Intel Core i9 12900K

Intel was never going to be without its performance crown for long, so with appropriate pomp and ceremony Jacob Ridley introduces the new CPU king.

- By Jacob Ridley

SPECS

Socket: Socket V LGA1700

Process: Intel 7 10nm

Cores (P+E): 8+8

Threads: 24 P-cache: 640KB L1, 10MB L2, 24MB L3

E-cache: 768KB L1, 4MB L2, 6MB L3

P-core: 3.2GHz (5.2GHz boost)

E-core: 2.4GHz (3.9GHz boost)

Unlocked: Yes GPU: UHD Graphics 770, 32 EU, 300MHz, OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 2.1

Memory max: 128GB, No ECC, two-channel

Memory speed: DDR5 4,800MT/s, DDR4 3,200MT/s

PCIe: v5 16-lanes, v4 4-lanes

Processor Base Power: 125W

Max. Turbo Power: 241W

Meet Alder Lake, Intel’s all-new 12th gen processor architecture. It’s a core part of what may well be the beginning of Intel’s push-back against a resurgent AMD, but more than that, it’s an extremely good chip. And that’s really what counts, right? This Core i9 12900K represents the very best in Intel’s desktop 12th Generation processors, and what that means is it houses the Alder Lake architecture in its most performant form.

Alder Lake is Intel’s first desktop processor to use the Intel 7 process node, which was previously referred to as Intel 10nm SuperFin. Smaller process means less power, less heat, more speed. The next notable change of the lot is the hybrid Core architecture. Intel is stuffing all of the K-series 12th Gen chips with two types of cores: Performance Cores (P-Cores) and Efficient Cores (E-Cores).