Core i9-12900KF, Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600 in a workstation test with amazing results and an old weakness | Part 2

1 - Introduction and test systems 2 - Autodesk AutoCAD 2021 3 - Autodesk Inventor 2021 Pro 4 - Solidworks 2021 5 - Different CAD Benchmarks - SPECvieperf 2020 6 - Rendering, financial, programming 7 - Science and math (1) 8 - Science and math (2) 9 - Power consumption and efficiency 10 - Summary and conclusion

So today I’ll get serious and show you where Alder Lake S can really score aside from colorful gaming pixels. Gaming what? Completely overrated if you look at at least some of today’s results. Because the true strengths of the new architecture will hardly be seen while playing games, because today it’s getting faster in a different way.  Of course, even Alder Lake S won’t outright kill the current competitor CPUs, but it will almost do so in some areas. At least whenever lighter or mixed workloads dominate the workday. And there are a lot of them.

For today’s test, I’m using the same platforms as yesterday’s gaming, also with the same settings. This also makes it easier to compare where your preferences are better: gaming or working. Or maybe even both, who knows? In follow ups I will of course go into more detail on cooling and Xaver on OC and RAM. But today the productivity will be tested first.

I admit that the title of the article sounds a bit lurid if you look at it superficially, but if you look at the results of the first three major test suites in particular, where I rely exclusively on licensed full programs from industry and engineering, then you will understand that one could have been even more explicit. However, the other benchmarks are also impressive, because I also calculated the required watt hours for the completion of demanding tasks at the end.

Intel Core i9-12900K(F), Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K in the test – gaming in really fast and really frugal

However, the signs from the gaming tests have already indicated that a completely new impression of Intel’s computing and working slaves could manifest itself here  in productive use, too. I’m sure you can understand my euphoria if, like me, you depend on a truly unrestrained workflow and can’t pay for the electricity out of petty cash. Efficiency and dominance, it’s hard to ignore, even as an outsider.

In gaming, it’s usually the graphics card that slows things down, in productive use and especially in design and construction, it’s almost always the CPU. I’m using an NVIDIA RTX A6000 for testing, which also wants a snappy underbelly when outputting real-time 3D views, regardless of whether OpenGL or DirectX is being used. Many a CAD program is even worse than the nastiest 720p gaming test in this regard, cue AutoCAD. But I’ll get to that in a minute. Solidworks and Inventor Pro are also demanding, but they contain very different workloads, from light to extremely heavy, which can also occur at the same time. This is where Alder Lake S should be able to show its strengths, which will have to be proven.

And also in this test I have to preface that the current Ryzen CPUs are not degraded to silicon waste with today and you also don’t have to have a reason to panic to suddenly not be able to work with them from one day to the next. But this, admittedly partial demonstration of Intel’s superiority in some areas is actually almost a kind of humiliation. And of course, since I’m always fair, I’ve made an effort to look for any weaknesses for Intel and advantages for AMD. So let’s be surprised, we have both today.

Benchmarks, Test system and evaluation software

The measurement of the detailed power consumption and other, more profound things is done here in the special laboratory (where at the end in the air-conditioned room also the thermographic infrared recordings are made with a high-resolution industrial camera) on two tracks by means of high-resolution oscillograph technology (follow-ups!) and the self-created, MCU-based measurement setup for motherboards and graphics cards (pictures below).

The audio measurements are done outside in my Chamber (room within a room). But all in good time, because today it’s all about gaming (for now).

I have also summarized the individual components of the test system in a table: