Intel Alder Lake: An overview of the new generation of Intel APUs

Unlike the new Core i7 and Core i9 chips, the Core i5 processors are based on a smaller, simplified Alder Lake die. Because of this, our test Core i5-12600K only has 6 high-performance cores on board, supporting 12 logical threads and 4 additional power-efficient cores. The former can be accelerated to a frequency of 4.9 GHz, the ceiling of the latter is 3.6 GHz. The main rival of the novelty from the AMD camp is the 12- thread Ryzen 5 5600X processor based on the Zen 3 architecture.

In the synthetic CPU-Z and Cinebench tests, the new product from Intel is literally half a body away from the Ryzen 5 5600X - in most measurements, the advantage is 2-3%. In games, the Core i5-12600K and Ryzen 5 5600X show almost the same performance. The level of energy consumption also differs little. And this is great, because the older Core i9 from the Alder Lake family turned out to be not a little gluttonous. All things considered, the new Intel chip could cause a lot of excitement among gamers and people who need a fairly powerful and modern PC for work.

Prices will play a key role in this confrontation between Ryzen 5 and Core i5. Now in domestic retail for both processors they ask plus or minus the same $400. In favor of Ryzen is the fact that this processor can be used with motherboards on the good old socket AM4. To work with the Core i5-12600K, you will need a new motherboard on the LGA1700 socket. And they are expensive. As for the use of DDR5 memory, so far there is no particular use from it - most synthetic tests in comparison with DDR4 received an increase in performance by literally 2 - 3%. For a Core i5-level processor, this is now superfluous.

As you have already heard, the 12th generation of Intel Core processors has moved to a hybrid architecture in the spirit of mobile SoC systems, when processor cores are divided into 2 categories - fast and powerful main cores that do all the main work and less powerful energy-efficient auxiliary cores that answer for CPU speed when performing small background tasks. The test Intel Core i7-12700K has a total of 12 cores - 8 large + 4 auxiliary. The former can be overclocked up to 5 GHz, the latter up to 3.8 GHz. Compared to its predecessor, the Core i7-11700, the third-level cache has increased from 16 to 25 MB. Plus, support for the DDR5 standard and the PCI-E 5.0 interface has been added.

Looking at the price of the Core i7-12700K and its serious muscle mass, it becomes clear that its competitor is the hit AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, which proved to be equally successful in serious workstations and powerful gaming computers. After a bunch of measurements, we came to the same conclusion - the new Intel Core i7 Alder Lake processors outperform competing Ryzen Vermeer processors by an average of 8 - 18% both in single-core work, and in multi-threaded load with synthetic benchmarks, and in gaming tests. However, this comes at the cost of much higher power consumption. Recent tests of the flagship Core i9-12900K have shown that it is not worth it. It is only 11% faster than the Ryzen 9 5900X, but at the same time it consumes one and a half times more energy and heats up more.

But with the Core i7-12700K, the situation is much more interesting. Specifically, in Cinebench, Chromium, Blender multi-core tests, it outperforms the Ryzen 7 5800X by almost 20%. In single-core tests, the gap widens to 31%, making it a serious weapon for applications like Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. At the same time, its energy consumption is 24% higher than that of a competitor. Given all of the above, price tags in stores, as well as the availability of a new platform from Intel, will play a decisive role in this confrontation. In contrast, AMD has been using the same AM4 socket for years, making it easy for everyone to upgrade.

Core i9-12900K contains 8 high-performance cores and 8 power-efficient cores, however, the total number of threads reaches 24 instead of 32, since 8 auxiliary cores do not support Hyper-Threading technology. As for the frequency characteristics, the main cores can be overclocked up to 5.2 GHz, while the speed of the auxiliary ones is limited to 3.9 GHz. Plus, the Core i9-12900K is equipped with 30 MB L3 cache + 14 MB L2 cache, supports 16 PCI-E 5.0 bus lines. Or with four PCI-E 4.0 lanes. In addition to everything, the processor can work both with the usual DDR4 memory and with the new DDR5.

What did all these improvements give? In most synthetic benchmarks that focus on instantaneous multithreading, the Core i9-12900K is slightly ahead of the competing Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X chips. The excess is from 5 to 15%. Although there are reverse examples, when the Ryzen 9 5950X, on the contrary, goes ahead by the same 10 - 12%. In gaming benchmarks, Intel still managed to regain leadership - in FarCry 6, Forza Horizon and F1 2021, the Core i9-12900K processor always turns out to be 8-12% faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X competitor.

But here it is important to make two clarifications. First, AMD Vermeer processors were released a year ago, so the comparison is not entirely correct. The real fight for the championship belt is scheduled for early 2022, when the new Ryzen 6000 chips will be released with the new 3D V-Cache, which promises the same 15% increase in pure power. The second important nuance is that Intel CPUs pay for their acceleration with increased power consumption. If the power consumption of the system with the Ryzen 9 5950X was 221 watts, then the Core i9-12900K requires a little more than 350 watts. The final 130 W is not the most beautiful reverse side of the coin, which calls into question the victory of the Core i9-12900K. After all, it needs a more powerful power supply and a more serious cooling system.