i7-12700 Power Efficiency

[vadimo]

I was looking at i5-12600K and for the max frequency it can offer and i am happy with the perforamnce figures but i also want efficinecy and this is where i got noticed i7-12700 by me, it has lower base and e core frequncy thus it its nearly 50% lower on the power consumption 65 vs 125W.

I would like to be bale to run PC for general use too like browsing and office applications and hoping that maybe i7 will stick to its lower frequncy and power.

Oponion welcome.

 

[alec]

Not too familiar with new Intel bios options, but there are settings in bios to limit CPU power use or high power duration.
So I would get the 12600K and strangle it to 65W or whatever with power settings.
It will be slightly faster in general applications and games thanks to higher single core boost, potentially slightly more efficient in general than 12700 from fewer cores and better bin.
Modern CPUs are very efficient when constrained in power.

 

[Tetras]

I haven't seen any direct comparisons between 12th gen non-k and k CPUs, but if I extrapolate from TPU's 10700 non-K review and the 12600K and 12700K / non-K reviews:

For general use (desktop, office type stuff), I'd expect the differences between the i7-12700 and i5-12600K to be marginal, because the 12600K and 12700 won't exceed the power limits in this type of usage and if the 12600K does it would be a very short duration boost that isn't necessarily bad from an efficiency point of view. The 12700 definitely does not consume 50% less power than the 12600K, on average, in single-threaded (or lightly-threaded) tasks.

For gaming it would depend on how the board is configured. For productivity the same thing, though as with desktop use, higher frequencies aren't necessarily less efficient.

If you're looking at long term sustained load (i.e. not a finite task), then lower frequencies are usually better when they're closer to the architecture's optimal efficiency curve, but in this case, the turbo clocks are practically the same, so it'll be down to the board's config again. I'm not sure what kind of sustained load you'd have apart from gaming.

 

[Dallies]

I was looking at i5-12600K and for the max frequency it can offer and i am happy with the perforamnce figures but i also want efficinecy and this is where i got noticed i7-12700 by me, it has lower base and e core frequncy thus it its nearly 50% lower on the power consumption 65 vs 125W.

I would like to be bale to run PC for general use too like browsing and office applications and hoping that maybe i7 will stick to its lower frequncy and power.

Oponion welcome.

My 12600 draws about 20w when surfing the Web etc.... I notice most of the p cores are parked and windows 11 will utilise the e cores. Also on the z690 platform you can customise the core use. I.e disable/enable any number of cores to suit your needs. I imagine the same goes for the 12700.