The Intel Core i3-12300 Review: Quad-Core Alder Lake Shines
by Gavin Bonshor on March 3, 2022 8:30 AM ESTCPU Benchmark Performance: Power, Office, and Science
Our previous set of ‘office’ benchmarks have often been a mix of science and synthetics, so this time we wanted to keep our office section purely on real-world performance.
For the Core i3-12300, we are running DDR5 memory at the following settings:
- DDR5-4800(B) CL40
Power
As expected from a 4C/8T processor, the Core i3-12300 has a lower power draw than the 6C/12T and 8C/16T models.
Office
Compared to previous generations of Intel's architecture, Alder Lake (Core i3-12300) is above everything else in regards to variable/lightly-threaded loads.
Science
In any scenario where AVX-based workloads or in multi-core and multi-threaded applications, the Core i3-12300 lags behind the chips with higher core and thread count.
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Kyrie - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
The main problem with 12300 is the existence of 12100(F).Alistair - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
The quad cores are garbage because they are either not available or incorrectly priced.Right now in Canada I can buy the 12400f for $199, and i3 on the other hand is $220. ... Pointless.
yetanotherhuman - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
Those fans look to be using turbulent flow, not laminar.They blow down, it seems. What a stupid name.
AshlayW - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
For 150 USD or £140 this is a really nice product from Intel. Good to see some good value/budget options. Normally I would scoff at a quad core but the Golden Cove cores here are strong enough that it does really well for itself. AMD is in a spot of trouble if they don't lower 5600X price.porina - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
Did Cinebench R23 change behaviour compared to earlier versions? That's quite a difference with DDR4 - DDR5 scaling in multi-thread. Up to R20 it seemed insignificantly affected by ram. I did quickly test R23 on 6700k at 2133 vs 3200, and saw no significant difference there. So I'd question that specific result, unless DDR5 does something with R23?erotomania - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
R23 seems to be the same on the surface, just with the addition of an adjustable looping timer. Perhaps running the test for 10 or 30 minutes shows the RAM differences much better than 1 run, of several seconds to several minutes, depending on core count.brantron - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
Gear 1 adds a few watts, which may exceed a power limit. Peak power of 68 watts was with DDR5, which requires gear 2.Some 65w Rocket Lake CPUs do the same thing. It can be overridden.
porina - Saturday, March 5, 2022 - link
Good point, fixed power limits can cause what you described. If that is the reason, would it not apply to R20 also? Unless R23 does behave very differently to R20.eastcoast_pete - Friday, March 4, 2022 - link
Thanks Gavin! While I agree with much of what you wrote, I have one question: Why test a decidedly budget CPU only in a clearly premium-level board, with a also not-so-cheap AIO cooling? Both cost a lot more than the i3 itself. Yes, I assume you're doing so to minimize differences to test of better and pricier CPUs, but I really doubt a $ 130 CPU would find itself in a high-end board with that AIO cooling attached. Wouldn't it make sense to test a CPU in its "natural habitat", so in a budget socket 1700 board with the stock cooler on it? Just wondering.cowymtber - Saturday, March 5, 2022 - link
AMD doesn't want to be mentioned anywhere near the term, "budget" going forward. AMD's goal is to assume the premium/luxury class role (selling $15k EPYC 3D stacked Genoa). Chasing the low-end makes it difficult to attain high margins. This is why we have not seen the low-end Zen 3 updates to this point.With Zen 4, we will see the 1M L2 + 64M 3D stacked-fed L3, full-fat cores. The raw performance in single and multithread will render those Intel E cores worthless. The 7950X3D will give Threadripper-class multithread, along with fantastical single-core performance.
Its not that AMD doesn't care about the low-end anymore....they just don't care about the low-end anymore.