I think comparing a 2012 MacBook to a current generation, even a 2015 should be taken with a grain of salt. Like LogicalApex said above, Intel has crammed so much into these modern processors, from the graphics (which is 5x faster than the HD 4000 of 2012), to the PCH, south bridge controllers, USB controllers, memory controllers, going from LPDDR3 to DDR4, increase in resistor counts, etc. Just for ***** and giggles, a colleague of mine has a surface book 2 i5-7300U with 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD. I ran Cinebench on it. It maxed out its turbo boost of 3.5gHz, but couldn't sustain it for more than 15 seconds before throttling back to 2.6. Heat was around 90C, and watts was around 30 while sustaining the 3.5gHz Turbo. Now this is a fanless system, but if you read Microsoft forums, or watch Surface Book 2 videos, there are all kinds of throttling issues with them. I use Surface Books as comparisons cause I feel they offer the best of the Windows laptops (other the MateBook Pro X is really nice for a laptop only, however even though they stole the Mac design, they should have stole the design with 2 fans, not the single fan which goes full speed as soon as its pushed and sounds like a hair dryer).
Right now typing this, my system is idling at 43C, and Im not limiting it with Volta. Its plugged in. Under Cinebench its goes to around 93-96C. Inside the house is 73F or 22C. Now if I load the photos app and start looking at photos, the temps increase into the 50's, and same can be said if watching youtube.
I think I'm more amazed out how well the 15" cools compared to the 13" 2018. For all whats added in the 15" compared to the 13", along with the faster memory, dGPU, extra 2 cores, the additional 4 hyper threaded cores, the faster processor and the higher Turbo clocks, I think they did a pretty good job. Here's a picture of my previous 13" 2018 i5 and my 1st 2018 15" 2.6gHz (both had the supplement update 1 installed).
