The Intel Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K Review: High Performance For the Mid-Range
by Gavin Bonshor on March 29, 2022 8:00 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 remainder of the testing in this review of the Core i7-12700K and i5-12600K, we are using DDR5 memory at the following settings:
- DDR5-4800(B) CL40
Power
Comparing power draw to other competing CPUs, both the Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K are noticeably more power-efficient than previous generations including both Intel's 11th Gen and 10th Gen Core. Though at full-load with no overclocking, AMD's Ryzen 5000 and 3000 series processors remain much more power-efficient.
Office
In our office benchmarks, Intel's 12th Gen Core reigns supreme in Agisoft Photoscan due to its higher core frequency and IPC performance.
Science
In the majority of our science-based benchmarks, both the Core i7 and Core i5 did well. The only benchmarks that didn't favor the 12th Gen Core series processors were in 3DPM 2.1, but more specifically in the AVX test.
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Gondalf - Wednesday, March 30, 2022 - link
Try to drop AVX, and your power figure change absolutely. This AMD propaganda is stunning.tamalero - Wednesday, March 30, 2022 - link
Do you even know what "Propaganda" is?29a - Thursday, March 31, 2022 - link
Or Gondalf you could just turn off the computer and power would really drop dramatically.OreoCookie - Thursday, March 31, 2022 - link
I thought that Intel’s current big.little designs do not support AVX, because the small cores don’t.mode_13h - Friday, April 1, 2022 - link
> I thought that Intel’s current big.little designs do not support AVX, because the small cores don’t.It's AVX-512 they dropped. Gracemont (the E-core in Alder Lake) is actually the first Intel "little" core to support AVX/AVX2. And because it lacks AVX-512, Intel actually added a couple more regular AVX instructions, for special-purposes (deep learning) that had only so far been by AVX-512.
mode_13h - Friday, April 1, 2022 - link
Oh, and if you didn't know, AVX and AVX2 are both 256-bit. AVX basically provides instructions for operating on 8-element fp32 vectors, while AVX2 adds operations on 4-element fp64 vectors and various sizes of integer vectors.This mirrors what Intel did with SSE and SSE2, where SSE was introduced with the Pentium 3 and SSE2 was introduced with the Pentium 4. Before SSE2, you'd have to use (64-bit) MMX for vector operations on integers, but MMX had various downsides (besides the width).
MDD1963 - Friday, April 1, 2022 - link
"Keep in mind that Zen 4 is coming later this year and will make Alder Lake 2nd again. " Pretty sure that is not all that is coming out this year. (Raptor Lake) But, the difference is, I'm not really on a side, and wish both do well, and, honestly, although I seem to root for Intel, no one can deny 5600X on up are good products. Quibbling over the 5-10% differences is almost pointless.Rezurecta - Friday, April 1, 2022 - link
COMPLETELY disagree that AMD approach looks rudimentary. The intel design is impressive and them making it work in an x86 architecture is great! That thread director (or whatever its called) is really cool and I can't wait to see how they develop it and optimize it in future setups. However, Intel is using a design setup that mobile parts have been using for years in having big little. They have a very power hungry design. A process node that is archaic compared to TSMC 7nm and smaller. And finally not being able to move away from expensive monolithic design. Chiplets are the future and AMD lead the way in that!Granted I will say 100% I am very impressed that Intel was able to do what they did with the tools in hand, but to call AMD design rudimentary is inaccurate.
The true test for 12th gen is the low power U series that will be in thin and light laptops. The fact that they haven't released it yet and started with a desktop alternative laptop processor is worrisome. To me that chip was just throwing 100W+ in a laptop that is completely useless for 99% of the user base to impress people, but it isn't the reality of what their laptop lineup will look like.
It is an interesting time and I'm glad there is competition in the space!
Mike Bruzzone - Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - link
I'm monitoring all of AL mobile. mbBlastdoor - Tuesday, March 29, 2022 - link
Will there be a review of the Mac studio with M1 Ultra? If not, I’ll stop checking the site.