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State of AVX-512 on Alder Lake?

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mackerel

Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2008
Anyone know what the actual current situation is with AVX-512 enabling on Alder Lake? I finally managed to put an order in for affordable DDR5 so I'm looking at what mobo to get. I'd really like to test AVX-512 as well as E-cores, obviously not at the same time!

There were reports that Intel were going to close off the AVX-512 feature with microcode update. I take it that older ones can still allow that. I'd also guess that DDR5 mobo sales rates aren't exactly high so there is a good chance any stock has old bios. Worst case I can flash back? So I just need to know which mobos support it? As I'm mainly interested in testing (not overclocking) I want to keep this build as cheap as possible, so I'm looking at cheaper boards.

Not having much luck searching which mobos have AVX-512 potential. So far it seems like Asus is my safest bet, but I've not got much to go on. Any advice welcome.
 
Affordable DDR5....bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaha! (sorry, couldn't help myself).

No clue on which exact motherboards still support it or not with each updating at their own cadence, it's nearly impossible to tell. Add that to the fact that the BIOS may be older as you're suggesting, it really is a crapshoot. These chips were not supposed to have it and I don't use it, so can't say I kept up or even paid attention inside the BIOS of boards I've reviewed.
 
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ADATA DDR5-6000 kits are getting cheaper in the EU. I would look for one of those as they cost as much as the higher DDR4 series.
I heard that some brands are working on unlocking AVX-512. I think it was MSI which has it as a beta option for their higher motherboards. Sadly, every good overclocking motherboard (count it as RAM support because CPU OC is almost the same on everything) costs a lot.
 
I ordered Crucial 4800. That's what I'd call affordable. It's just under 2x DDR4 3600 pricing.

Mobo being on old bios I'm calling a plus here, as it is more likely Intel haven't blocked support yet. The testing I want to do with AVX-512 is one-off so after that I don't mind losing it by updating to newer bios. I did ask around at launch but couldn't find any volunteers to do the testing on my behalf and save me the cost of getting more kit. It doesn't even have to be on DDR5, but this way I get some hands on experience myself with it.
 
You can probably push that Micron kit up to 5200-5600 CL36-40 1.35V. The performance will be about the same as that of high DDR4 kits which aren't really cheap.
If I'm right then the microcode blocking the AVX-512 was in Dec, but I can be wrong. At least about then, I saw it in the news. I don't care much about it but I guess that some mobo manufacturers will unlock it in time. Actually, I don't even know if it's locked on my motherboards but I see it's not listed in CPU-Z on Gigabyte Z690 Master with F7 BIOS.
 
AVX-512 can only be enabled if you disable E-cores, and if the mobo supports of course.

For my use cases I'm mainly wondering if the ram bandwidth scales as expected.
 
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