AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth and Cache Performance
We are now going to utilize AIDA64’s Cache & Memory Benchmark to look at memory bandwidth as well as memory and L1, L2, and L3 cache latencies. The RAM is the same between all systems, running at 3600MHz with CL16 timings.
Memory Read
The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X platform and Intel Core i5-11600K platforms are rather close, around 52-53GB/s of memory read bandwidth. The new Intel Core i5-12600K platform is, however, faster than both offering 56 almost 57GB/s of bandwidth, up by 6% generation-to-generation.
Memory write performance is also at 56GB/s on the 12600K, which is a 9% improvement generation-to-generation. The Ryzen 5 5600X is running normally, due to the way its CCD/CCX complexes are arranged, write performance is always cut in half from read performance. All of this is with the same DDR4 memory kit, so even with DDR4 memory, the newer Intel i5-12600K platform is faster in regards to memory bandwidth.
AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark
We now want to show you the complete AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark so you can also see the latencies, importantly the L3 cache latency which was an issue in the past on Windows 11 with the Ryzen CPUs. Let’s see if it has truly been fixed.
12600K
Here is the Intel Core i5-12600K above, you can see the memory latency is 76ns, L1 and L2 cache latencies are very small, and L3 cache latency is 17ns. The L3 cache performance is around 694GB/s read and 327GB/s write.
11600K
The Intel Core i5-11600K information is above, and as you can see the memory latency is actually lower on the 11600K at just 50ns. We also find the L3 cache latency to be lower on the 11600K. However, the L3 cache performance is a lot lower at 271GB/s read and 205GB/s write. Therefore the 12600K has much better L3 cache performance overall.
5600X
Here are the results from the Ryzen 5 5600X above. The first thing to notice is that the L3 cache latency issue has been fixed, it’s just 12ns here, which is actually lower than the i5-12600K’s latency! The memory latency is closer to the 12600K’s but still slightly lower. In terms of latency then, the 5600X is actually overall better than the 12600K. But in terms of L3 cache bandwidth, the 12600K does have a leg up in read performance, the 5600X operates around 362GB/s read, and 322GB/s write. It has a similar write performance, but lower read performance than the 12600K.