Windows 11 will boost Intel Alder Lake and big.LITTLE CPUs Performance

Intel’s first bigSMALL architecture CPU, dubbed “Alder Lake,” is expected to be released later this year, and it appears that it will include a new scheduler that will boost the performance of Intel Alder Lake (and other CPUs based on a big and SMALL core design). According to HotHardware’s benchmarks (via Videocardz), multi-threaded results will improve by 5.8%, while single-threaded results will improve by up to 2%.

Intel Alder Lake CPU to get up to 5.8% boost from new hardware scheduler in Windows 11

HotHardware stumbled across a significant piece of information. They tested the Lakefield Core i7-L16G7 CPU with the leaked Windows 11 ISO (which Microsoft have confirmed is legit in DMCA complaint) and discovered that the new scheduler enhances performance when there is a big and LITTLE core architecture. Of course, this means that Intel’s future Alder Lake CPUs will have a performance boost similar to Windows 10. To put it another way, Microsoft Windows 11 is optimized for Intel Alder Lake processors (and other big SMALL designs). Without further ado, here are a few of the benchmarks; we recommend reading the whole evaluation on their website.

“While the inner machinations of Windows are an enigma for most people, we have a theory as to what’s going on here in our test results. Our working theory is that Microsoft has put in a lot of work for Lakefield, perhaps in anticipation of Intel’s Alder Lake, with respect to the Windows scheduler.

Remember that the Core i5-L16G7 represents Intel’s first crack at focused cores for performance and power efficiency. Up until then, such things only existed on Arm64. With Alder Lake set to launch later this year, we think that the Galaxy Book S is perhaps an early benefactor of efforts to ensure that Intel’s new hybrid architecture lives up to its full potential.” – Ben Funk, HotHardware

Windows 11 will be a free upgrade for Windows 10 users (and even Windows 7 and 8), making it a no-brainer for the majority of users. With Alder Lake slated to be the first processor to ship with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, Intel appears to have a second chance to compete with AMD.

One thing is certain – it will be far more competitive than the Apple M1, it will boost power per watt (power efficiency) thanks to the inclusion of SMALL cores. Intel may be able to reclaim its power efficiency crown, which it hasn’t held in a long time. In the near future, AMD has no plans to switch to a big SMALL architecture.