Intel Core i9-12900K Review: Alder Lake Arrives

[ltkAlpha]

Well, nice to see some competition... I'd like to see you benchmark some NON-GPU INTENSIVE games so that we can actually see which CPU is better... most of the games provided were "ties" but only because they maxed out the 6900 used (still think you need to spring for a 3090 - but I understand that's really expensive).

Steve does have access to, probably multiple, 3090s. As he's commented on multiple occasions on Hardware Unboxed, he's using the 6900 XT as it has the highest (non-upscaled) FPS at 1080p on average, which, for his selection of games, it does (or did):
https://www.techspot.com/review/2160-amd-radeon-6900-xt/

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

Well...AMD has nothing to worry about with Alder Lake. Very modest lead in *some* benchmarks. Very expensive new platform. Horrendous power draw when pushed, which means more noise...expensive cooling etc.
Nothing there to convince anyone to change from an AMD setup. New builds will opt for AMD's much cheaper platform and sensible power habits, with almost the same performance.

Underwhelming...despite all of Gelsingers marketing BS.

 

[Nintenboy01]

Anandtech says it's like 8% faster in int and 16% faster in flops IPC than Zen 3, so Zen 4 will easily surpass it. Also they were touting 15-25%+ gainz with V-Cache Zen 3

 

[Squid Surprise]

Not going to disagree ... either platform from my current will be a large leap. the new hotness though just doesn't live up to the hype we were fed

I'd be interested to actually see this "hotness" in action... Other than price, I don't really see an issue with simply buying a nice cooler for it... it's not like the 5950 OCs very well either...

Steve does have access to, probably multiple, 3090s. As he's commented on a multiple occasions on Hardware Unboxed, he's using the 6900 XT as it has the highest (non-upscaled) FPS at 1080p on average, which, for his selection of games, it does (or did):
https://www.techspot.com/review/2160-amd-radeon-6900-xt/

Yes... but on games that are NOT GPU limited... I want to see which CPU runs a game like Fortnite (just an example of a less intensive game where high FPS is wanted) best...

My comment about a 3090 is mostly for when they run 4k benchmarks... it is clearly the better choice for those.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Took me 20 seconds to find that searching the internet on newegg.com

So a promotional price makes the X570 cheaper? At MSRP the prices for X570 are very similar to Z690 DDR4 boards but the Z690 has a higher spec and more features. And guess what, you do get promotional prices on Intel motherboards too!

 

[Lionvibez]

So a promotional price makes the X570 cheaper? At MSRP the prices for X570 are very similar to Z690 DDR4 boards but the Z690 has a higher spec and more features. And guess what, you do get promotional prices on Intel motherboards too!

You said you couldn't find it and I did. If I'm buying right now that is the price I'm paying. You are free to continue to disagree with the author of the article.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Nice and informative article Steve, I have been waiting for this article.
Although I think Intel is on the right track. I am going to wait until AMDs next offerings appear. I am interested in AMDs V Cache and what it brings performance wise.

If these chips were priced around the 5900x or less, maybe, but being in the middle for the performance, I think I will wait.

Maybe the next round from Intel has a better showing. And with GPUs the way they are, I may just wait until around 2024 to do any upgrading.

 

[mistyrain]

Is it me, or it brings memories how AMD had no other options but to consume more power and be hot to catch up Duron, Athlon anybody?

 

[mbk34]

I mean I will laugh so hard if Ryzen 6000 with its 3D cache (or whatever marketing buzzword AMD is giving it) performs a little bit faster but uses more power. These companies always ramp up voltages and clocks when they don’t have a new architecture to jump to.

The new 3D cache is just a way of fitting way more cache memory on the chip by stacking it on top of itself - so the 3D name is fairly descriptive. There's been reports on Techspot already about how having extra cache improves performance on all processors. The Intel chips here have 30MB worth while the new 3D cache from AMD will up that to 192MB! Power usage won't change much by just adding more cache.

