Between shenanigans like this and Spectre/Meltdown mitigations giving me a ~20% performance hit [1], I avoid Intel like the plague if I have the choice.
Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
41–50 of 317 posts
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nvidia do the same with disabling passthrough on consumer GPUs (gotta upsell Quatro). However I would say avoiding Intel completely is unnecessary. They're a good FOSS citizen when it boils to things like WLAN and GPU. Its just that with AMD, you can hardly go wrong on CPU and GPU side. Especially on Linux.
I’m waiting for amd to do TB4 so I can get a ryzen framework laptop.
Yeah, AMD Ryzen Framework laptop would be amazing. (Would also have ECC support?)
They'd have to license TB from Intel. I don't know about TB4, but TB3 is royalty-free, just gotta pass a certification.
TB3 or better would be great for eGPUs in general. Not sure I personally would need TB4.
Also, I wonder if Framework would be usable with say Proxmox and macOS (or 'native' Hackintosh?)
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#43Stuff like this is why I plan to never buy Intel ever again. I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, I much prefer AMD's strategy of segmenting just by speed and number of cores. It is really annoying that with Intel you can't run the same program on the server and on your desktop, it makes development and testing a huge pain.
Nvidia do the same with disabling passthrough on consumer GPUs (gotta upsell Quatro). However I would say avoiding Intel completely is unnecessary. They're a good FOSS citizen when it boils to things like WLAN and GPU. Its just that with AMD, you can hardly go wrong on CPU and GPU side. Especially on Linux.
Didn't they turn this on last April for all cards?
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#44If all of this was planned (and I’m not saying it is), that would have been very clever. It would work like this: 1. You “accidentally forget” to disable the feature in hardware. Given how competitive the market is, motherboard manufacturers can be relied upon to enable it in their “1337 OVERCLOCKZ” mode. No conspiracy is needed. 2. You “tolerate” this practice just long enough to win the critical initial wave of rev…
Is AVX-512 even useful in benchmarks? I thought it was mostly used for specialized workloads, and was basically useless for end users and gamers.
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#45If all of this was planned (and I’m not saying it is), that would have been very clever. It would work like this: 1. You “accidentally forget” to disable the feature in hardware. Given how competitive the market is, motherboard manufacturers can be relied upon to enable it in their “1337 OVERCLOCKZ” mode. No conspiracy is needed. 2. You “tolerate” this practice just long enough to win the critical initial wave of rev…
I don't think that anyone who cares about specific CPU features would not know that it shouldn't work and therefore wouldn't risk getting it removed later
Everyone else would not know that this might have a performance impact.
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#46Is this not the definition of bait and switch? How can this not end up in a lawsuit and investigation from regulatory bodies ?
It was never advertised, and Intel very specifically said AVX-512 instructions will not be available. Some motherboard manufacturers made them available anyway, now Intel is fixing that. It's like buying a car with an advertised speed limiter of 155mph, then finding that actually it can go 170mph, and then the manufacturer fixes the speed limiter with a software update. Yes we know the car could go faster, but the sp…
Not sure how others do it, but I don't only buy products based on advertisements, but rather by the actual properties the product has.
But it's not like this changes anything legally. Products get worse due to software changes all the time (especially through cloud services shutting down) and as far as I know there haven't been any successful lawsuits about it.
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then why not leave it as an option for people who want to experiment with the feature?
Fair point, but again most Windows programs aren't designed with heterogeneous CPUs in mind, so probably they don't want to deal with the headaches, plus the space used for AVX-512 (note that it's now in microcode) can be repurposed for more important tasks. Of course, this could be evil Intel playing its tricks again but financially speaking removing AVX-512 do have tangible benefits to them in the form of increased…
It's not in microcode, they're just disabling it in a microcode update. Microcode updates aren't replacements for microcode either, they're patches. The vast majority of microcode is in ROM and can never be changed wholesale; updates can just patch in hooks and change certain things, limited by the number of patch slots available. Doing this does not "free up" any microcode. It's purely disabling a feature, there is absolutely nothing to be gained in return.
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can only upgrade microcode on any given boot, not downgrade it. Therefore, if the BIOS has already upgraded your microcode for you on boot, you can't undo that from the OS.
The BIOS doesn't upgrade microcode - the OS does. During boot there's usually no network connectivity, so how would the BIOS even know of an update, let alone acquire it?
It's explained in the article.
You update your BIOS to get better DDR5 compatibility, but the new BIOS will also include a microcode update.
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#49And here I thought it might've been Intel's way of apologizing after robbing us of performance with the Spectre and Meltdown debacles.
Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> now Intel is fixing that That's not a fix. That's a disabling. A fix repairs something.
Bringing a product in line with specification is very much fixing it. Even if the fix happens to be disabling something.
There was no specification about this feature until immediately prior to launch.
When a company announces with years in advance a new product (e.g. Alder Lake), that is the replacement for their previous product (i.e. Rocket Lake & Tiger Lake) and in that series of products the most valuable feature is backward software compatibility and the new product will no longer have this feature, one would expect that the company should publicize vigorously the fact that the replacement product will not match the features of the replaced products.