The Intel 12th Gen Core i9-12900K Review: Hybrid Performance Brings Hybrid Complexity
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Andrei Frumusanu on November 4, 2021 9:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmark Performance: E-Core
In this batch of testing, we're focusing primarily on the E-cores. Intel claimed that the performance was around the level of its Skylake generation of processors (6th Gen to 10th Gen, depending which slide you read), and we had to put that to the test. In this instance, we're comparing to the flagship Skylake processor, the Core i7-6700K, which offered 4C/8T at 91 W. We also did a number of multi-threaded tests to see where the E-cores would line up.
In order to enable E-core only operation, we used affinity masks.
Single Threaded
In these few tests, we can see that the E-core is almost there at 4.2 GHz Skylake. Moving down to 3.9 GHz, perhaps something like the i7-6700, would put it on par.
Multi-Thread Tests
Having a full eight E-cores compared to Skylake's 4C/8T arrangement helps in a lot of scenarios that are compute limited. When we move to more memory limited environments, or with cross-talk, then the E-cores are a bit more limited due to the cache structure and the long core-to-core latencies. Even with DDR5 in tow, the E-cores can be marginal to the Skylake, for example in WinRAR which tends to benefit from cache and memory bandwidth.
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Zzzoom - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
You're gullible enough to forget that AMD raised its margins as soon as it got the lead with Zen 3.lejeczek - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
And you are ready! to convince everybody... that whole freaking plandemic & communists mafia had nothing to do with prices gone up across the board. Good man!Spunjji - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
"plandemic"🙄
"communists mafia"
🤦♂️
Qasar - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
zzzoom, so in other words, intel kept raising its prices when they had the lead, but its NOT ok for amd to raise its prices when they have the lead ? so who is gullible ?amd had the right to raise its prices, after all intel did it.
madseven7 - Saturday, November 6, 2021 - link
You're gullible enough to forget that Intel raised prices for every generation of cpu's and chipsets.karmapop - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
This is a market economy. Neither company cares about your emotional attachments or misgivings beyond what is profitable for them. AMD as the market underdog played up that position heavily, gaining significant goodwill with the enthusiast consumer market. However as Zzzoom mentioned just as is expected as soon as they retook the performance dominant position their aggressive pricing strategy evaporated.If you're going to criticize Intel's market stagnation via mismangement for a decade you can't just ignore the fiasco of AMD's awful Bulldozer architecture and the 4.5 year gap between the launch of Piledriver and the launch of Zen 1. It's not unreasonable to make the argument that because Intel absolutely needed AMD to remain around at that time to avoid facing anti-trust issues, the lack of any real competitive alternative is a factor in their decision to stagnate as just 'greed'.
yeeeeman - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
AMD has been doing the same starting with Zen 3, so spare me with this...deathBOB - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
And they should be punished for correcting those problems?heickelrrx - Thursday, November 4, 2021 - link
AMD did since they make FX series so badStop blaming Intel alon for market segmentation AMD being not competitive also part of it
Spunjji - Friday, November 5, 2021 - link
FX series was as bad as it was for a couple of reasons - partly because AMD were starved of funding during the entire Athlon 64 era, and partly because Global Foundries utterly failed to develop their fabrication processes to be suitable for high-performance CPUs.