Intel Alder Lake-S: Core i9-12900K to be released in November for 590 US dollars

Intel’s Alder Lake-S CPU range of the Core i-12000 series will already start at the beginning of November. The Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K CPUs and the F-series sibling models with a disabled graphics unit will kick things off.

Intel Core i9-12900K: The battle for the gaming throne

Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has presented the Alder Lake CPUs in the course of Intel Innovation. With the top model Core i9-12900K, the manufacturer is once again reaching for the gaming throne and wants to offer impressive performance.

Intel relies on a combination of Golden Cove and efficient Gracemont cores in all models of the new series. In the case of the i9 CPUs, one relies on eight performance and efficiency cores each and offers Hyper-Threading with 24 threads in the Core i9-12900K and Core i9-12900KF.

Stronger gradation within the Intel Alder Lake S CPUs

Compared to the 11000 series, Intel again relies on a stronger gradation between the i9, i7 and i5 in the new Alder Lake-S processors. While the top model comes with a total of 16 cores, the Core i7-12700K and Core i7-12700KF rely on eight performance and only four efficiency cores. In the case of the Core i5-12600K and Core i5-12600KF, six performance and four efficiency cores are used.

Not much changes in comparison to the Rocket Lake-S series in terms of the installed graphics unit. Intel also offers 32 execution units and an Xe architecture here. However, the clock rates change due to the lower manufacturing method from 14 nm to 10 nm. Furthermore, the GPU base now listens to the name UHD Graphics 770, instead of UHD Graphics 750 as before.

Higher Gaming Performance

Intel promises an instructions-per-cycle (IPC) increase of 19 percent on a single performance core compared to the previous-generation Rocket Lake and greatly increased multithreading performance thanks to the efficiency cores.

Thanks to the revamped CPU cores, more Level 3 cache memory and faster RAM, this should increase gaming performance by 13 to 28 percent compared to the Core i9-11900K, according to Intel’s own benchmarks.

However, Intel does not reveal how exactly it performed these tests, which is why the results should rather be taken with a grain of salt. According to the comparison between Core i9-12900K and AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, Windows 11 Pro version 22000.9 was used, which was released in July.

Thus, the benchmarks were still performed without the recently released L3 cache fix, which could significantly improve the performance of AMD’s current CPUs. This bug negatively impacted the Ryzen CPUs’ performance in games by up to 15 percent.

LGA1700 platform and high power consumption

The 12th-generation Core desktop processors rely on the LGA 1700 socket, but Intel may have bought its benchmark results with increased power consumption. Intel’s Alder Lake S no longer has a Thermal Design Power (TDP), but the i9-12900K still competed with its maximum TDP budget of 241 watts in Turbo Boost during gaming benchmarks, while AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X was only allowed to boost to the maximum TDP of 142 watts for a short time.

Instead of the TDP, Intel now talks about the Processor Base Power, which is 125 watts. However, Intel does not care if motherboard manufacturers simply ignore this base value and permanently use the increased Powerlimit 2 as Maximum Turbo Power.

So, roughly speaking, this means that a significantly increased gaming performance is possible with the Intel Alder Lake CPUs if you can live with the enormous power consumption.

Prices and availability

The Intel Alder Lake-S processors will launch on November 04, 2021, with the top-of-the-line Core i9-12900K coming in at an MSRP of $589. The Core i7-12700K is priced at $409, while the Core i5-12600K is priced at $289.