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Intel Core i5-12600

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Wait, so this chip is only 4% ahead of the 5600x? So does that mean that the P-cores only have a very small IPC uplift when compared to Zen3?
 
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It's surely less redundant than the 10600, which differed ONLY from the 10600K in being 4.8 GHz locked, rather than 4.8 GHz unlocked.
As well as TDP, while delivering the same core count, making it a similar but lower power option. That's a rather different situation than this - and is how Intel has operated for a decade. K SKU at a high TDP, non-X SKU that is otherwise very similar but with a lower base clock and lower TDP. This overturns that in favor of ... incremental improvements on lower end SKUs while co-opting the name of a SKU with 4 more cores? That's just weird. Rather than "buy K if you want performance, can deal with the power, and want to OC; buy non-K for lower power (and a bit lower performance)", it's now "buy K if you want performance, can deal with the power, and want to OC; buy non-K for ... an entirely different product that barely stands apart from its two lower priced, lower tier siblings".
Here the SKUs are:

* i3-12100 -4.3 GHz, sensible chip
* i3-12300 -4.4 GHz, uh.....
* i5-12400 - 4.4 GHz - the popular chip
* i5-12500 - 4.6GHz, bigger IGP
* i5-12600 - 4.8 GHz
* i5-12600K - 4.9 GHz, more cores, unlocked

Here there's a BIG difference to the 12600K, the only question is price.
A listing like this without taking core counts into account is ... rather weird, no? i3s are 4c8t, i5s are either 6c12t or 10c16t. But as I said, Intel are the masters of incremental product segmentation. And I fully agree that the i3-12300 doesn't make any more sense than this chip - but then, that isn't what is reviewed here, is it? IMO, having three non-K i5s is pretty dumb overall. Arguably one would have been sufficient - but again, that brings us back to "well, with three there are two that are a tad more expensive". Which always seems to be Intel's game. But regardless, this SKU is pretty much redundant in terms of performance, barely outperforming the cheaper 12400, while being drastically different from (and significantly weaker than) the K SKU it shares a name with.
 
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i mean the entire ADL segmentation is just a total fucking trainwreck.
the 12600 doesn't have E-cores. the 12600K does.
the 12700 does have E-cores. as does the 12700K.
???????????????
 
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i mean the entire ADL segmentation is just a total fucking trainwreck.
the 12600 doesn't have E-cores. the 12600K does.
the 12700 does have E-cores. as does the 12700K.
???????????????
Yep. They could at least have kept it as cosistent as same number = same hardware features. Just call this the 12500, ditch one of the other unnecessary 6P SKUs, and things would be a lot more coherent.
 
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Sooo, its been months since 12th gen release.
Are there any B660 boards with ext. clock generator, and ideally with DDR4 support?
 
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Compared manually to the 12900k review, when you consider price, tdp, and brokenness of big little design this is easily the best alder lake chip.

Also why is H670 not more common, from value point of view probably best chipset? or is it only slightly cheaper than Z690? CPU overclocking might not be cared for by customer H670 does away with it but keeps the pcie lanes.

If I was upgrading today using Intel platform it would be 12600 and H670 combo, as not wasting on E cores and excessive VRM on board, since not overclocking.

Thats my thoughts thanks for the review.
 
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As well as TDP, while delivering the same core count, making it a similar but lower power option. That's a rather different situation than this - and is how Intel has operated for a decade. K SKU at a high TDP, non-X SKU that is otherwise very similar but with a lower base clock and lower TDP. This overturns that in favor of ... incremental improvements on lower end SKUs while co-opting the name of a SKU with 4 more cores? That's just weird. Rather than "buy K if you want performance, can deal with the power, and want to OC; buy non-K for lower power (and a bit lower performance)", it's now "buy K if you want performance, can deal with the power, and want to OC; buy non-K for ... an entirely different product that barely stands apart from its two lower priced, lower tier siblings".

A listing like this without taking core counts into account is ... rather weird, no? i3s are 4c8t, i5s are either 6c12t or 10c16t. But as I said, Intel are the masters of incremental product segmentation. And I fully agree that the i3-12300 doesn't make any more sense than this chip - but then, that isn't what is reviewed here, is it? IMO, having three non-K i5s is pretty dumb overall. Arguably one would have been sufficient - but again, that brings us back to "well, with three there are two that are a tad more expensive". Which always seems to be Intel's game. But regardless, this SKU is pretty much redundant in terms of performance, barely outperforming the cheaper 12400, while being drastically different from (and significantly weaker than) the K SKU it shares a name with.

