FYI: Comparison of Alder Lake's performance vs efficiency cores (Geekbench 5)

[horshack]

I was curious about exactly how the Intel 12th gen efficiency cores compare to the performance cores, so I wrote a script that runs Geekbench 5 against each individual core. I chose Geekbench for this test because it offers a nice mix of real-world algorithms rather than an arbitrary synthetic mix of computations. Here are the results for an i7-12700h running in an Asus Vivobook S 14X.

 

Summary of results
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Core # 0: Average=1771.00  *** Baseline ***
Core # 1: Average=1770.50  vs Baseline:  99.97%
Core # 2: Average=1767.33  vs Baseline:  99.79%
Core # 3: Average=1749.00  vs Baseline:  98.75%
Core # 4: Average=1844.16  vs Baseline: 104.13%
Core # 5: Average=1843.66  vs Baseline: 104.10%
Core #12: Average=1091.66  vs Baseline:  61.64%
Core #13: Average=1097.66  vs Baseline:  61.97%
Core #14: Average=1096.50  vs Baseline:  61.91%
Core #15: Average=1098.50  vs Baseline:  62.02%
Core #16: Average=1097.83  vs Baseline:  61.98%
Core #17: Average=1095.50  vs Baseline:  61.85%
Core #18: Average=1097.16  vs Baseline:  61.95%
Core #19: Average=1096.33  vs Baseline:  61.90%

Cores #0-5 are the six native performance cores (hyperthreaded cores excluded); cores #12-19 are the eight efficiency cores. Core #0 is the 100% baseline.

Based on these results the efficiency cores are 62% as fast as the performance cores on a i7-12700h.

Note how cores #4 and #5 are faster than the other four performance cores - these are the "favored cores" on this particular CPU die. See Intel Turbo Boost Max Technology 3 for details.

Here is a link to my GitHub repository if anyone would like to run this test on their setup as well. It runs under Linux.

https://github.com/horshack-dpreview/GeekbenchAutomationTools