That awkward moment when the Core i5-1240P is outperforming most Core i7-1260P laptops currently available

Laptops with Alder Lake-P CPUs have been in the market for a few months now and we've collected a healthy number of samples thus far. In particular, the Core i7-1260P has become the dominant option while the Core i5-1240P is much less common. Our charts below compare all the Core i7-1260P laptops we've tested so far (13 as of this writing) to one particular Core i5-1240P laptop of interest.

The data is clear: The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro and its Core i5-1240P is outperforming the average Core i7-1260P laptop in our database by about 25 percent in multi-threaded workloads. The Lenovo system is able to maintain a lead even after accounting for any throttling. All our numbers were recorded from retail units and not from developer or pre-release models.

Lenovo's secret isn't surprising. In order to achieve such results, the CPU in the Yoga model runs warmer and at higher power draw levels than on the current crop of Core i7-1260P laptops. As an example, the Core i5-1240P in the Yoga hovers between 40 W to 60 W and 80 C to 100 C compared to only 28 W and 82 C on the Core i7-1260P-equipped MSI Summit E14 Flip.

The Core i7-1260P is still worth considering for those who value single-thread and integrated graphics performance. In these scenarios, the Core i5-1240P is just a few percentage points slower in single-threaded operations while being between 7 to 30 percent slower in graphics performance. After all, Core i5 CPUs carry the Iris Xe 80 EUs while Core i7 CPUs carry the Iris Xe 96 EUs.

We would love to see future laptops with the Core i7-1260P start tapping deeper into the potential of the processor. We know the Intel CPU can absolutely perform faster when not neutered by OEMs in order to reach specific temperature or chassis thinness limits.