The P-cores and E-cores are at the heart of 12th Generation Core's new "big.LITTLE"-style architecture. This approach to chip design employs high-power and low-power processing cores. In this particular chip, the design pairs eight P-cores with eight E-cores, and divides the demands of your PC across them from moment to moment, depending on the task at hand. Only the eight P-cores are Hyper-Threaded in this new chip design, for two threads per core; that's why the number of supported threads isn't the usual double the number of cores. Then for those interested in productivity, it's almost always going to be the case where buying the 7950X ends up being the better deal. When just factoring in motherboard and memory costs, it's not much more for an additional 33% cores, and those extra cores often net you a good amount of performance. Last up, before we jump into the spec table, Intel has once again reclassified our known definitions of processor power draw. The company says it's now moving beyond the familiar Thermal Design Power rating (often expressed as "TDP" in watts), to its newest nomenclature, "Base Power" and "Maximum Turbo Power." We've experienced that single-core performance is essential for some games, as many don't take full advantage of multiple cores. Similarly, we have experienced that professional tools depend on high single and multi-core turbo frequencies to maximize their processing speed.

The idea is that with Windows 11, it all works. With Windows 10, it almost all works. The main difference Intel told us is although Windows 10 can separate cores apart, and hyperthreads, it doesn’t really understand efficiency that well. So its decisions are made more in regards to performance requirements, rather than performance vs efficiency. At the end of the day, all this should mean to the user is that Windows 10 tries to minimizes the run-to-run variation, but Windows 11 does it better. Ultimate best-case performance shouldn’t change in any serious way: a single thread on a P-core, or across several P-cores for example, should perform the same. Let’s Talk Testing The Core i9-14900K has 8 Performance-cores, 16 Efficient-cores and a total of 32 threads with a massive 36MB of Intel Smart Cache. It sounds impressive, but with only 8 Performance-cores, it seems a little under-powered to be honest. I was expecting at least 10 or 12 even 16 Performance-cores. No, your eyes don't deceive you: Intel has carried its wins from content creation right on through to gaming, and for the first time in too long, has released a desktop gaming CPU that's competitive with AMD on both price and performance. Sure, games like F1 2021 are a "gimme" due to their RAM sensitivity, but both the 3DMark and Rainbow Six Siege results leave us optimistic that Intel can keep pace in the gaming race for at least the next several months (if rumors of Zen 4's launch date prove true). One Gaming Caveat, Though...There isn’t anything like the Core i9-12900K on desktop right now. The closest competitor is the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, though it’s not nearly as fast as the Core i9-12900K. How long will it last? However having said that, it only manages to beat the previous gen, the Core i9-13900K by a small margin. Which means, if you already have a 13th Gen processor … then it may not be worth your while to upgrade to Intel’s new 14th Gen processor. It’s like the Apple iPhone 14 vs iPhone 15! cough. On the flipside , I would upgrade if I had an older 10th, 11th or 12th Gen processor. With that said, the Core i9-14900K is in my opinion a really tough sell. There isn’t a lot of real differences between it and the previous gen the Core i9-13900K. It has the same number of cores, the same TDP, the same amount of cache … the only thing it has going for it, is the increased core speed. And I’ve said this already, it’s really just a “refresh” of the previous gen Raptor Lake, but the ability to support higher memory speeds of up to DDR5-8266. The 7900X is able to outperform the 12900K by a 12% margin and put away the old 5900X by a convincing 25% margin. A small word on power (see this article for more info) – rather than giving a simple ‘TDP’ value as in previous generations, which only specified the power at a base frequency, Intel is expanding to providing both a Base power and a Turbo power this time around. On top of that, Intel is also making these processors have ‘infinite Turbo time’, meaning that with the right cooling, users should expect these processors to run up to the Turbo power indefinitely during heavy workloads. Intel giving both numbers is a welcome change, although some users have criticized the decreasing turbo power for Core i7 and Core i5.

Based on our evaluation of using Intel's Core i9-12900K CPU for gaming, you can expect excellent game performance with a high-performance CPU cooler. Intel's Core i9-12900KF CPUs have 8 Performance cores (P-cores) and 8 Efficiency cores (E-cores) for a total of 16 cores. Intel delivered. The Core i9-12900K competes with the Ryzen 9 5900X on price, but competes with the Ryzen 9 5950X on performance — and is coming out with a significant lead at that. Gaming Its 8 Efficiency cores have a 2.40 GHz base frequency and support a 3.90 GHz max turbo boost frequency. Think of the scheduler as a traffic cop for Windows 11 (or any modern OS, for that matter): It tells bits of programs where they should each run on a processor, based on a variety of factors. That includes thermal/cooling capacity, available power draw, performance peaks, and task/thread priority. This process is relatively straightforward on traditional desktop-processor designs, and it works the same, in principle, on Windows 10 as it has in previous versions.See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html?wapkw=hyper+threading for more information including details on which processors support Intel® HT Technology. Intel's Core i9-12900K CPUs have 8 Performance cores (P-cores) and 8 Efficiency cores (E-cores) for a total of 16 cores. One of the nice things about the MSI MEG Z690 Unify motherboard is that the LED that posts diagnostic codes during bootup switches to a CPU temperature monitor after booting, showing you the temperature of your CPU.