Intel Core i9 12900K P-State Governor Performance On Linux

92 different benchmarks/tests were run on the Core i9 12900K system across the four CPU frequency scaling driver/governor choices. To no real surprise, using the performance governor yielded the best performance -- P-State performance in particular but even when in passive mode with intel_cpufreq, the performance governor speed there tended to be neck-and-neck.

Of these 92 diverse benchmarks, when taking the geometric mean of all those raw benchmark results using P-State performance boosted the performance by about 7.6%. It's a healthy gain and roughly in line with what we have seen out of past Intel generations of CPUs or AMD CPUs with CPUFreq Performance... Those concerned of changes with Alder Lake due to the hybrid architecture, the Core i9 12900K still delivered the best raw performance with P-State performance.

Switching from the default P-State powersave to P-State performance though boosted the CPU package power consumption on average by about 5% -- so still slightly ahead for better power efficiency given the geometric mean. The peak power consumption recorded on the Core i9 12900K was consistent across the different governors at 228 Watts.

That 5% average increased power consumption from P-State powersave to P-State performance translated to roughly a 2 degree Celsius higher average CPU temperature across the entire span of benchmarking. The Core i9 12900K was being cooled by a dual fan Noctua NH-U9S LGA-1700 adapted heatsink fan.

Those wishing to go through all the 92 benchmarks in full and the per-test thermal/power data can find the huge data set over on this OpenBenchmarking.org result page.