From its tenth generation CPUs that Intel assigns several “Power Limits” being the PL1 the one that can be reached in an undefined time and the PL2 in a period of 100 seconds.
A particularity of the Intel Core 12 is that they allow you to assign what the PL2 is for an undefined time. This does not mean that the processor is constantly under these clock speeds, since at the minimum that the temperature begins to approach a dangerous point immediately the rate of cycles per second drops in order to lower the voltage and with it the temperature and consumption.
So logically there is a consumption point that is higher than normal, but cool enough to be stable and with greater efficiency than placing the CPU at the maximum possible consumption.
What is the most efficient point of the Intel i9-12900K?
Using the multi-threaded benchmark included in CPU-Z An i9-12900K has been put to the test with different limit consumptions for the processor, the results can be seen in the table above these images. In it we can observe a typical effect that occurs in all CPUs regardless of their architecture, its efficiency the lower the consumption increases, however, the total performance obtained is much lower.
Obviously, no one with two fingers of a brain is going to put a CPU like the i9-12900K At such a low performance, however, what we are interested in is the energy efficiency of the i9-12900K in limit consumptions beyond the 125 W that the CPU stipulated as PL1 has. And what is the surprise? Well, with a 150 W limit consumption efficiency per watt is a 53% higher that with 250 W of consumption and the temperature of 74 ° C and, therefore, it is low enough to keep it under this consumption level for a long time.
Taking into account that we can make the PL1 and PL2 values the same in the Intel Core 12, making the i9-12900K work at 150 W is a bad idea at first glance, but taking into account that the temperature that reaches less than 80 ° C this gives enough margin. Of course, we recommend that you have a good cooling system for greater security and stability.
It gives us clues for future variants of the Core 12
We know that Intel has versions with a lower PL1 of its Alder Lake-S architecture stored under the chamber, we are talking on the one hand of the 65 W desktop versions and the Alder Lake-H55, a version of the Intel Core for desktop, although low BGA packaging and designed for high-end laptops and that would not stop being an i9-12900K for laptops.
Well, these data allow us to know the efficiency of the architecture at much lower consumptions, which is where the performance per watt is much higher. Seeing these figures, AMD is going to have a very difficult time if it wants to steal the throne from Intel in laptops and we have to add that desktop CPUs do not have the measures to reduce the consumption of their equivalents for laptops, so the efficiency it will be much greater.