Uh?

The i5-10600 is rated at 65W ('TDP') at all-core base frequency.
So was the i3-10100.

This number is essentially a fiction with fiddled frequencies to meet the target. Therefore the i3 went as high as 4x3.9 GHz, whereas the i5 had a base of 6x3.3 GHz (or less).
Alder Lake has up to 3.5 GHz for the 4 core TDP now reduced to 60W, and 3.3 GHz for the 6 core.

These numbers are not very meaningful in that if someone, let's say Asrock, created a board, that was incapable of dealing with the arbitrary 'TDP' of a K chip (125W), then people scream that it is terrible.
That TDP is e.g. 8 x 3.6 GHz + 4 x 2.7 GHz, as on the 12700K

Intel now provide a second more useful 'TDP', which for the non-K i5s is 117W. This is therefore 6 x 4.8 GHz.

Meanwhile the 12600K is up to 8 x 4.9 + 4 x 3.6 = 150W

The only problem with Intel's numbers is that they aren't SKU-specific.

I believe the 12600 uses every bit of that 117W, whereas the 12400F can run all day at 4.4 GHz on 75W or less.

As well as TDP, while delivering the same core count, making it a similar but lower power option. That's a rather different situation than this - and is how Intel has operated for a decade. K SKU at a high TDP, non-X SKU that is otherwise very similar but with a lower base clock and lower TDP. This overturns that in favor of ... incremental improvements on lower end SKUs while co-opting the name of a SKU with 4 more cores? That's just weird. Rather than "buy K if you want performance, can deal with the power, and want to OC; buy non-K for lower power (and a bit lower performance)", it's now "buy K if you want performance, can deal with the power, and want to OC; buy non-K for ... an entirely different product that barely stands apart from its two lower priced, lower tier siblings".

A listing like this without taking core counts into account is ... rather weird, no? i3s are 4c8t, i5s are either 6c12t or 10c16t. But as I said, Intel are the masters of incremental product segmentation. And I fully agree that the i3-12300 doesn't make any more sense than this chip - but then, that isn't what is reviewed here, is it? IMO, having three non-K i5s is pretty dumb overall. Arguably one would have been sufficient - but again, that brings us back to "well, with three there are two that are a tad more expensive". Which always seems to be Intel's game. But regardless, this SKU is pretty much redundant in terms of performance, barely outperforming the cheaper 12400, while being drastically different from (and significantly weaker than) the K SKU it shares a name with.

For Comet Lake and Rocket Lake you had non-K SKUs with low base frequency and a low TDP. Since most people just buy a board which ignores the TDP, we now have two TDPs, the same one from Comet/Rocket Lake, and one at full turbo, maxed chip.

The i5-12600k should be the i6 or something, and it is quite confusing.

I assumed it was obvious that the i3 and i5 are different C/T so didnt list that.

Again, clearly there is more justification for having multiple i5 chips in the past in that:

12500 vs 12400 is a totally different GPU (32 vs 24 EUs, 2 encoding engines vs 1)
12600k vs 12600 is a totally different CPU (6+4 cores vs 6)

whereas in the past it was literally only down to clock speeds and the TDP you cite could be done with BIOS settings anyway so not significant.
 

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I really don't like that hybrid design and this chip solves that, with compromises.

I'd always intended to upgrade my aged, but trusty 4 core 2700K top of the range CPU to at least an 8 core CPU with all cores being performance cores and likely top of the range too. However, this is hardly top of the range and has 6 cores which doesn't sit that well with me. The only way to do that from Intel now is to buy the top model 12900K and disable the E cores which is a lot of performance and money to throw away for this, so I won't go for this option. On top of that, the only performance metric I'm interested in is gaming and there's hardly any difference between this and the 12900K at 720p, let alone higher resolutions so it's a lot of extra money for not much more performance. I like the low temps of the 12600 at stock, too.

Therefore, if I was upgrading right now, I might get the 12600 and be done with it, compromises and all. However, it's still not pressing for me to upgrade, especially as I'm not gaming so much lately and the next gen Intel CPUs are due sometime this year too, so I'll see what they have to offer. My 2700K still feels perfectly snappy on the desktop, so not much pressure to upgrade there. It does show its age in games though and that's my main driver for upgrading, not Windows 11 with its annoying rounded corners.

Of course, my system's days alas are numbered. Assuming such an old system doesn't suffer hardware failure, that crunch point is 14.10.2025, when Microsoft ends Windows 10 support, so I've got three years and change left in it, but it's not really that long overall. However, the hardware landscape will be dramatically different then, including available graphics cards. I'm sure that NVIDIA will have hit the reassuringly unaffordable 5 grand price point by then for its top cards lol.

Great review, as always.
 

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I really don't like that hybrid design and this chip solves that, with compromises.
It could be a God-send for mobiles. For desktops... it's a solution looking for a problem.
I can see how it makes sense from an engineering point of view (i.e. get almost Skylake levels of performance from a tiny piece of the whole die). But that doesn't mean it's an automatic win for the end users. If anything, it's a net loss on the desktop since the only difference from an homogeneous design is that now your work can end up on an E core and take more time to finish. The only thing this design improves is when you saturate all cores and the E cores a little more extra HP on top of that. But honestly, how often do you saturate 12 or 16 threads?

Edit: Good thing the P-cores are good enough on their own, though.
 
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Think we might get a 12700 non k model? 8 P cores no E cores.
 

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It could be a God-send for mobiles. For desktops... it's a solution looking for a problem.
I can see how it makes sense from an engineering point of view (i.e. get almost Skylake levels of performance from a tiny piece of the whole die). But that doesn't mean it's an automatic win for the end users. If anything, it's a net loss on the desktop since the only difference from an homogeneous design is that now your work can end up on an E core and take more time to finish. The only thing this design improves is when you saturate all cores and the E cores a little more extra HP on top of that. But honestly, how often do you saturate 12 or 16 threads?

Edit: Good thing the P-cores are good enough on their own, though.
Exactly, E cores are for laptops, not desktops, where it might make sense to keep power consumption down under most scenarios.

However, I don't see the 12900 as 8 P cores with a bonus 8 E cores, but as a 16 core CPU with 8 of them crippled, especially as they don't even support hyperthreading and that's what I don't like about it.

Intel have been clever with their marketing here. Notice how one can buy a 6 core CPU with no on-die E cores, but not an 8 core one when it would be trivial to make it. This strikes me as preventing it from cannibalizing sales of their high end CPUs as 8 cores with HT are a potent mix and certainly isn't for the benefit of the customer.

I can just see the Intel apologists coming on here and attempting to counter my point with vitriol. Let's see if that happens...
 
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Hi,
E cores are just thermal defective cores which intel used to bin out but now use.
 

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It annoys me that the i5-12600 doesn't have the same core configuration as the i5-12600K. IMO, they should always have the same core configuration if they have the same model number +/- the K. The clock speed can be slightly different, but the core configuration should be the same.

Hi,
E cores are just thermal defective cores which intel used to bin out but now use
That isn't true at all. The E cores are designed completely different than the P cores.

it's a solution looking for a problem.
It's a solution to a problem that does actually currently exists. Governments, in their never ending fight to reduce energy usage, are implementing regulations that computers now have a power limit when they are sitting idle or under light load, even desktops. So the E-cores allow more powerful P-Cores(and more of them) while still keeping the computer under the power limits. It's stupid on the government's side, but that's an entirely different discussion. And the new laws have already made some PC manufacturers pull certain high end models of their computers from the markets those laws cover.

In and ideal world, Intel would have a processor that is all P-cores, as many of them as they could fit on the die space. I figure if they replaced the E-cores with P-cores, they could have a 10 or 12 core 12th gen CPU with all P-cores. Maybe call this beast the i9-12950K. This CPU would only be available in OEM systems outside those jurisdictions with the strict energy laws. But there's also nothing stopping someone in those areas from upgrading their computer themselves with this processor. Of course this won't happen because it doesn't make a lot of business sense for Intel. It's another die they have to design and product test. And they probably wouldn't make much money off of it.
 

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Uh?

