Tragedy: Error Lake

[roganaut]

Hi,

so sad being forced to skip my upgrade wishes for the 800 Series. Even my 13700K outnumbers i9 285K in a lot of benches.  

To dry my tears I've ordered a 14900K as a interim solution. 

[Prestonian]

An ASUS Z890 motherboard will offer Intel Default Settings (IDS), Performance and Extreme mode settings for a 285K in the BIOS. Very few if any of the reviews I have looked at so far even mention this. Some clearly were using IDS, some either Performance or Extreme with the consequent impact on performance numbers

The main issue as far as the gaming benches are concerned is that APO needs to be used with Arrow Lake. This involves a BIOS setting, the Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology (APO)  driver being installed under Windows and the APO app being downloaded from the Windows store. If APO is activated for Cyberpunk 2077 for example it will ensure that the game runs on the P-cores. Without APO it is possible for this game to run on the E-cores only which will explain some of the numbers online.

Aside from that, reviewers were using the first release BIOS and ASUS has already released a BIOS update that addresses some of the concerns noted in reviews. For example resolving a iGPU and dGPU conflict issue which was reported as causing instability and blue screens.

In one review a 285K on an ASUS Z890 board topped the Cinebench 23 charts for both single-core and multi-core so I don't think there is a lack of inherent performance. There are obviously a few 'first gen' issues with Arrow Lake but for me at least no real deal breakers.

[roganaut]

Appreciating your viewpoint. I think Intel did know what they did and no need to exculpate. How do you evaluate the analysis of gamersnexus etc.? The scores are differentiated following APO ON and APO OFF.  As far as I can see there is only a marginal gap.   And the 14900K  outclassed the i9 285K overwhelmingly in games.  So for me there is no reason to upgrade to the next generation. Not to mention all the degradations of the 13th and 14th and that Intel BIOS tinkering.

[JohnAb]

Error lake, lol. For me, my view is that overall similar performance with better efficiency is a good thing, but the power/energy savings are never going to cover the cost of a new CPU and motherboard if upgrading. For first time buyers it makes more sense, but without noticeably better performance, I can't see Arrow Lake tempting many 12th,13th and 14th Gen owners who are still satisfied with current performance. I haven't found any enthusiasm for Arrow Lake at any rate and I'm still on 12th Gen. If it offered a big performance boost over 14th gen I might have been tempted. But as it is, my oldish 12th gen build still performs great with everything I throw at it, including games. My plan is to go for the next Gen release, whatever that might be. Seems like Panther might be back on the table before Nova, but who can tell any more? I've given up trying to keep up with so many Lakes. I'd have more chance memorising a map of Canada 😂

[siposnorbert71]

I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU MY FRIEND!
I also think it's unnecessary to refresh, there's not that much difference in terms of productivity, it just has a financial impact. /andrej71/

[Mazdabater]

I was in the same boat, but then I thought about it and all the games are tested at 1080p medium setting which I will never run.  Every game I play at 4k, which the fps difference wil be next to nothing.  That aside with the lower power and thus less temp in my loop will allow my  gpu to run harder.  All the tests also run the same ram settings, it seems apparent the 285k likes fast ram (not that I can even get mine to xmp at the moment) so the gap probably isnt as bad as you think with the right settings.  Apples to apples benchmarking is fine, but sometimes it handicaps one cpu more then another.  

That said I was coming from a 9900k so no matter what I brought it was going to be a big upgrade.