Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K Review: Retaking the Gaming Crown

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Alder vs Zen, Fight!

Our Verdict

The Intel Core i9-12900K is the fastest gaming processor on the planet while the Core i5-12600K offers unprecedented gaming performance at its price point.

Whip in superior pricing and excellent performance in all other types of workloads, and both Alder Lake processors handily beat competing AMD models.

For

• Exceptional gaming performance
  
• Competitive pricing
  
• PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory
  
• Leading single-threaded performance
  
• Multi-threaded performance
  
• Overclockable
  

Against

• No bundled cooler
  
• Requires LGA1700 motherboard
  
• Platform pricing
  

Intel's $589 Alder Lake Core i9-12900K and $289 Core i5-12600K come to market with a powerful combination of competitive pricing and impressive performance, taking the lead in gaming over comparable Ryzen 5000 models and assuring a position on our list of Best CPUs for gaming. Intel's newest chips are also incredibly competitive in productivity work, ranking among the top chips on our CPU benchmark hierarchy, and provide the biggest gains in overclocking performance that we've seen in the last several chip generations. Combine that with Alder Lake's new next-gen connectivity technologies that bring big increases in throughput via DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 interfaces, outstripping AMD's venerable AM4 platform, and Intel has a winner on its hands.

With up to 16 cores and 24 threads on the flagship Core i9-12900K, Intel has finally achieved a comparable core count to AMD's halo mainstream PC chips that have held the core count lead since the first 16-core 32-thread Ryzen 9 landed back in 2019. In fact, the $589 Core i9-12900K even beats the ultra-impressive $799 Ryzen 9 5950X in many threaded applications that have become Ryzen's uncontested stomping grounds, like Cinebench.

That's enabled by a first for desktop PCs — Intel's new hybrid x86 design represents the company's most disruptive architectural shift in a decade. Alder Lake combines big and fast Performance cores (P-cores) with a smattering of small and powerful Efficiency cores (E-cores) that chew through background processes with surprising speed. The Golden Cove architecture powers the 'big' P-cores while the 'little' E-cores come with the Gracemont architecture, with both providing much-needed IPC improvements to Intel's core designs.

Intel etches those cores on its 'Intel 7' process, finally ending the misery of the 14nm node after six long years that ultimately cost the company its performance lead over AMD in desktop PCs. We previously knew this 'Intel 7' manufacturing tech as 10nm Enhanced SuperFin, but Intel recently renamed its process nodes to match industry nomenclature. Technically, this is the second generation of Intel's 10nm process, but it's a first for desktop PCs.
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