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GPUs and CPUs · Intel Core

Intel Core 12th gen

8owners with an opinion
62%of verdicts positive
3/0positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and sound; criticized for battery.

What people wrote

Likes it
I have two LARGE Xeon systems of this era that I used to use when I was heavily involved with Kubernetes and needed to build out a home lab. One is 2x Xeon w/ 256 GB of ram, and one is 1x Xeon w/ 512GB of ram. Both are slow as dogs, and both of them take up at least 150+ watts with only one power supply. My 12th gen Intel Nuc is so, so much faster and efficient. I'm recycling the Xeon systems.
Likes it
> Even something as simple as alt-tabbing lagged for seconds on an overpowered machine. This may not be KDE's fault; I tracked these kinds of issues down to some bad tunable defaults. I came up with this: ---- cat /etc/sysctl.d/50-usb-responsiveness.conf # # Attempt to keep large USB transfers from locking the system (kswapd0) # vm.swappiness = 1 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5 vm.dirty_ratio = 5 vm.extfrag_threshold = 1000 vm.compaction_proactiveness = 0 vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 200 # FIXME? 64K too big? vm.page-cluster = 16 ---- I have fast everything, NVMe SSD onboard and others in Thunderbolt 4 enclosures and 32GB of RAM on my 12th-Gen i7 with 20 (6+14) cores; there should have been no reason for any stuttering and/or Alt-Tab slowness while doing large file copies and finally got fed up, did some research and experimentation and use the above and it's not happened since. YMMV, but it's worth a try. (Oh, and on-topic, I've had to try Wayland (vs. X11) on my KDE desktop 'cause it seems to handle switching monitors when I go from home to work better; jury's still out if I'm keeping it)
Doesn’t like it
> search bar that can finally find files properly like back in Windows 7 I don’t think that quality is ever coming back. No matter what, they’re going to be connecting to bing for the top results / ads, so you’ll always have a bunch of latency and will never get back to Win 7 levels of local only performance. It’s sad and the AI, which is mostly useless based on my experience, is going to suck up even more CPU cycles and add even more latency. For me, it takes 5 seconds for the start search to respond on first use. My 12th gen i5 with NVMe storage and Win 11 literally runs worse than my 4th gen i7 with a first gen SSD and Win 7. Microsoft has usurped a decade of computing gains and spent them on ads and tracking. Don’t expect anything that benefits the user in the near future.
Doesn’t like it
I went Intel 12th gen and I have buyer’s remorse. My next upgrade I’ll go back to AMD. Every 12th gen I’ve touched has little stuttering issues. Last week I was playing around with laptops at the store with 13th gen and they also get random stuttering issues too. A lot of people have said to me they don’t get any issues but going into a store and opening up YouTube with a 4k video and moving the mouse it stops and then continues. The AMD laptops don’t do this at all.
Likes it
I'm using the Intel 12th gen and I don't hear noises even when compiling Rust projects. The only time I hear noises is when some Electron web app burns my CPU for no reason. I also get 7-8 hours of work (that is compiling code during these hours) and something like 12 hours without compilation work. I'm using Archlinux with Sway and enable/disable GPU as needed. It's not as perfect as Apple's new M2 but it's close to competition.
Doesn’t like it
Battery life is worse than in my 10 year old laptop. Battery life in suspend is exceptionally bad. I haven't ever used anything THAT bad. You can read more about this in my blog https://127001.me/post/ten-years-of-thinkpadding/#_the_ugly_...
Likes it
I personally find the value prop of my 2020 and 2021 model laptops, and my 2022 model desktop, to be rather good. 2020: Razer Book 13: 4 core, 8 threads, AVX-512, Thunderbolt 4. Weird gaming company, yes, but also competent thermal design and the machine works perfectly. This CPU when cooled properly is going to be at least 200% faster than that old Sandy Bridge CPU in the article, and that CPU has a much higher TDP so cooling an 11th gen properly is a piece of cake comparatively. 2021: MacBook Pro 14, M1 Pro CPU. The CPU that scared the pants off Intel. Say no more. 2022: 12th gen Intel Core. The empire strikes back. More than doubles the single-threaded performance of 11th gen Core in many cases. And these machines are cheaper than ever. Competition works.
Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it
Exactly. Not just 1 model but you can compare identical ThinkPad models as well and AMD versions have significantly better battery life. Not only that, even last year's identical models with 11th Gen Intel CPUs have better battery life than their new 12th Gen models. So Intel's power efficiency actually decreased compared to last year, even though they introduced the hybrid architecture. In some instances Alder Lake CPUs slightly edge out Apple's CPUs in performance, but with a terrible battery life (~4 hours of real world battery life vs >10 hours on Apple laptops) and noisy fans. AMD on the other hand seems to have focused on getting a good balance this year. 6800U models have significant performance improvements over the last gen while improving the battery life as well. I am thinking of buying a new laptop this year, but I am waiting for the AMD models. For anyone interested, these are the models I am waiting for: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkBook/ThinkBook_13s_G4_... https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X13_Gen_3... Both have much better battery life than their Intel counterparts: ThinkBook 13s Gen 4 (AMD): 14 hours ThinkBook 13s Gen 4 (Intel): 10.9 hours ThinkPaf X13 Gen 3 (AMD): 15.68 hours ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 (Intel): 11.8 hours These numbers are usually lower in real life, but they are comparable with each other.