Intel Core i9-12900K Review: Alder Lake Arrives

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I'm disappointed with 12th gen. I expected it to blow Zen3 away. Is it an upgrade to 7-10th gen owners? Yes, is it worth spending a shed load more money on an expensive motherboard and DDR5 over Zen3 setup for maybe 7% better performance in games? I'm not convinced.
That double power usage at max workload is a nail in the coffin to me.
 
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.
Hard to test dynamic games like that. My Ryzen 5900X at 4.7 performs good in Warzone, pretty much identical performance-wise as my 9900K at 5.2 GHz.

Both consumes around 100 watts in Warzone at those clockspeeds with temps at 50-60C / 22-24C ambient.

Why do people only look at full peaked watt usage? In most real world stuff, watt usage is nowhere near what you see in burn-in, obviously.
 
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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.
Yes, it's false extra performance gotten from increasing the power consumption. Not the best solution.
 
Yes, it's false extra performance gotten from increasing the power consumption. Not the best solution.
At stock Alder Lake beats Ryzen 5000 with ease too, and watt usage is almost similar.

Just because Ryzen 5000 can't really overclock, it does not mean you have to run Alder Lake at 5.2-5.4 GHz, just because it's possible. Most will run the chips at stock or just do 5 GHz on all cores.

My 5900X at 4.7 GHz can peak at 250 watts and 90C, do I care? Nah. In gaming the watt usage is ~100 watts and temps 50-60C.

Same is true for Intel chips. You never see peak watt usage and temps in regular workloads and gaming.

Even the i5-12600K beats Ryzen 5950X in gaming.

Expect big AMD pricecuts soon.
 
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.
For a guy with this fanboy discourse I had said that you had an Intel CPU, but no you have Ryzen. This shows how good Ryzen is.
 
1 you can't overclock the 5950x enough to make it match as really none of the tip end chips have enough oc headroom these days to make it worthwhile.

2. The fact you forget about temps is that's only when doing very CPU intensive productivity tasks if you care about gaming (especially at 4) then the power usage is the same or possibly even Lower than what AMD is doing leading to the same or lower temps.

Yep, Ryzen can't really overclock. They simply hit a brick wall (gen for gen). This has been the case since first gen Ryzen and still is with 5000 series.

Ryzen 1000 series maxed out at 3.9 GHz on average.
Ryzen 2000 4.1 GHz on average.
Ryzen 3000 4.3 GHz on average.
Ryzen 5000 4.5 GHz on average.

Intel chips can go very high in terms of clockspeeds. With good cooling and more juice = Higher clockspeeds and better perf, but watt usage goes up (obviously) Logic 101.

You will never see peak watt usage in regular workloads, especially not in gaming.

My 5900X at 4.7 GHz consumes 100 watts in gaming. So does my 9900K at 5.2 GHz. Both can peak at 250 watts in synthetics and burn-in and they both can hit 90C temps here. In gaming, they sit at 50-60C most of the time.

So i9-12900K might hit 300 watts or more at 5.3 GHz but the performance is insanely high at this speed and watt usage in gaming is probably also 100-125 watts..
 
Comments complaining about power consumption are just desperate fanboys clutching at straws. Intel have beaten AMD on both price and performance and it’s literally all they have left to argue. You don’t buy an unlocked K series flagship part if you give a dam about power consumption, or a Ryzen 5950x for that matter.

The difference in power costs will never equal the extra money you currently pay for a 5950x in most countries.

That's your opinion, but in my opinion, power consumption matters alot. I don't know how many countries you've been to, but in my country, power is costly. My intuition suggests also that, machines which do more for less, are well engineered.

Otherwise, how are mobile platforms supposed to look and perform, if power consumption keeps rising every generation?
 
For a guy with this fanboy discourse I had said that you had an Intel CPU, but no you have Ryzen. This shows how good Ryzen is.

I always have 2 systems. AMD and Intel. I support both companies. I want experience with both instead of reading about what other people think. I game on the best one and use the other for server/testing/benching/encoding and playing around with stuff.

However I don't use AMD GPU right now, 3080 Ti and 3070 in those systems.

My 9900K have been running 5.2 GHz since week one. Awesome chip.

I bought the 5900X almost 2½ year later, before this I used a Ryzen 1700X in that system. Ryzen 1000 and 2000 are terrible compared to 3000 and especially 5000 tho. Especially for gaming. I know that for a fact.

9900K beats Ryzen 1000, 2000 and 3000 with ease. Ryzen 5000 is hit or miss, in some games 9900K win, in others 5900X win, but they are close. Pretty good for an almost 3 year old chip with 2c/4t less, in my opinion. No regrets thats for sure.

I will upgrade my Intel platform when 13th or 14th gen is out.

