- 5 GHz all P-Core: ‘elmor’ and ASUS teams used liquid helium to smash CPU frequency record, as well as Cinebench R20, Geekbench 3, and PiFast
- 7 GT/s DDR5: ‘Hocayu’ pushed memory speed to the next level with some skillful frequency and timing manipulation
- 3DMark Sweep: ‘Rauf’ and ‘OGS’ toppled many 3DMark records, old and new, using 12th Gen Intel® Core™ CPUs along with several different graphics cards
- Total of 9 world records, 22 first places: ‘safedisk’ achieved many first-place rankings across 4 multi-core categories for an impressive ROG team total
Singapore, November 4, 2021 — ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) today announced that overclockers have broken a gamut of world records using ROG Maximus Z690 Apex motherboards with 12th Generation Intel® Core™ processors.
Each jump to a new microarchitecture brings a host of challenges that overclockers face as they try to understand and adapt to the new hardware. But the transition from the 11th Gen (Rocket Lake) to the 12th Gen (Alder Lake) was huge, particularly with the split between performance and efficiency cores. ROG overclockers could internally reach single-core frequencies as high as 8.2 GHz with Alder Lake, but enabling more cores drastically reduced maximum overhead, and this is especially true of the e-cores.
So when ASUS overclockers froze a 12th Gen CPU with liquid helium, they turned off the e-cores to see just how far the p-cores could go. During an intense validation run in early October, ‘elmor’ clocked in at 7543.95 MHz on all performance cores with an Intel Core i9-12900K processor socketed into a ROG Maximus Z690 Apex motherboard. In that same session, ‘elmor’ also shaved the PiFast world record down to just over eight seconds, and ‘safedisk’ turned the e-cores back on to take 16-core first places in Cinebench R20 and Geekbench 3.
Since then, ‘safedisk’ has made many more achievements with both Intel Core i9-12900K and i5-12600K processors. Running both platforms through a gauntlet of all-core and p-core-only runs has brought him 16 global and hardware first-place scores across a variety of benchmarks: Cinebench R20, Geekbench 3, GPUPI for CPU, HWBot x265, and y-cruncher.
One of the records that the most eyes are on this generation is seeing how fast DDR5 memory can be driven. Overclocker ‘Hocayu’ showed just that by tuning a G.Skill DIMM all the way up to 8704 MT/s, handily exceeding even the best clocks reached on the venerable DDR4 standard.
Last, but certainly not least, ‘Rauf’ and the ‘OGS’ team brought their 3D benchmarking prowess again this generation, dominating across the 3DMark suite and in Unigine Heaven. In the process, eight world records were broken, including several scores those very overclockers set on legacy benchmarks with Rocket Lake.
All of the records and first place scores are shown below for reference. Note that the asymmetrical core structures required some changes to overclocking scorekeeping. Starting with this generation, validation and ranking site HWbot decided to track records on hybrid chips both for their full core amount as well as performance cores only. As such, for the multi-core benchmarks, results are broken down as follows:
- Intel Core i9-12900K benchmarks are separated into all-core (16x) and p-core only (8x) categories.
- Intel Core i5-12600K benchmarks are similarly separated into all-core (10x) and p-core (6x) categories.
| Overclocker | Category | Score | Distinction |
| elmor | Intel® Core™ CPU frequency (8x core) | 7543 MHz | Hardware First Place |
| Hocayu | Memory frequency | 8704 MT/s | World Record |
| elmor | PiFast | 8.06 sec | World Record |
| safedisk | Cinebench R20 (16x core – all cores) | 15021 cb | Hardware First Place |
| safedisk | Cinebench R20 (8x core – p-cores only) | 10825 cb | Global First Place |
| safedisk | Cinebench R20 (10x core – all cores) | 10100 cb | Global First Place |
| safedisk | Cinebench R20 (6x core – p-cores only) | 8011 cb | Global First Place |
| safedisk | Geekbench3 – Multi Core (16x core) | 112639 pts | Global First Place |
| safedisk | Geekbench3 – Multi Core (8x core) | 81929 pts | Global First Place |
| safedisk | Geekbench3 – Multi Core (10x core) | 76692 pts | Global First Place |
| safedisk | Geekbench3 – Multi Core (6x core) | 61754 pts | Global First Place |
| safedisk | GPUPI for CPU – 1B (16x core) | 47.357 sec | Hardware First Place |
| safedisk | GPUPI for CPU – 1B (8x core) | 60.444 sec | Hardware First Place |
| safedisk | GPUPI for CPU – 1B (10x core) | 70.142 sec | Global First Place |
| safedisk | GPUPI for CPU – 1B (6x core) | 81.826 sec | Hardware First Place |
| safedisk | HWBot x265 Benchmark – 4K (8x core) | 34.980 fps | Global First Place |
| safedisk | HWBot x265 Benchmark – 4K (6x core) | 26.077 fps | Global First Place |
| safedisk | y-cruncher – Pi-1b (8x core) | 17.298 sec | Global First Place |
| safedisk | y-cruncher – Pi-1b (6x core) | 21.409 sec | Global First Place |
| elmor | 3DMark CPU PROFILE MAX (8x core) | 11457 | Global First Place |
| OGS | 3DMark Vantage – Extreme (1x GPU) | 142166 points | World Record |
| Rauf | 3DMark Vantage – Performance (1x GPU) | 180560 points | World Record |
| Rauf | 3DMark Time Spy (1x GPU) | 26191 points | Global First Place |
| Rauf | 3DMark Fire Strike – Extreme (1x GPU) | 37843 points | Global First Place |
| Rauf | 3DMark Fire Strike – Ultra (1x GPU) | 19783 points | Global First Place |
| Rauf | 3DMark Fire Strike (1x GPU) | 60860 points | Global First Place |
| Rauf | 3DMark11 – Performance (1x GPU) | 73800 marks | World Record |
| Rauf | 3DMark06 (1x GPU) | 93368 marks | World Record |
| Rauf | 3DMark05 (1x GPU) | 123770 marks | World Record |
| OGS | 3DMark03 (1x GPU) | 456481 marks | World Record |
| Rauf | Heaven Benchmark – Extreme (1x GPU) | 14208.06 marks | World Record |
About ROG Maximus Z690 Apex
The ROG Maximus Z690 Apex is a streamlined motherboard designed to let enthusiasts break the limits of 12th Gen Intel Core processors and DDR5 memory for record-smashing performance. Beyond its dual-DIMM design and its massive twenty-four stage VRM, it features a pair of PCIe® 5.0 expansion ports and the top one is attached to a new Q-Release button for hassle-free building and upgrading. Similarly, storage installation is easy with the included PCIe 5.0 M.2 add-on card and a DIMM.2 attachment, both of which come with sizable heatsinks. And as a gift to enthusiasts, ROG Maximus Z690 Apex motherboards come with a complementary USB oscilloscope called the ROG True Voltician to help monitor system voltage.
To learn more about the ROG Maximus Z690 Apex, as well as the new line of ASUS Z690 motherboards, visit the series page at https://www.asus.com/microsite/motherboard/Intel-Alder-Lake-Z690-H670-B660/
