News Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K Review: Retaking the Gaming Crown

[-Fran-]

Is the i7 12700K review coming any time soon? With 4 less E cores and the same number of P cores than the 12900K it can very well be an extremely promising single/multi thread/value blend like the 10850K before it.

I'm planning on getting the 12700K for my new build next month.

Well, if you have a need for the extra threads, the 12700K is quite decent. Just keep in mind the overall "package" (assuming DDR5) is still priced higher than a potential 5950X build that would still out-perform it in MT tasks. I still think the 12700K strikes a decent balance, but the platform cost and, depending on the apps you use, the mandatory need to use Win11 makes it less enticing to me, particularly.

Regards.

 

[Bazzy 505]

This whole discussion evokes a strong sense of déjà vu. Particularly the era when AMD pulled the rabbit out of their hat for the first time with Clawhammer (athlon 64). At the same time Intel was stuck in the rutt with the bad bet on Netburst horse, that just didn't want to scale and run as hot as a space heater. For about next 3.5 years Intel stayed on par with AMD at the expense of, for the time anyway gluttonous power consumption, with the only consolation prize being superior FPU performance ( which wasn't a big surprise as that has historically not been AMD's strong suit).

In that time AMD enjoyed a great run, built much the zealot fanbase it has now, put a sizeable dent in the Intel's server business and started charging premiums for their silicon, very much in vein Intel has been critized in the past. And at some point you could say AMD was even worse "Intel" than Intel. Comfortable in its shoes, it let pass such "jewels" as its notoriously unstable chipset partners' KT266, culminating in the performance cripling TBL bug that wiped much of the performance gain of the first iteration Phenom just to name a few. Still it somehow AMD could do no wrong.

That first Iteration Core architecture came about. While Pentium Dual Core returned Intel to more sane clockspeeds and power draw, it still wasn't quite fast enough to give it a definitive edge over AMD, Very much in vein of (Rocket Lake vs Zen3 situation). When Penryn microarchitecture rolled 2 years later Intel finally had a product line that was very actractive, despite the initial mockery just like we see with Adler Lake, and successive iterations steamrolled everything from AMD for next decade.

Intel's biggest mistake of last generation was betting on being to put off EUV for another generation.
AMD biggest mistake of the generation before was betting on being able to squeeze out another generation without having to do a new clean design.

Having said i hope AMD can put a rabbit out of their hat again and adjust to the new OS paradigm. If not they are bound to end up in the same spot they had been 2x in the past (in early 90's when Pentium came out, and late 2000's then with Phenom to Bulldozer transition took place)

 

[Howardohyea]

Well, if you have a need for the extra threads, the 12700K is quite decent. Just keep in mind the overall "package" (assuming DDR5) is still priced higher than a potential 5950X build that would still out-perform it in MT tasks. I still think the 12700K strikes a decent balance, but the platform cost and, depending on the apps you use, the mandatory need to use Win11 makes it less enticing to me, particularly.

Regards.

Yeah from what it seems now DDR4 is the best bet, and isn't there some 3rd party performance tool released some days ago that promises to get W11 level of performance on Alder Lake running W10? That could be pretty promising (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alder-lake-support-process-lasso)

 

[TerryLaze]

Yeah from what it seems now DDR4 is the best bet, and isn't there some 3rd party performance tool released some days ago that promises to get W11 level of performance on Alder Lake running W10? That could be pretty promising (https://www.tomshardware.com/news/alder-lake-support-process-lasso)

You can do that just by setting affinity for software that has problems to whatever fixes it, use all cores, use only p cores or use only e cores, by setting an affinity mask in the shortcut you use to run it.
Process lasso being an automated tool will screw up for some things, there is no way around that.

CPU Affinity Shortcut for a Program - Create in Windows

How to Create a Shortcut to Run an Application with a Set CPU Affinity in Windows Processor affinity or CPU Pinning enables the binding and un-binding of a process or thread to a physical CPU or a range of CPUs, so that the process or thread in question will run only on the CPU or range of...

www.eightforums.com

 

[Why_Me]

Is the i7 12700K review coming any time soon? With 4 less E cores and the same number of P cores than the 12900K it can very well be an extremely promising single/multi thread/value blend like the 10850K before it.

I'm planning on getting the 12700K for my new build next month.

https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i7-12700kf-core-i7-12th-gen/p/N82E16819118345
Intel Core i7-12700KF $429.99

Intel Core i7-12700K Review - Almost as Fast as the i9-12900K

With the Core i7-12700K, Intel has released a formidable competitor to AMD's Ryzen 5800X and even 5900X. Thanks to eight powerful Golden Cove cores, the processor handles all workloads very well, including gaming. Compared to the i9-12900K, it runs almost as fast, but much cooler, with better...

www.techpowerup.com

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B14h25fKMpY

 

[kinney]

Just setting TAU or long duration power maintained will do that.
(here 16 seconds if not auto)
Just because MCE does this as well doesn't mean that it's the only thing MCE does.
TAU should always be available as a separate setting in your bios, even if you prefer MCE.

Even the article you link to says that:
"There will be some users who are already familiar with Multi-Core Enhancement / Multi-Core Turbo. This is a feature from some motherboard vendors have, and often enable at default, which lets a processor reach an all-core turbo equal to the single core turbo. That is somewhat similar to ABT, but that was more of a fixed frequency, whereas ABT is a floating turbo design. That being said, some motherboard vendors might still have Multi-Core Enhancement as part of their design anyway, bypassing ABT. "

If you were genuinely interested, I just tested MCE with and without ABT as promised. My 11900K definitely boosts less aggressively with ABT off. This game holds 5.1Ghz on 8 cores and never dips with MCE+ABT. This is typical with MCE and no ABT.

Basically Anandtech's turbo graph generally seems to apply on my system with MCE enabled. Meaning MCE extends turbo boost length but doesn't let every core hit the fastest single core speed (5.3GHz). That screenshot was in-game like my 5.1GHz all-core ABT boost in the same title. Instead with MCE on and ABT off it was 3 cores at 4.8GHz, 4 at 4.9GHz, 1 at 5.1GHz. Obviously those are in transition to some other state, as they were bouncing around.

But regardless of what the article states, I think you may have misinterpreted it. I won't deny that I read it the same way you did.. but I knew in my tests before ABT was released for the 11th gen i9s that I wasn't seeing anywhere near what I saw after the ABT enabled BIOS.

The 11900K is so-so without ABT enabled. I'm not sure MCE helps it at all in multicore performance as ABT all-core 5.1GHz boost is done within the 125W power envelope, MCE could be disabled (and that's what Intel recommends). MCE definitely helps in other scenarios though.
I don't intend to get rid of my 11900K when I finish my 12900K build. I really like it as it's rock solid stable, quirk free and with post-launch review updates it is very fast, only 2nd to the 12900K in gaming. The 12600K trades blows with it. And it's the end of the road for Intel on DDR4 with mITX.