I will upgrade my AMD platform when Zen 4 or 5 is out (not buying 1st gen of anything, meaning I will skip first AM5 release of chips just like I skip Alder Lake)

I only bought Ryzen 1700X because I got it cheap back then. But 1st gen of anything usually means bugs and issues.
 
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That's your opinion, but in my opinion, power consumption matters alot. I don't know how many countries you've been to, but in my country, power is costly. My intuition suggests also that, machines which do more for less, are well engineered.

Otherwise, how are mobile platforms supposed to look and perform, if power consumption keeps rising every generation?

Look at watt usage in regular workloads instead of burn-in and synthetic benching - then you will see that Alder Lake don't really use more than Ryzen.

Alder Lake watt usage goes up when you overclock, disable limiters and run the chips at peak performance. Same is true for Ryzen 5000. My 5900X peak at 250 watts at 4.7 GHz.

So why bring this up.
Only thing that matters is performance and price. Look at stock performance. This is what 99% of people will be doing. Alder Lake at stock beats Zen 3 at stock. Alder Lake with OC beats Zen 3 with OC. Alder Lake at stock pretty much beats Zen 3 with OC too.

i5-12600K beats Ryzen 5950X in gaming, a 300 dollar part beating a 800 dollar part.

Zen 3 might be 1 year old by now. But it took AMD at least 6 more months to actually deliver most of the higher-end chips and you won't see something truly new from AMD before Zen 4 at AM5 + DDR5 in late 2022 or early 2023.

I highly doubt adding 3D Cache will do much in terms of performance, we will see in 3 months or so. It will be a minor upgrade just like XT models for 3000 series.

Hybrid design is going to be awesome for mobile segment, more so than desktop.
 
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Thats a promotional price. The boards MSRP is $200. You have used a promotional price to come to the conclusion that the platform cost that AMD is cheaper, this is a little misleading. Also thats like the only retailer selling for that price in most countries. Come on dude.

Looking at prices in the UK Z690 DDR4 is slightly cheaper than X570 was at launch. You also get PCIe5 and Thunderbolt which the X570 board does not have.
 
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.
Ok well done I was not able to find it. Im not actually in the USA so my searches dont go through American retailers I just checked the major stores.

But my point stands, products should be reviewed at MSRP. You can always find deals. There are already deals in the UK for a bundle of Z690 + Alder Lake CPU + RAM for cheaper than if you buy it seperately. Should day one reviews around the world go on the best promotional price we can find rather than MSRP?

Come on dude.
 
Bringing up watt usage at synthetic loads and burn-in is grasping at straws. Intel wins on performance, and on value too.

AMD has no other option than to lower prices.

However DDR5 pricing and Z670 board price drags price up. DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 adds a premium. I'm sure prices will go down over time tho (and platform issues + software hybrid bugs will get sorted).

Just like back in the days where 3200/C14 was the only memory worth buyingfor Ryzen adding a 50-100% memory cost increase compared to an Intel platform which performed just fine with 3200/C16.

Alder Lake is a big step in the right direction and Raptor Lake will bring 20% improved IPC and use the Intel 4 node instead of Intel 7 and lower watt usage.

I expect Raptor Lake to be way better than Alder Lake and Raptor Lake will fight Zen 4 on AM5 with DDR5 too. A true Next gen battle.
 
Bringing up watt usage at synthetic loads and burn-in is grasping at straws. Intel wins on performance, and on value too.

AMD has no other option than to lower prices.

However DDR5 pricing and Z670 board price drags price up. DDR5 + PCIe 5.0 adds a premium. I'm sure prices will go down over time tho (and platform issues + software hybrid bugs will get sorted).

Just like back in the days where 3200/C14 was the only memory worth buyingfor Ryzen adding a 50-100% memory cost increase compared to an Intel platform which performed just fine with 3200/C16.

Alder Lake is a big step in the right direction and Raptor Lake will bring 20% improved IPC and use the Intel 4 node instead of Intel 7 and lower watt usage.

I expect Raptor Lake to be way better than Alder Lake and Raptor Lake will fight Zen 4 on AM5 with DDR5 too. A true Next gen battle.
Higher wattage may mean higher energy cost but the real point is that energy efficiency is an indication of a good architecture. It's my perception at least. Because efficiency dictates the peak/potential/sustained performance of a chip. It may mean an architectural advantage/maturity. As I see it, Nvidia pulled ahead of AMD with this mentality.

Why should AMD pull down the prices while the new intel platform costs way more, like you mentioned?

All in all, a healthy market relies on competition and I'm happy that intel released a new line of competition.

English is not my main language so please forgive me if I could not explain myself clearly.
 
