly the better CPU by a wide margin, and it's not even close. 28% on the low end and nearly 50% on the high end. I just put in my order for a Gigabyte z690 Aero G motherboard

***IMPORTANT UPDATE March 10***

Updated the summary encode times to include a 12700k. Got the Aero G working with EFI folder from @CaseySJ (THANK YOU!!!) All P+E+HT enabled, speeds are stock, voltage set to -0.090 offset using a NH-D15 Chromax Black running on 3600mhz RAM (Kingston Fury Beast with XMP Profile 1) on an 2.5" HDD WD Blue (temporary, only using for testing purposes). Temperatures hover around 67-70c sometimes peaking at 72c.

Glad I made the decision to go with the 12700k, it's not far behind the 12900k but way cheaper (and much lower power draw).

So far in Cinebench R23, my scores are around 22,200 in OS X and around 22,800 in Windows.

 

[c-o-pr]

We can't directly compare VTE to cores, because there are full stack implications. It's not my intention to make a direct comparison. My intentions are to illustrate the value of silicon carefully designed to task and make an argument for architecture fitness for a purpose.

Without any idea of fitness, we will cores over iGPU because they are more general purpose.

But as devices evolve, all things are not equal Lol

To summarize:

11th gen Rocket Lake must be seen as a stop-gap and nothing more. (Prolly why they named it Rocket.)

Alder Lake is not a breakthrough. It's a saner and more cost-effective 10980XE with attendant IO gains. More I/O is good. But, while it offers an incremental IPC (instructions per clock) gain over 11th gen and throws more cores at market with better power spread than RL, plus E core juju to help mobile PC in marketing against Apple, x86 core arch is getting long in tooth and maybe full of legacy complexity/reliability bugaboos re microcode and electromigration, per AVX512. While I figure AL is as solid as anything before — Intel knows their stuff — they're in a position where they can no longer drive PC product advances without control of the stack which they don't have. So Intel designs are looking ham-fisted. I predict that the PC as we've known it will soon look really dumb.

Apple back to defining what personal devices look like. AppleSi is clean-slate with optimizations under control of total stack. Very strong architecture position, iff they know what they want to do toseize new consumer appliance markets (AR/VR, transportation, medical etc). Plus they forgo all Intel Arch bugs and exploits!

But back to topic at hand: For hackintosh desktop, if Apple supported Alder Lake it would be a nice config that keeps hacks pace not far behind (for now) with AppleSi Mac and freedom to Linux / Win too. But AL as just a glob more cores with big gaps due to iGPU and TB, 12th gen looks not inviting for hack. Not to me, anyway.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[radu.truica]

Hello again,

After building my new machine and successfully installing Monterey (thanks @StefanAM for the EFI folder, you're the best ), I'm still faced with a couple of issues: 1) the computer shuts down after sleep and 2) restart hangs about 80% of the time (the monitor turns off but doesn't come back on, I need to do a hard shut down and power it back on; whenever it does restart properly, I noticed a bit of cracking in the speakers - also present when I do the hard shut down - maybe that's the issue ).
Another possibility could be that @StefanAM's hardware is a bit different from mine, as he has a Titan Ridge TB card and a Wi-Fi card installed and I don't (otherwise the CPU and motherboard are the same). I am attaching the EFI folder I used to get it all up and running (again, credit @StefanAM) in the hopes that someone can point me in the right direction. Thank you in advance.

P.S.: I had started a thread in Monterey Desktop Support, but after a few days of no replies I decided to remove that and ask here instead (I was getting my posts removed from here because of duplicate posts policy, hence the deletion of the stand-alone help request thread).

 

[hboy89]

Alder Lake is not a breakthrough. It's a saner and more cost-effective 10980XE with attendant IO gains. More I/O is good. But, while it offers an incremental IPC (instructions per clock) gain over 11th gen and throws more cores at market with better power spread than RL, plus E core juju to help mobile PC in marketing against Apple, x86 core arch is getting long in tooth and maybe full of legacy complexity/reliability bugaboos re microcode and electromigration, per AVX512. While I figure AL is as solid as anything before — Intel knows their stuff — they're in a position where they can no longer drive PC product advances without control of the stack which they don't have. So Intel designs are looking ham-fisted. I predict that the PC as we've known it will soon look really dumb.

Maybe that's true. But it's also true that because we hackintosh we cannot take full advantage of all the gains Intel/AMD have made:

• can't use the UHD 770 included with the Alder Lake chips. (Handbrake devs haven't bothered to implement hardware encoding using the AMD GPUs on a Mac either, so we just lost that entirely)
• We don't get the benefits Thunderbolt4/USB4 might bring.
• We cannot take advantage of the fact that our Mobos support Wifi 6E speeds and better bluetooth standards.
• We won't get an update that takes proper advantage of the bigLittle architecture in the scheduler
• We are at the complete mercy of Apple with regard to what future GPU support will look like

Basically, your qualm is that Intel is behind because all they can do is increase IPC or core count. And the reality is that by Hackintoshing, we have limited them to that choice. All of the above points are not true on Windows.

It's not their fault we use their hardware in an unsupported setup. The truth right now is that TSMC is the leading chip foundry and is a process node ahead of Intel. So of course anyone using their leading edge (like Apple) is gonna have access to chips that are ~20% faster/more power efficient as a baseline. And of course Apple has control of the stack, so they can take advantage of specialized hardware like their ProRes encoder/decoder, neural engine, etc.

Intel has supposedly already taped out Meteor Lake, which should be on a new process node, and should have a drastic impact. It will come out in Q1 2023 if schedules hold. Apple is still dependent on TSMC. Their dominance over Intel is, in part, always going to be dependent on that 3rd party manufacturing relationship and how long TSMC maintains its dominance.

I think you are right about the main point though:
As a Hackintosher, you need to understand your workflows and figure out what the benefits and drawbacks of a given setup are for you. Heavy Handbrake users might prefer the z490 with 10900k. Others may prefer Alder Lake.