typical TDP ?

[jasonnet2024]

I'm a fairly new cpubenchmark user. I have been visiting the pages for a variety of CPU for a few weeks and the other day noticed something perplexing. It left me wondering if I had been using cpubenchmark.net incorrectly and how "Typical TDP" is determined there.

The comparison of CPU's that was particularly interesting was the i5-12500t vs i5-12400t on cpubenchmark.net. One page lists the typical TDP as 35w whereas the other lists it as 74w. Looking at Intel pages it seems to me that these CPU's should have identical TDP's.

How should I be interpreting the TDP numbers on cpubenchmark.net?

[David (PassMark)]

TDP values don't mean much anymore. They are no better than a rough indication of the CPU class (Laptop, desktop, high end workstation, etc..)

Years ago the TDP value could be relied upon as a wattage value that the CPU would hit under load. Nowadays the claimed value is often massively exceeded and depends on the cooling solution.

Also the values doesn't tell you anything about the wattage under low load or idle and for most machines this is what their typical state is.

Finally it has become possible for machine vendors to tweak the BIOS and set lower of higher limits for a CPU model. e.g. lower the limit on very thin and light laptops.