Intel was rather misleading in its comparisons between the Core i9-12900K and Ryzen 9 5950X

exetras · November 3, 2021

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-was-rather-misleading-in-its-comparisons-between-the-Core-i9-12900K-and-Ryzen-9-5950X.576726.0.html

Summary

It seems that Intel was not telling the full story when it compared the Core i9-12900K against the Ryzen 9 5950X, currently AMD's most comparable processor. As it turns out, Intel allowed the Core i9-12900K to consume 2.4x the power of its AMD competitor and benchmarked the Ryzen 9 5950X using an older version of Windows 11 with AMD performance issues.

Quotes

Quote

Last week, Intel published the official specifications, performance statistics and prices for its Alder Lake desktop CPUs. As we discussed at the time, Intel sought to compare its flagship SKU against the Core i9-11900K and the Ryzen 9 5950X. Unsurprisingly, Intel's preferred benchmarks showed the Core i9-12900K in a favorable light, with the Core i9-12900K outscoring the Ryzen 9 5950X in seven of the nine gaming benchmarks.

However, Intel left out numerous details about how it tested the processors, which it subsequently published. As the slides below show, Intel allowed the Core i9-12900K to consume 241 W at PL1, with the Ryzen 9 5950X restricted to 105 W, also PL1. Correspondingly, the Core i9-12900K could operate at significantly higher clock speeds than the Ryzen 9 5950X, influencing benchmark results. For some reason, Intel has not shared the PL2 consumption of either processor.

My thoughts

This kind of behavior is nasty and only damages their reputation more for those who care. I'm sure some will miss this article and still believe the original quotes from Intel . The fact that misinformation is getting everywhere is worrying.

Also 240W vs 105W is quite the difference, around 228% more power draw.