The i5-10600 is rated at 65W ('TDP') at all-core base frequency.
So was the i3-10100.
Uh ... where did that i3-10100 come from? I responded to your out-of-the-blue mention of the i5-10600, which, in case you forgot, you brought up as a response to me saying the 12600 seems kind of redundant. I honestly don't see what you're getting at at all here. Have I complained about the TDP of this chip? No, I've complained that it doesn't make sense at this point in the product stack, doesn't fit the 12600 name (in light of the spec differences vs. the K), and that this just follows Intel's habit of having way too many SKUs. Whether previous i5s and i3s shared a TDP is entirely irrelevant to that point.
This number is essentially a fiction with fiddled frequencies to meet the target.
You see that this sentence is contradicting itself, right? Yes, TDP is very different from actual power targets. I've never said anything even relating to that. But those "fiddled frequencies" are precisely why they can give chips different TDPs, and why at any reasonably low TDP a higher core count chip will have a lower base clock. Which is a meaningful distinction, as how much you're able to cool is highly variable between different PCs.
Therefore the i3 went as high as 4x3.9 GHz, whereas the i5 had a base of 6x3.3 GHz (or less).
Alder Lake has up to 3.5 GHz for the 4 core TDP now reduced to 60W, and 3.3 GHz for the 6 core.
Again, apparently I have to remind you here: I made a statement about the 12600 seeming rather redundant. You responded to that with a list of SKUs and frequencies, which ... I assume was supposed to contradict that somehow? But which also for some reason left out some of the major differentiating factors between those SKUs, making the list rather useless overall - and still it didn't bring any clarity to why there needs to be 3 6c12t i5 SKUs, or why this SKU shares a name with a 10c16t chip for some reason.
These numbers are not very meaningful in that if someone, let's say Asrock, created a board, that was incapable of dealing with the arbitrary 'TDP' of a K chip (125W), then people scream that it is terrible.
That TDP is e.g. 8 x 3.6 GHz + 4 x 2.7 GHz, as on the 12700K
.... relevance? If a bad motherboard has a bad VRM, does that affect whether or not a CPU SKU is unnecessary?
Intel now provide a second more useful 'TDP', which for the non-K i5s is 117W. This is therefore 6 x 4.8 GHz.
Again: Yes, but relevance? I only brought up TDPs as you failed to account for that as a differentiating factor between the two chips you brought up in order to contradict my point.
Meanwhile the 12600K is up to 8 x 4.9 + 4 x 3.6 = 150W

The only problem with Intel's numbers is that they aren't SKU-specific.

I believe the 12600 uses every bit of that 117W, whereas the 12400F can run all day at 4.4 GHz on 75W or less.
I don't know what river you're paddling up currently, but it bears no relation to what I was saying, nor my response to you. Why are we discussing TDPs? My point was about product segmentation. TDPs play into that, but they are one of many variables, and discussing TDP alone gets us nowhere. Also, do I need to remind you that my first post here said that "Intel are the absolute masters of incremental product segmentation" - does that somehow imply that this hasn't been true up until now? It should really be plenty clear that this isn't new - I'm simply pointing out that this is a particularly egregious example of it.
For Comet Lake and Rocket Lake you had non-K SKUs with low base frequency and a low TDP.
This has literally been how Intel SKUs have worked since Skylake, though arguably since Sandy Bridge: for any model number, a K SKU is unlocked, higher clocked, and might have a higher TDP than the non-K SKU, but they were the same hardware and were configured very similarly outside of this. They've now broken with this system, for no good reason beyond making three near-identical i5 SKUs that perform within a few % of each other. I find that worthy of pointing out.
Since most people just buy a board which ignores the TDP, we now have two TDPs, the same one from Comet/Rocket Lake, and one at full turbo, maxed chip.
Yes, that's a good thing. But also entirely irrelevant to this discussion. Whether previous TDP figures were nonsense or not (they mostly were), I'm talking about product segmentation.
The i5-12600k should be the i6 or something, and it is quite confusing.
No, the i5-12600 non-K should have been a 10c16t chip or not have existed at all. Then they could have had a couple of 6c12t i5s below that and this would have been a lot less messy.
I assumed it was obvious that the i3 and i5 are different C/T so didnt list that.
So what was the point of the list? To say that different chips have clock frequencies a few % apart from each other? I don't see how that in any way refutes my point about this being a redundant SKU.
Again, clearly there is more justification for having multiple i5 chips in the past in that:

12500 vs 12400 is a totally different GPU (32 vs 24 EUs, 2 encoding engines vs 1)
12600k vs 12600 is a totally different CPU (6+4 cores vs 6)
"totally different GPU" - but they're both uselessly slow, so ... who cares? Sorry, but that's not a meaningful differentiator for anyone otuside of perhaps a few digital signage OEMs. Nobody in the world cares if their desktop CPUs comes with a 24 or 32-core Intel iGPU. Xe is better than their previous stuff, and can compete with Vega when the drivers work, but they generally don't, so that point is moot. This just underscores my point of Intel producing a ton of useless SKUs for no good reason.
whereas in the past it was literally only down to clock speeds and the TDP you cite could be done with BIOS settings anyway so not significant.
... which is kind of my point, no? That Intel is creating an ever-increasing number of undifferentiated SKUs that have no meaningful differences? I mean, you're actually here making excuses for them ("this one has a marginally faster iGPU!"). You're also acting as if this segmentation isn't entirely by choice. There's nothing forcing Intel to have three non-K i5 SKUs whatsoever - and again, nobody cares about that iGPU. Nobody. If this 12600 was called the 12500 and the 12500 didn't exist, things would look a lot more sensible.

It annoys me that the i5-12600 doesn't have the same core configuration as the i5-12600K. IMO, they should always have the same core configuration if they have the same model number +/- the K. The clock speed can be slightly different, but the core configuration should be the same.
Yep. Breaking this system is beyond stupid.
That isn't true at all. The E cores are designed completely different than the P cores.
Again, entirely true. No idea what @ThrashZone is on about here, but E cores are an entirely different architecture than P cores.
It's a solution to a problem that does actually currently exists. Governments, in their never ending fight to reduce energy usage, are implementing regulations that computers now have a power limit when they are sitting idle or under light load, even desktops. So the E-cores allow more powerful P-Cores(and more of them) while still keeping the computer under the power limits. It's stupid on the government's side, but that's an entirely different discussion. And the new laws have already made some PC manufacturers pull certain high end models of their computers from the markets those laws cover.
Sorry, but this is pure nonsense. You seem to have bought into some of the sensationalism and misinformation that got tossed around a while ago when some new environmental regulations (that OEMs had known about for years) came into effect, causing non-compliant OEMs to halt sales of certain models. Failure to comply with these regulations is only the responsibility of said OEMs, as compliant components were plentiful and they had several years' notice. The only computers pulled from the market were also pulled due to using low efficiency PSUs, and not because of the power consumption of any of their other components.

As for the goal of this being to bring down idle power consumption: that's likely partly true, but given that current Intel mobile CPUs idle in the mW range, the differences from adding E cores is relatively minor overall - especially as the differences between desktops and mobile in this regard comes down to larger boards and more AICs requiring more power, not the CPUs themselves (as well as high powered desktop PSUs generally being very inefficient at low loads). There is no way in which E cores affect any of this meaningfully, so presenting that as the reasoning just doesn't add up. Intel's main motivation for adding E cores is to compete with AMD's massive MT efficiency lead, as well as Apple, as it's clear their P architecture just can't deliver the necessary combination of efficiency and speed.
In and ideal world, Intel would have a processor that is all P-cores, as many of them as they could fit on the die space. I figure if they replaced the E-cores with P-cores, they could have a 10 or 12 core 12th gen CPU with all P-cores.
The die space used by the 4-core E clusters is widely documented, and is roughly the same as a single P core, so they would top out at 10 in the same die area, but you'd then also have lower clocks and increased thermal density, while getting fewer threads for your trouble. Most likely, a 10-core Golden Cove chip would be quite underwhelming due to thermal limitations. In most MT heavy applications, 4 E cores deliver more performance than two more P cores would, at least after the scheduler was updated to keep track of them. There are still applications that don't manage to make use of them, but those are growing increasingly rare.
Maybe call this beast the i9-12950K. This CPU would only be available in OEM systems outside those jurisdictions with the strict energy laws. But there's also nothing stopping someone in those areas from upgrading their computer themselves with this processor. Of course this won't happen because it doesn't make a lot of business sense for Intel. It's another die they have to design and product test. And they probably wouldn't make much money off of it.
Such a chip would likely meet those idle power requirements just fine - just like an all-P core ADL i5 does, after all. Cores can be power and clock gated after all, so why would a 10P CPU consume more power at idle than a 6P one? And those 6P CPUs are sold in those jurisdictions. So, sorry, but your reasoning here doesn't add up. You're giving environmental regulations the blame for something they have literally zero effect on - the architectural traits of Intel's P cores and how many of them can be packed into a CPU package and made to perform well. Intel isn't being stopped by regulations, they're stopped by their inability to put more than 8 of these cores in a single package and have them clock high enough to run well.