Higher wattage may mean higher energy cost but the real point is that energy efficiency is an indication of a good architecture. It's my perception at least. Because efficiency dictates the peak/potential/sustained performance of a chip. It may mean an architectural advantage/maturity. As I see it, Nvidia pulled ahead of AMD with this mentality.

Why should AMD pull down the prices while the new intel platform costs way more, like you mentioned?

All in all, a healthy market relies on competition and I'm happy that intel released a new line of competition.

English is not my main language so please forgive me if I could not explain myself clearly.

i9-12900K is a flagship chip, no need for 99% of people since the i7-12700K performs pretty much identical (especially when you apply the same clockspeed) and 200 dollars is saved + watt usage is lowered by 50-75 watts too.

Intel has higher clockspeeds than AMD so watt usage will be slightly higher as a result. Ryzen watt usage goes up alot when you overclock.

The i5-12600K and i7-12700K are the chip to get for most people and price and watt usage is lower than the i9.

6900XT custom cards can peak at 650 watts so AMD watt usage can explode too, even tho they are using a better node in TSMC 7nm

Without TSMC, AMD would be in big trouble tho. TSMC 7nm is literally what made AMD relevant - Ryzen 1000 and 2000 at Global Foundries sucked in comparison.

Im just glad we have competition.
 
Lol, it’s only $100! I’d say that’s significant. It’s certainly better than the price increases we had from AMD last year.

Also I find your comment about second try amusing. AMD took three tries to beat Intels 2016 architecture and didn’t do it until 2020, only to have Intel take back the crown just 12 months later. Lol.

Anyway, let’s see how the 12600KF does. I feel the real bloodbath for Ryzen will be there. Beating an overpriced 16 core is one thing. But beating the 5600X on both price and performance would be a far more impressive and useful to consumers feat.
it took AMD one try with Zen to beat everything Intel had in multicore and power efficiency, yes the single core advantage took up until Zen 3 that's correct. But the most important metric, multicore and performance per watt, they basically had it on their first shoot, with Zen 2 completely dominating everything besides single core. I know we are talking desktop here, but still each company's most important CPU's - The Xeons and EPYC's, still to this day, intel has nothing in servers that comes close to AMD's offerings.
 
If you want a CPU now wait for Black Friday - prices sure to drop
If you have a pretty good system - I'd personally wait till zen4 or the next intel gen.
I think on the better fabs - next gen will blow these current ones away - same for next gen GPUs
50% & 100% faster respt.

Plus if you want the best of the best - RTX 4090 and 7900 are meant to be power hogs - so again worth waiting to see motherboard , PSU - to get .
I think there may be new PSU solutions depending on cables needed for those GPUs
 
I already posted on Steve's video review on HUB, but like some others here said, the sum of it is:

+7% at 1080p vs Zen3 is really not impressive at all.

Alder Lake comes one year later, it's much more expensive (the entire platform, CPU + big water cooler, expensive MB and DDR5), consumes more power even though it has 8 big + 8 little cores vs Zen3's 16 big cores (so that's laughable), it's hotter, it needs Win11 and DDR5 (though it malfunctions sometimes) and this is the result? Yeah, not impressed...

Zen 3D will have no problem achieving at least parity in performance, if not beat it, while also being on a cheaper platform and more efficient.

And then comes Zen4 with DDR5, when it's more matured... that one also will come before Raptor Lake.

Since you can see the future, can you tell us when will ETH drop to bellow $2000?
Thanks.

edit: This is not just question for you, but for all other clairvoyant people in this thread that seem to know everything about future of Zen 3 and 3d cache and whatnot.
 
it took AMD one try with Zen to beat everything Intel had in multicore and power efficiency, yes the single core advantage took up until Zen 3 that's correct. But the most important metric, multicore and performance per watt, they basically had it on their first shoot, with Zen 2 completely dominating everything besides single core. I know we are talking desktop here, but still each company's most important CPU's - The Xeons and EPYC's, still to this day, intel has nothing in servers that comes close to AMD's offerings.
Lmao, no you are incorrect there have been 4 generations of Ryzen. Funnily enough their higher core count parts did best Intels parts with lower cores (although not always). But single core performance is what matters. It took AMD 4 attempts to beat Intel here.

Also it’s laughable that you think Intel have nothing in servers! Have you recently suffered a head injury? Intel chips are in far more servers than AMD chips are. In fact Intels enterprise business is literally recording record profits. They are extremely competitive in this area. Intels server chips don’t perform as fast as Epyc chips but that’s not even half the story. Most people who buy server or data Center solutions buy the whole package, installation, maintenance and support etc. Intel kills all in this area. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.
 
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That's your opinion, but in my opinion, power consumption matters alot. I don't know how many countries you've been to, but in my country, power is costly. My intuition suggests also that, machines which do more for less, are well engineered.

