Intel’s 12th Generation Alder Lake processor product line continues to surpass AMD’s Ryzen products. The latest leaked Core i9-12900KS 5.5GHz benchmark shows that it scores better than the Ryzen 9 5950X in single-threaded and multi-threaded performance tests.
While the Intel Core i9-12900KS won’t be available until next month, it’s already on the market and sold by various retailers. Some lucky buyers have already gotten their chips ahead of time, and in addition to some sharing out-of-box photos and videos, others have posted benchmarks. Reddit user Seby9123 is one such person who successfully got the chip and released the first benchmark for retail units.
Intel Core i9-12900KS 5.5 GHz CPU specifications
The Intel Core i9-12900KS will be the flagship chip in the 12th generation Alder Lake desktop CPU lineup. It will have 8 Golden Cove cores and 8 Gracemont cores for a total of 16 cores (8+8) and 24 threads (16+8).
P-cores (Golden Cove) will run at up to 5.5GHz with 1-2 active cores and 5.2GHz with all cores active, while E-cores (Gracemont) will run at 3.90GHz at 1-4 cores, running up to 3.7GHz when all cores are loaded. The CPU will have 30MB of L3 cache.
The main change is that to accommodate the higher frequencies, Intel has improved the base TDP by 25 watts over the Core i9-12900K. As a result, the 12900KS has a basic TDP of 150 watts, and the maximum turbo power class is increased by 19 watts to 260 watts (compared to 241 watts).
Test platform
In benchmarks, users used the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX motherboard and the 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5-6200 (CL36) memory module. The thermal solution was not told, and it looked like the Intel Core i9-12900KS CPU was tested in the Cinebench R23 benchmark for raw and overclocked conditions.
Test results
The CPU has some interesting clock speeds, with 2 P-Cores running at 5.5GHz, the rest running at 5.2GHz, and E-Cores running at 4.0GHz. With these clocks, the chip scored 2162 points in single-core tests and 29164 points in multi-core tests.
However, because this CPU can be overclocked and doesn’t have any limitations like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, it is pushed to 5.4 GHz in all P-Cores and 4.2 GHz in all E-Cores. The CPU’s V-Core voltage is up to 1.418V, which is on the high side, and the CPU does get very hot, close to 100C, while consuming 319W of crazy power, but it was able to break the score of 30K on the Cinebench R23.
In addition, the user only enabled P-Core and overclocked it to 5.3GHz at a voltage of 1.341V. This CPU scored 20510 in the multithreaded benchmark with a maximum power consumption of 187W. For comparison, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X scores around 21,000 points, which is in the case of 12 cores and 24 threads, while the P-Core has only 8 cores and 16 threads.
As you can see from the benchmarks, the Intel Core i9-12900KS is not only 6% faster than the 12900K, but also overwhelms the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with a lead of up to 14%. In terms of single-threaded performance, Intel chips end up being about 35% faster. This performance is undoubtedly very eye-catching. Even when the 5800X3D rolls out, it will help Intel maintain its position in gaming.