Me? I trust Intel's engineers to know what they're doing with the resources available to them. They made E cores for a reason, and that reason isn't because the gub'mint forced them to do so. For what they do, E cores are good, and smarter and more dynamic PCs is a net benefit and a necessity if we want faster PCs going forward - the era of brute-forcing your way to victory is coming to an end. And that's also a good thing. And lastly, I don't hold to scapegoating governmental regulations (which are only beneficial in this scenario) in lieu of attributing blame where it actually lies: with those engineers, and/or with the product designers at various OEMs. Intel has a high performance architecture that has efficiency and area issues. E cores are a solution to that. And OEMs failing to design compliant products when given several years' notice have nobody but themselves to blame.
 
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It's surely less redundant than the 10600, which differed ONLY from the 10600K in being 4.8 GHz locked, rather than 4.8 GHz unlocked.

Here the SKUs are:

* i3-12100 -4.3 GHz, sensible chip
* i3-12300 -4.4 GHz, uh.....
* i5-12400 - 4.4 GHz - the popular chip
* i5-12500 - 4.6GHz, bigger IGP
* i5-12600 - 4.8 GHz
* i5-12600K - 4.9 GHz, more cores, unlocked

Here there's a BIG difference to the 12600K, the only question is price.
Bah, that's nothing compared to Haswell + Haswell refresh. At least eight i3 and seven i5 models without suffixes, plus the K chips. And an endless line of T's and S's, but maybe not all of those were avilable in retail.
 

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@newtekie1 Green lobby strikes again. :(
I mean, it is what it is. I've been feeling the higher electric bills in the past year or so, so a lower power idling computer that still has tons of horsepower for gaming and multi-threaded work is A-OK with me. But I'd be nice if the option was there to just go full on beastly CPU if you wanted.

Sorry, but this is pure nonsense. You seem to have bought into some of the sensationalism and misinformation that got tossed around a while ago when some new environmental regulations (that OEMs had known about for years) came into effect, causing non-compliant OEMs to halt sales of certain models. Failure to comply with these regulations is only the responsibility of said OEMs, as compliant components were plentiful and they had several years' notice. The only computers pulled from the market were also pulled due to using low efficiency PSUs, and not because of the power consumption of any of their other components.

As for the goal of this being to bring down idle power consumption: that's likely partly true, but given that current Intel mobile CPUs idle in the mW range, the differences from adding E cores is relatively minor overall - especially as the differences between desktops and mobile in this regard comes down to larger boards and more AICs requiring more power, not the CPUs themselves (as well as high powered desktop PSUs generally being very inefficient at low loads). There is no way in which E cores affect any of this meaningfully, so presenting that as the reasoning just doesn't add up. Intel's main motivation for adding E cores is to compete with AMD's massive MT efficiency lead, as well as Apple, as it's clear their P architecture just can't deliver the necessary combination of efficiency and speed.


The fact is it is not just an inefficient power supply issue. The limits actually just got stricter in some areas. Selling a gaming PC with a high end graphics card is getting harder, and these E-Cores are the solution to that problem. The laptop processors aren't really an argument here. Yes, some idle at mW in some cases, but the high end gaming ones don't. And they also often aren't nearly as powerful as a desktop processor at full speed either.