Otherwise, how are mobile platforms supposed to look and perform, if power consumption keeps rising every generation?
Ok you may care. But I can assure you the market will not. People who buy these products do not care about power consumption. And in most cases, it’s just desperate AMD fanboys clutching at straws.
 
Great Job by intel.

But for gaming this is not the improvement that I was expecting, and doesn't really lineup with performance gains everywhere else.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Zen3 refresh with 3D cache to equal or exceed in game performance. Considering they are so close now.

AMD pushing Zen4 so far back IMO was a mistake. I'm not holding my breath on much of a all core clock speed bump from Zen3 with the Zen3 refresh. I'm sure we will see a slight bump, and better performance per watt with the new node.

For general performance Intel has the crown for the next year +, when it comes to the desktop space.

Intel is still a poor choice for performance per watt in the data center. This is a huge money making area. But that won't stop the likes of Dell from keeping most of their servers on Intel Platforms, and we all love Dell Servers. They do offer AMD though. In non data center installs its hard to get product likes customers are custom too to switch over.

I can't wait to see reviews on the i5 chip. That may end up being a better option price to performance wise on a gaming machine.

I don't expect much overclock headroom on these intel chips.
 
Even i5-12600K beats all Ryzen 5000 chips in gaming tests so I expect a price drop across the board on all AMD parts.
The only reason Ryzen 5000 had such a massive price hike was because it was finally competitive and mostly superior in games. If Ryzen 5000 was priced like Ryzen 2000/3000 series these Alder lake parts would have a much harder time.
 
The only reason Ryzen 5000 had such a massive price hike was because it was finally competitive and mostly superior in games. If Ryzen 5000 was priced like Ryzen 2000/3000 series these Alder lake parts would have a much harder time.
This is accurate but I wouldn't call a $50 + increase to MSRP a massive price hike. What retailer choose to price them by the time you were able to purchase at retail is out side of AMD's control.
 
This is accurate but I wouldn't call a $50 + increase to MSRP a massive price hike. What retailer choose to price them by the time you were able to purchase at retail is out side of AMD's control.
Dude, stop lying, It was more than $50. The Ryzen 5000 parts were $50 more than the XT variants of the 3000 series. For most of 2020 the R5 3600 sold for $150. The 5600X released at the end of 2020 for $300. The 3700X was available for less than $300 and then the 5800X released for $450.
 
Dude, stop lying, It was more than $50. The Ryzen 5000 parts were $50 more than the XT variants of the 3000 series. For most of 2020 the R5 3600 sold for $150. The 5600X released at the end of 2020 for $300. The 3700X was available for less than $300 and then the 5800X released for $450.
There is no need to lie when the information is all over the internet.

Zen 2 MSRP

  • AMD Ryzen 9 3950X: $749 (about £570, AU$1,070)
  • AMD Ryzen 9 3900X: $499 (about £390, AU$720)
  • AMD Ryzen 7 3800X: $399 (about £310, AU$580)
  • AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: $329 (about £260, AU$480)
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600X: $249 (about £200, AU$360)
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600: $199 (about £160, AU$290)

Zen 3 MSRP

  • AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: $799 (around £620, AU$1,100)
  • AMD Ryzen 9 5900X: $549 (around £420, AU$760)
  • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X: $449 (around £350, AU$630)
  • AMD Ryzen 5 5600X: $299 (around £230, AU$420)

 
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.
You do realize Gelsinger had nothing to do with Alder Lake? OK, he perhaps said "put clock so high that CPU burns" but that's about it. Probably not even that much.
Lmao, no you are incorrect there have been 4 generations of Ryzen. Funnily enough their higher core count parts did best Intels parts with lower cores (although not always). But single core performance is what matters. It took AMD 4 attempts to beat Intel here.
List those "4 generations" of Ryzen? Do APU's count too? Remember that Ryzen 2000-series was using exactly same architecture Ryzen 1000-series did.
Also it’s laughable that you think Intel have nothing in servers! Have you recently suffered a head injury? Intel chips are in far more servers than AMD chips are. In fact Intels enterprise business is literally recording record profits. They are extremely competitive in this area. Intels server chips don’t perform as fast as Epyc chips but that’s not even half the story. Most people who buy server or data Center solutions buy the whole package, installation, maintenance and support etc. Intel kills all in this area. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.
Those morons who buy servers first refuse buy AMD Opteron CPU's despite being superior against Intel offerings and few years later complain about how expensive Intel CPU's are. Let's just admit it: server buyers generally are *****s. And yes, there are always exceptions.
Ok you may care. But I can assure you the market will not. People who buy these products do not care about power consumption. And in most cases, it’s just desperate AMD fanboys clutching at straws.
And then worst thing about FX-9590 was power consumption according Intel fanboys...
 
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