Thoughts on 12700K vs 13/14600K for a new build?

[r00tb33r]

They are within 10% of each other performance-wise, and somehow the 8 P-cores lose out to 6 P-cores and more E-cores, in most benchmarks anyway.  But what about everyday use?  Lots of browser windows, some VMs, maybe a CAD program like SolidWorks idling in the background?

 

The 3 CPUs seem pretty close in price too.  I can't make up my mind on whether to drink the E-core Kool-Aid.

[Dedayog]

8 minutes ago, r00tb33r said:

They are within 10% of each other performance-wise, and somehow the 8 P-cores lose out to 6 P-cores and more E-cores, in most benchmarks anyway.  But what about everyday use?  Lots of browser windows, some VMs, maybe a CAD program like SolidWorks idling in the background?

 

The 3 CPUs seem pretty close in price too.  I can't make up my mind on whether to drink the E-core Kool-Aid.

13600K is the jam.  Best bang for buck Intel.  Fantastic gaming chip and productivity is good too.

 

Lots of browsers can be done on a Core 2 Duo   You'll be fine.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

48 minutes ago, r00tb33r said:

some VMs

Depends on how many you run but definitely benifits from more cores even the ecores

 

49 minutes ago, r00tb33r said:

Lots of browser windows, maybe a CAD program like SolidWorks idling in the background

These on the other hand are mostly affected by ram capacity

 

 

Id get the 13600k(f)/14600k(f) over the 12700k(f) unless you find one for <200$ used

[r00tb33r]

18 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Depends on how many you run but definitely benifits from more cores even the ecores

Here's the thing, I never really understood if VMs use physical cores or logical processors.  For example VirtualBox allocation matches the thread count rather than cores.

 

All 3 processors have 20 threads, so is there a clear winner for VMs in terms of processor allocation?

[Somerandomtechyboi]

4 minutes ago, r00tb33r said:

Here's the thing, I never really understood if VMs use physical cores or logical processors.  For example VirtualBox allocation matches the thread count rather than cores.

 

All 3 processors have 20 threads, so is there a clear winner for VMs in terms of processor allocation?

Ive only ever used vms either for playing android games or that one time i ran a w7 vm for whatever reason that i now forgot so yea idk

[flibberdipper]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

even the ecores

Not VMWare Workstation though. If you don't disable the vmx from running on them, your VMs will be LUDICROUSLY slow. As in, a Windows XP VM will be slower than it would be on something like a Pentium II 233. I'm actually usually very annoyed with my e-cores, to the point that I really want a 7800X3D. VMs are a pain in the ass, Steam downloads are odd shit, but everything else is fine.

[r00tb33r]

1 hour ago, flibberdipper said:

Not VMWare Workstation though. If you don't disable the vmx from running on them, your VMs will be LUDICROUSLY slow. As in, a Windows XP VM will be slower than it would be on something like a Pentium II 233. I'm actually usually very annoyed with my e-cores, to the point that I really want a 7800X3D. VMs are a pain in the ass, Steam downloads are odd shit, but everything else is fine.

I Googled around and the sentiment is that E cores are indeed problematic for virtual machines.  So it sounds like 12700K would actually be more desirable...?

[flibberdipper]

11 hours ago, r00tb33r said:

I Googled around and the sentiment is that E cores are indeed problematic for virtual machines.  So it sounds like 12700K would actually be more desirable...?

It's probably the route I would go. Hell, if I had a 12700K instead of my 12600KF I'd probably just disable the e-cores altogether since I'd have an extra two big boy cores/threads which would help "make up the difference" so to speak.

 

To illustrate my point of how ass e-cores are for VMs, here's a freshly installed Xubuntu 21.10 VM booting from my MP510, with 6GB of RAM and 4 cores assigned. First part is with it using the e-cores, second part is me changing the affinity to only p-cores. And believe me, the difference with Windows guests is FAR greater.

 

 

 

[r00tb33r]

7 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

disable the e-cores

This crossed my mind.  I wonder if that provides more TDP budget to overclock the 8 P-cores even higher.  Curious if this has been benchmarked.

 

Though honestly I have yet to have a stable overclocked system that I used daily.  But playing with numbers will certainly be fun for a day.

[flibberdipper]

3 hours ago, r00tb33r said:

This crossed my mind.  I wonder if that provides more TDP budget to overclock the 8 P-cores even higher.  Curious if this has been benchmarked.

 

Though honestly I have yet to have a stable overclocked system that I used daily.  But playing with numbers will certainly be fun for a day.

If you're like me and OC using boost tables, voltage curves, and PL1/PL2 limits, it absolutely does. Alternatively it just cuts down on power usage overall which might be handy.