The die space used by the 4-core E clusters is widely documented, and is roughly the same as a single P core, so they would top out at 10 in the same die area, but you'd then also have lower clocks and increased thermal density, while getting fewer threads for your trouble. Most likely, a 10-core Golden Cove chip would be quite underwhelming due to thermal limitations. In most MT heavy applications, 4 E cores deliver more performance than two more P cores would, at least after the scheduler was updated to keep track of them. There are still applications that don't manage to make use of them, but those are growing increasingly rare.
Not really, a single P-Core with HT enabled is responsible for about 30w of power under load. At the same time, disabling the E-cores results in a power drop of about 25w, but that number might be inaccurate because the P-cores were allowed to boost higher and use more power since the E-cores were not taking up some of the power budget. But even if we assume the E-cores only use 25w, taking them out and adding 2 P-cores would only increase the power by 35w. And I'm talking about a high end processor here, something Intel could increase the power budget on easily to make up for that 35w and still keep the same or extremely close boost clock speeds.

Such a chip would likely meet those idle power requirements just fine - just like an all-P core ADL i5 does, after all. Cores can be power and clock gated after all, so why would a 10P CPU consume more power at idle than a 6P one? And those 6P CPUs are sold in those jurisdictions. So, sorry, but your reasoning here doesn't add up. You're giving environmental regulations the blame for something they have literally zero effect on - the architectural traits of Intel's P cores and how many of them can be packed into a CPU package and made to perform well. Intel isn't being stopped by regulations, they're stopped by their inability to put more than 8 of these cores in a single package and have them clock high enough to run well.

But we know that isn't true. The 4-Core 12300, using the same die as this i5-12600 uses less power at idle. In fact the 12600 is using about 10% more power at idle than the 12300. And those P-cores on the 12300 are physically disabled, meaning their power consumption is actually 0. Power and clock gating a core does not reduce it's power consumption to 0.
 

qubit

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:p I mean, it is what it is. I've been feeling the higher electric bills in the past year or so, so a lower power idling computer that still has tons of horsepower for gaming and multi-threaded work is A-OK with me. But I'd be nice if the option was there to just go full on beastly CPU if you wanted.
Yeah, +1 buddy.

We've got 50% higher electricity and gas bills here in brexit Blighty, too.

I wanted my new PC to be basically "double" my old one: twice the cores minimum (full performance cores of course), double the memory to 32GB and a really beastly powerful graphics card paired with a 4K 144Hz monitor. Why? Because I can. Pure, enthusiast logic! Alas, the CPU on Intel's side only exists as the 12900 and NVIDIA have helped ensure that their top cards remain reassuringly unaffordable.

If the right CPU had been available, I'd have probably pulled the trigger around now.

I might have a look at what AMD offers, but they've not quite got the same gaming performance as Alder Lake and I still don't trust them as much for troublefree performance as Intel, given what I see in the forums. While I did have intermittent stability problems with my PC for a long time, it turned out to be a bad memory stick, solved by buying a new one, so not a platform problem.

Regardless, I'll have to upgrade by 14.10.2025 when Windows 10 support runs out. Wish me luck. :p
 
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Whilst I like this model, I do agree on the naming scheme concerns, this should have been under its own number.
 
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The fact is it is not just an inefficient power supply issue. The limits actually just got stricter in some areas. Selling a gaming PC with a high end graphics card is getting harder, and these E-Cores are the solution to that problem.
Again: this is simply not true. AFAIK there are no environmental regulations anywhere significant that regulate maximum power consumption of a PC under load. I mean, this would be impossible to regulate in practice, as PCs come in a million shapes, sizes, use cases and performance levels. The new Californian regulations, which caused that hubbub in the middle of last year, only applied to idle power consumption, and the only PCs that were held back from sale because of it were due to them having insufficiently efficient PSUs - i.e. pure laziness/cheapness on the part of the OEM, given that they had several years to prepare, and compliant PSUs are abundant.
The laptop processors aren't really an argument here. Yes, some idle at mW in some cases, but the high end gaming ones don't. And they also often aren't nearly as powerful as a desktop processor at full speed either.
While an U series will idle lower than a H series or a desktop chip, the tech is the same, so unless your motherboard has for some reason disabled its sleep states, they will idle at equivalent power levels. More hardware present will drive up idle power, but that's relatively insignificant. Also, "they aren't nearly as powerful as a desktop processor at full speed" is completely irrelevant here - the regulations in question don't cover that use case, and regardless of this it's the same silicon with different power levels. It's a configuration difference, nothing more.
Not really, a single P-Core with HT enabled is responsible for about 30w of power under load. At the same time, disabling the E-cores results in a power drop of about 25w, but that number might be inaccurate because the P-cores were allowed to boost higher and use more power since the E-cores were not taking up some of the power budget. But even if we assume the E-cores only use 25w, taking them out and adding 2 P-cores would only increase the power by 35w. And I'm talking about a high end processor here, something Intel could increase the power budget on easily to make up for that 35w and still keep the same or extremely close boost clock speeds.
Yes, "only" 35W - on top of, what, 240? And sure, you can run them far more efficiently if you limit the boost clock and power level, but ... the E cores still deliver massively better efficiency. They just can't keep up in the high end, or in latency-sensitive workloads (like games) thanks to their shared L2 cache and indirect ring bus connection. But in any power limited scenario - even 240W - 8 E-cores at peak clocks still outperform 2 P-cores (4t) at peak clocks unless the workload is highly latency or cache sensitive. But the doubled thread count still means the E cores deliver more performance/area/watt outside of a few workloads, and are especially useful for lighter background tasks or highly threaded workloads that can make use of them.

