A really strong 12600K will do 5.3 GHz

A really strong 14600K will do 6.0 GHz

 

I thought most of the 14600k and 14700k all core would be around 5.7-5.8, probably need HT/OFF, as it would be over 1.3v. The memory controller is worse on the 12600k, probably best money for value 13600k, too close to the 14600k to make a difference.

 

There has been quite a jump in performance from 12th to 13th gen. I figure that 13th and 14th are pretty much the same. So my recommendation would be to get 13th gen, or 14th if it isn't much more expensive.

12th gen is not worth it.

 

Higher clock speeds and better DDR5 controller.

 

Get a 12700k/kf go with 8pcore if want 12gen.
Gamers nexus 12700kf test bench shows good scaling with faster gpus. Should ve a good price for 12700 nowadays

 

Get a 12700k/kf go with 8pcore if want 12gen.
Gamers nexus 12700kf test bench shows good scaling with faster gpus. Should ve a good price for 12700 nowadays

This, probably. 12700KF is currently $210 on USA Amazon. Dunno about Canada but the 12700K/F have been really affordable lately and if you don't care about E-cores there's little reason to pay $100 more for a 12900K. And 8P on 12700K vs 6P on 12600K could make a difference if OP is gonna be disabling E-cores and HT for gaming.

 

13th gen was a major improvement in IMC and headroom.

 

The IMC improvement is about as large as the clock speed improvement, roughly 10% unless you're hitting VCCSA limitations (in which case it's around 5%)

 

i have 13600KF running with DDR4-4533 in gear 1, my best 12th gen CPU 12900KF does maximum DDR4-4250 in gear 1, and all my other 12th gen 12400F, 12100F etc. around 4200. I would only recommend a 12600KF if its really cheap and if you dont OC every day its just fine and really fast too.
Personally i would recommend either a 13600KF or a 14700KF all the others are meh imo. Be careful they will run extremely hot.

 

OP, have a look yourself:

 

Funny thing is that my old 13900K at 5.7p/4.5e on a mid range Strix Z690-E MB consistently outperforms both of my 14900K's at the same exact clock speeds (and bios settings); one 14th gen is on a Z790 Apex Encore and one on a Z790 Dark Hero. I'm talking just the standard bench marks like CBr23/etc.

Usage wise? I can't tell any difference but the old 13900K on the beater Z690-E did significantly better in CBr23 and also ranks quite a bit higher than that XTU HwBOT ranking score thing. Have no idea what is up with that but about to put another "bench" rig together around the old 13900K chip and with the same Z690-E MB to get to the bottom of things lol.

And oddly, both the Apex (7800MHZ DDR5) and Dark Hero (6600mhz DDR5) are running faster DDR5 than the old 13th gen.

Sort of makes me want to snag a 13900KS just to test as well. Maybe 14th gen was not the way?

 

Alder Lake is very sensitive to cache size and SKU with >25MB is often slower than Zen 3 IPC

The true generational leap in performance starts with i7 12700 or i5 13600K.

A true 13th gen Raptor Lake fixed many of the deficiency in 12th gen by increasing the L2 P-Core caches from 1.25MB per core to 2MB.

The e-cores on true 13th gen Raptor Lake also got massively upgraded. The L2 cache size E-Core cluster got doubled from 2MB per cluster to 4MB per cluster. The ring downclocking issue when E-cores are present have also been fixed.

Either get a 12700 for really cheap ($190~$220) or used 13600K (often under $250)

 

I had a reply ready saying I was thinking of doing the 12700K like was mentioned by a couple posters earlier, and now you as well.

You make a good case with the cache... Are you sure it's the cache and not the clock speed that helps though? I guess if everyone's going off benches of stock chips, the only difference in both the base clock and max turbo is 200MHz, so with the same architecture in the same power envelope it would have to be the cache helping, except for that ~3% clock difference.

Do you know what it is specifically about Alder that extra cache hurts its performance? Is it like it wasn't designed for it and Intel re-released it with more cache as 13 and 14th gen to "stay relevant" (in the interim) which helped the 600s but not so much 700s and 900s, but the 700/900s performance impact was offset by the higher clocks? This is where my mind goes first, because I know Intel's lazy (from watching what they do lol). But I really do want to know the technical reason... if one has been ascertained (not given... Intel wouldn't tell us that. At least not on purpose lol. If they did, it'd be inadvertently from explaining something else, probably to enterprise clients lol. It can't just be the extra addresses to check + the extra cores?


So for single-threaded performance the 13600K would be better, and multi, 12700K would be better, right?

Or (stay with me here lol) does the 600-700MHz bump across all 6 of the 13600K's P-cores transform it into an almost 7 core 12700K with extra cache which then performs like a 7.5 core 12700K in multi-threaded. I'm stating that very loosely, of course... I will be overclocking whichever chip it is I end up getting, so if the 13600K, overclocked, can be >10% faster in single threaded tasks than the 12th gen at their overclocked speeds (for any reason ie. clock, cache, whatever), and the 13600K is closer to the 12700K than 12600K in multi-threaded performance (both overclocked, of couse), then I'd like to go with the 13600K. Is that the case?

 

I agree. The only reason one of my pcs are still equipped with a 12900k is because of rpcs3 and avx512, the other one which has a 13700k is way faster. If it weren't for the emulator performance I'd get another 13th probably. Those extra MHz as well as faster ring and ram really helps.
12900k has e-cores disabled ofc, but I run the 13700k HT off, so both have the same amount of threads. I run the 12900k at 5.3GHz with TVB, making it hover around 5.2 for the most part in games, or 5.1 if the game is demanding enough. The 13700k on the other hand I can run at 5.8 with the same TVB, meaning it mostly hovers around 5.7 etc.

TL-DR If you don't need avx512 support, there's no way in hell I'd recommend a 12th over a 13th. But if money is tight, you do you I guess.

 

Agreed.

 

For Gaming is a six core i5-12400f enough, if you OC them (easy) to 5.3 allcore (no bottlelnecks).
If you want save money and electricity, then the best choice ever is:
Asrock b760m pg riptide
i5-12400f
6800xt

Dont give to much money for gaming!
A strong 12400 can do allcore 5.6GHz

 

If your country would run on real energy and not some fairy tale utopia of zero emissions you would have very cheap energy… but we all know its manipulated.

 

Was out of the game for over a decade. Bought a 12900kf (call me a boomer if not wanting integrated graphics makes me old and dumb, I'll own it) new for like $270 I think it was? 5.3ghz all core, 4.0ghz e cores, 40 ring ratio, 1.3v and it's great. Still good fun to overclock.

Not that I'd know any better since I don't know what's possible these days, but maybe that's the point; don't get caught up too much in semantics, they're all great unless you're actually doing CPU work that requires a monster. In that case, I'd expect you'll find recommendations within that trade circle. But for overclocking, just send whatever you get and enjoy the hunt

 

12600K OC hits 13600K stock scores, BUT NOT WITH MICROCODE ****TING ON 12 GEN IN 2025.

 

12600K OC hits 13600K stock scores, BUT NOT WITH MICROCODE ****TING ON 12 GEN IN 2025.

Hitting 5.1 GHz on the P-cores? Definitely
Making up for the slight IPC lift from 2MB of L2 by cranking P-core clock speed to 5.2 GHz? Possible
Making up for the fact that the 12600K has only 4 E-cores as opposed to a 13600K's 8? Only if you decide to go phase-change and daily 5.7 GHz P-cores