In all honesty, I don't care who wins the race. I currently have an old Intel K CPU but was interested in upgrading to the 5800X but couldn't see the point unless I paid silly money for a new GPU. That just means I'll stick with my current system for a year or two. It would be nice if this competition drove prices down in general.

 

[Sausagemeat]

The new 3D cache is just a way of fitting way more cache memory on the chip by stacking it on top of itself - so the 3D name is fairly descriptive. There's been reports on Techspot already about how having extra cache improves performance on all processors. The Intel chips here have 30MB worth while the new 3D cache from AMD will up that to 192MB! Power usage won't change much by just adding more cache.

In all honesty, I don't care who wins the race. I currently have an old Intel K CPU but was interested in upgrading to the 5800X but couldn't see the point unless I paid silly money for a new GPU. That just means I'll stick with my current system for a year or two. It would be nice if this competition drove prices down in general.

Oh completely agree, before Alder lake I probably would have bought a 5600X. And if something better releases from AMD going forward then I would buy that. In the past I’ve always found prices vary so whatever is good that you can get a deal on tbh.

However, “would” is the operative word. I can’t get a GPU for reasonable money and until that happens it doesn’t matter how many layers of cache it has or the score a CPU gets in a benchmark, I won’t be buying one until I can get a GPU.

 

[Pastuch]

Techspot once again doesn't test with any Battle Royale games! I don't understand. Warzone is one of the most CPU demanding and popular games on the market.

 

[grvalderrama]

Not to be disrespectful, but although an impressive improvement over last Intel's Gen of cpus, I think 90 score it's just a little too much. I'd go 85...

 

[Nobina]

It's exceptional in a couple of results, in most is nothing to write home about. Power consumption is terrible, cooling is terrible, DDR5 RAM is still early. I'm more interested in 12600K.

 

[Steve]

I want to call Steves price of the Asus TUF Gaming X570 Gaming Plus being $160. I have this board and I paid $200 for it one year ago. I cant find it today for less than $195. Steve claims $160 for this board and then claims that AMDs platform is $20-$40 cheaper which is a bit unfair imo. These are small differences so maybe there was an offer on the TUF board that has now expired. From what I can see Z690 boards dont cost much more at all then X570 boards generally but they do have more features like PCIe5, DDR5 and Thunderbolt, making them far better value. In fact if you opt for a DDR4 board they are coming in a little cheaper than X570 but still has PCIe5 and thunderbolt.

The cost of the cooler is the real difference although I dont think the 5950X is going to be happy on a cheap cooler.

I'd like to reverse call out: https://www.newegg.com/asus-tuf-gam... Gaming-_-13-119-197-_-Product&quicklink=true

 

[Arbie]

So top Alder Lake is 14% faster in Cinebench than a 5950X - while consuming 100%+ more power.

That's an estimate of CPU vs CPU, after subtracting out maybe 100W idle. So: 120W over idle for Ryzen; 260W over idle for Alder Lake.

That means Alder Lake is umm... a joke, technically. And of use only in corner cases where power is completely irrelevant. This is not a few watts more; it's ghastly.

To put it another way: if you can justify this space-heater, you can justify anything. Which of course Intel fanboys have necessarily become adept at since 2017.

 

[McMurdeR]

Great stuff, inovation and competition are very much in evidence. I'd still think CPU prices are too high though, and I'm not keen on the direction power consumption is going. It's like 2006 all over again.

 

[Arbie]

I'm not keen on the direction power consumption is going.

Well, power consumption is not headed up - with AMD. At least performance per watt isn't. That's the metric I respect.

 

[hahahanoobs]

I would hope anyone buying flagships are buying them because it best suits them.

In terms of core counts, Intel server CPUs don't automatically lose to AMD CPUs simply because of core count. Intel has a software engineer team that is twice the total staff at AMD that optimize software to take the best advantage of their hardware. Think Apple software and Apple M1 hardware.