Also, your argument here is a bit ... well, inconsistent. If we're talking about performance within a given power envelope, whatever it may be, adding 35W to that inherently breaks the comparison.
But we know that isn't true. The 4-Core 12300, using the same die as this i5-12600 uses less power at idle. In fact the 12600 is using about 10% more power at idle than the 12300. And those P-cores on the 12300 are physically disabled, meaning their power consumption is actually 0. Power and clock gating a core does not reduce it's power consumption to 0.
Power gating does indeed reduce power consumption to 0 - it literally means turning off the power to a portion of the silicon. The reason why the 12600 consumes more power is likely that its extra cores are fluctuating in and out of sleep, or it could be down to the rest of the system - remember, TPU's power measurements are full system, so they include everything including PSU losses (which account for quite a bit at idle, given how inefficient most PSUs are in that wattage range). A 4W difference like between the 12300 and 12600 is utterly meaningless in that perspective, as there are too many complicating factors to trust that measurement - it's well within any reasonable margin of error for a full-system measurement. You'd need an EPS cable measurement to get anything even remotely reliable.
 

bug

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It's a solution to a problem that does actually currently exists. Governments, in their never ending fight to reduce energy usage, are implementing regulations that computers now have a power limit when they are sitting idle or under light load, even desktops. So the E-cores allow more powerful P-Cores(and more of them) while still keeping the computer under the power limits. It's stupid on the government's side, but that's an entirely different discussion. And the new laws have already made some PC manufacturers pull certain high end models of their computers from the markets those laws cover.
I don't agree with that. According to current benchmarks, there are no tangible power savings whatsoever. Maybe the scheduler isn't smart enough to make proper use of the E core in light-load scenarios, or maybe it's bugged, but currently the E cores definitely do not lower power draw. Plus, I'm not aware of regulations targeting CPUs or PCs specifically.
 
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I don't agree with that. According to current benchmarks, there are no tangible power savings whatsoever. Maybe the scheduler isn't smart enough to make proper use of the E core in light-load scenarios, or maybe it's bugged, but currently the E cores definitely do not lower power draw. Plus, I'm not aware of regulations targeting CPUs or PCs specifically.
Yeah, they exist to deliver increased MT performance at any given power level k(as a response to AMD), and to allow mobile chips higher core counts without necessitating 100W+ boost power (again mostly a response to AMD). There's absolutely nothing indicating that they exist in order to meet some kind of regulatory limit.
 

bug

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Yeah, they exist to deliver increased MT performance at any given power level k(as a response to AMD), and to allow mobile chips higher core counts without necessitating 100W+ boost power (again mostly a response to AMD). There's absolutely nothing indicating that they exist in order to meet some kind of regulatory limit.
For the record, E cores make sense when you look at perf/die area, but we need the scheduler to be smart enough to send light loads to them properly. What we're seeing right now in Win11 (send a window to the background, watch it becoming a low-priority task) seems to be quite far from that. And I'm not very confident a scheduler can be smart enough to figure things out properly, unless programs themselves start providing hints.
 
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MT is important though, so why does it matter how they make it better. E cores will make sense when the scheduler works properly, I won't disable mine as they have no detrimental effect on my PC
 
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