Intel Alder Lake CPUs with AVX512 have a different logo
The AVX512 support for Alder Lake CPUs is an interesting topic in its own. In short, the new series of desktop CPUs were listed with AVX512 instruction support in developer guide for Alder Lake series. According to this guide, initially AVX512 support was only available for the big (Performance) cores on Alder Lake desktop CPUs, but Intel later changed the guide and listed AVX512 as disabled.
Intel Alder Lake CPUs with and without AVX512, Source: VideoCardz/Luumi
Reviewers and overclockers were quick to notice that despite no official support, Alder Lake CPUs still supported AVX512 instructions, which can be successfully executed in benchmarks. Motherboard makers even decided to provide support for AVX512 should the CPU support it.
However, all good things come to an end. In March this year Intel officially started to fuse off the AVX512 from the silicon, meaning that even with supported BIOS, the functional will no longer work.
There is still a chance that customers may stumble upon AVX512 enabled chips though. Intel recently made a new revision that has a distinctive marking that can help you quickly distinguish each chip.
As it turns out, the new square Intel logo which replaced the old ‘halo’ version is probably the quickest way. We have actually seen people asking whether the square logo means it’s a fake CPU, as it did not look like any Alder Lake CPU launched before, but fortunately it is not. It is just a subtle logo change after Intel’s 2020 rebranding. Luumi explains:
I wanted to add this information to my Cheap AVX-512 monster video as I couldn’t get AVX-512 to work on either of my previous G7400 CPUs. The rig itself was fine, but actually neither of those G7400 CPUs had AVX-512 support available as it was already disabled by Intel at the factory which is pretty much the case with all newest Alder Lake CPUs.
Seems that nearly all 2022 batched Alder Lake CPUs have AVX-512 disabled, so you are better off hunting a 2021 batch CPU. Luckily for us Intel left a mark to determine does the CPU support AVX-512 or not, by looking at the IHS. Every CPU that has a halo/circle marking on top of the word Intel on the IHS will have AVX-512 support, and all rectangle/square ish marking CPUs will have it disabled by Intel.
So at least with the Pentiums and other lower end models you can just walk around in a store and look at the processor’s IHS from the small peek window and determine if it has AVX-512 or not.
— Luumi
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