Also, if cache is king in games, why is a 20MB 12600K beating Ryzen in games while being 30% faster than the 5600X in productivity?

I wouldn't dare spend an extra $100 on a mobo just because it's a 12900K. You don't need high end to get stock perf. I would put that $100 towards a good DDR5 RAM kit if anything.

Also, no one picks low power over higher perf if they want or need it.

 

[lesovers]

Your Cinebench R23 is strange, usually, Ryzen 5950x Gets 27500-28000 Scores. Check other reviews

Yes my 5950x scores 28333 in Cinebench R23 with 4.4GHz all cores and about 185 watts CPU package power.

 

[Michael7]

When you consider the power draw things are not looking that good for Intel's Alder Lake. First of all I don't see big market for Core i9 12900K. This thing is a giant toaster and cooling it and keeping it quiet will be a challenge and require careful parts selection. So it will be a niche product. Purely marketing play. Core i7 12700K and especially Core i512600K on the other hand will be pretty successful products but caveats apply. Right now paying premium for DDR5 memory makes no sense given negligible real world usage performance difference. And comparing Ryzen 5600X (65W part) to 12600K is pointless. It should be compared to Ryzen 5800X based on power draw and core count. And AMD will have to revise their prices now.

 

[grvalderrama]

Techspot once again doesn't test with any Battle Royale games! I don't understand. Warzone is one of the most CPU demanding and popular games on the market.

I think they don't because it's almost impossible to recreate the same scenario testing a battle Royale and the sample needs to be as similar as possible since they triple check the results in order to do these reviews.

 

[Dimitrios]

Correct me if I'm wrong didn't INTEL admit this new architecture won't play old games for now right? Last I heard they are going to contact developers to help them out.

 

[Yenega]

Correct me if I'm wrong didn't INTEL admit this new architecture won't play old games for now right? Last I heard they are going to contact developers to help them out.

Haha yes it will. There was some DRM issues which are fixed or will be, because of hybrid approach (DRM is often removed anyway, after some time).

 

[Yenega]

Is it me, or it brings memories how AMD had no other options but to consume more power and be hot to catch up Duron, Athlon anybody?

Duron was a turd.
With crapdozer and pileofshit AMD never did catch up even with way higher clockspeeds and watt usage - I love those names

I'm glad that AMD is not completely trash anymore, we need 2 players. However I am sure that Intel will be 100% back in a few years. Pat Gelsinger is turning the company around fast. Bob Swan was sleeping on the job.

I can't wait to see if AMD is still competitive on performance when Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake comes out because Alder Lake is just the first taste of things to come.

Alder Lake is first time AMD is NOT competiting against Intel 14nm chips, never forget that Ryzen 5000 has been fighting 14nm parts and still Intel had almost identical performance in most workloads especially gaming and emulation.

Ryzen 5000 when overclocked to 4.7-4.8 on all cores also uses a ton more power. My 5900X at 4.7 can peak at 250 watts so I am not really sure why people bring watt usage up. Intel still have OC headroom but most AMD chips does not, this is why watt usage CAN go up alot on Intel chips still. Running at 5.2-5.4 GHz on all cores is obviously alot higher than 4.5-4.7 GHz on all cores.

Even i5-12600K beats all Ryzen 5000 chips in gaming tests so I expect a price drop across the board on all AMD parts.

AMD had a good run tho. Now they will probably go back to lower prices. Prices exploded with Ryzen 5000 launch and AMD did not release Non-X parts. So I am glad Intel is finally back.

 

[Yenega]

Quite a dissappointment. with all the buzz before release I would expect that the i5 12600k would beat the AMD best cpus... so the Apple like wow efect from Intel does not come and will not come anytime soon if this is the best card played we might need to wait few more years for something technologically competitive with AMD and Apple silicone

The i5-12600K does beat Ryzen 5950X in gaming, for 300 dollars.
It downright destroys the 5600X, which cost 310 dollars.

Expect big price cuts on Ryzen 5000 soon.
AMD had a good run tho.