Uncategorized

Intel’s 12th Gen Core i5-1240P Beats the Core i7-1260P and i7-1270P with a Slightly Higher Base Clock

Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake-P processors were launched with promises of delivering desktop-grade performance in a mobile form factor with half the power draw. However, a report published by NBC shows that these chips are much worse than rival AMD’s Ryzen 6000 APUs in terms of energy efficiency. In fact, the Core i5-1240P turns out to be faster than both the Core i7-1260P as well as the i7-1270P in Lenovo’s Yoga notebooks. As you can imagine, this is bizarre as the latter is clearly a higher-end SKU and yet ends up being slower in some workloads.

In Cinebench R15 multi-threaded, the Core i5-1240P performs very similarly to the i7-1260P, managing to thoroughly beat it through the course of this benchmark. Meanwhile, the Core i7-1270P which is supposed to be the fastest SKU here ends up being the slowest. So, what gives?

SKUCPUPower Limit 2Power Limit 1
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga G7Core i7-1270P64 Watts28 Watts
Lenovo Yoga 9i 14Core i7-1260P64 Watts38 Watts
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro 14 G7Core i5-1240P64 Watts50 Watts
Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 13Core i5-1240P40 Watts20 Watts

This has mainly to do with power efficiency, an area where Intel’s 12th Gen processors aren’t very competitive. They perform rather horribly in the sub-55W segments. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga G7 which features the Core i7-1270P has a base TDP of 28W and a peak boost figure of 64W. The same is true for the Core i7-1260P and the i5-1240P powering the Yoga 9i 14 and the Yoga Slim 7 Pro 14 G7, respectively. Except, the vendor has raised the base power to 38W on the former and 50W on the latter for whatever reason.

This means the 1240P and the 1260P can run at higher clocks across all the cores in heavily threaded workloads for longer durations, something the Core i7-1270P can’t on account of the lower base TDP. Therefore explains the poor performance. It’s hard to see who’s to blame here. Intel, for making mobile processors that are watt suckers or Lenovo for revving up the base TDP to make their budget offerings look more attractive. Either way, it’s a non-sensical practice that can mislead a lot of buyers.

Areej Syed

Processors, PC gaming, and the past. I have been writing about computer hardware for over seven years with more than 5000 published articles. Started off during engineering college and haven't stopped since. Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Divinity, Torment, Baldur's Gate and so much more... Contact: areejs12@hardwaretimes.com.
Back to top button