New Chinese Loongsoon chip matches Intel's 14600K in IPC tests, overclocked to 3 GHz with liquid nitrogen

New Chinese Loongsoon chip matches Intel's 14600K in IPC tests, overclocked to 3 GHz with liquid nitrogen

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By Mark Tyson

publishedabout 2 hours ago

Still basically an Intel Core i3-10100 competitor.

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Chinese chip designer Loongson has finally launched its loong teased "next-generation" 3A6000-series processors based on the LoongArch microarchitecture. IPC tests showed the 3A6000 matching Intel's Raptor Lake i5-14600K in IPC (instructions per clock), with both chips clocked at 2.5GHz.

As well as the headlining x86 compatible processor came the announcement of numerous partner desktop, laptop, and all-in-one machines — plus a consumer-grade motherboard from Asus. It was also entertaining to see a recorded overclocking session, which took an LN2-cooled 3A6000 chip to the current maximum 3 GHz.

Starting with the basics, the Loongson 3A6000 desktop processor is fabricated using a 14 / 12nm process and features a 4-core/8-thread configuration. It runs at clock speeds from 2.0 to 2.5 GHz, consuming up to 50W. According to the chip designer, this new CPU has 256KB of L2 cache and 16MB of L3 cache, and still only supports DDR4-3200 — like its 4C/4T predecessor, the Loongson 3A5000.

Loongson compared its new 3A6000 with Intel 10th Gen and AMD Zen 3 CPUs prior to today's official launch. It continues to make comparisons to the higher-clocked 4C/8T Intel Core i3-10100 even now. Note that the Core i3-10100F features on our list of the best budget CPUs, and it features the Comet Lake architecture that was a rehash of the Coffee Lake architecture, which itself was a refresh of the Kaby Lake and Sky Lake architectures.

Chinese TechTuber Uncle Tony took the Loongson 3A6000 desktop processor for a spin a few hours ago. In his BiliBili video, he tested a sample on the new Asus XC-LS3A6M motherboard. Apparently, the new Chinese CPU can be "easily" overclocked to 2.63 GHz on air. However, Uncle Tony pushed things further for fun, using liquid nitrogen to coax the CPU to 3.0 GHz. According to the linked ITHome report, 3.0 GHz isn’t going to be an impenetrable barrier for the 3A6000, and it says it thinks things will improve in the future and indicates that 3.0 GHz is a limit currently set in the Asus motherboard BIOS.

Regular readers probably won’t be too impressed at the performance of the out-of-the-box and overclocked Loongson 3A6000. Pre-launch we saw it was roughly on par with the Intel Core i3-10100 in SPEC CPU 2006 and UnixBench (at iso-clocks). This isn’t a trivial achievement, if Loongson is indeed achieving this with its own core IP and Dragon architecture, as it claims. Moreover, even Intel’s Core i5-14600K wasn’t significantly superior in SPEC CPU 2006, when restrained to 2.5 GHz. But IPC is only half the equation, and Intel's modern chips can clock about twice as high.

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Uncle Tony confirmed a number of benchmark comparisons between the 3A6000 (and the previous gen 3A5000) vs the Intel Core i3-10100. He also highlighted some of the Asus motherboard features, and checked out a few games and apps, before starting his OC session. As mentioned above, the OC fun was muted due to a hard limit in the BIOS, but it's always quite theatrical to see plumes of LN2 vapor boiling off a CPU.

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The source reports suggest that future desktop CPUs from Loongson are going to make their greatest strides by using process refinements. ITHome says China processor makers like Loonson will, in the future, “use mature processes to achieve the performance of Intel and AMD's advanced process CPUs.”

It would be fun to get a Loongson 3A6000 CPU in the lab, with a suitable motherboard. Now that it has finally launched, and with the plethora of partners announcing desktops, laptops, and AiOs, it's likely we will be able to buy some of this new Chinese hardware in the coming weeks or months — for science.