Intel's flagship Core i9-12900K costs $589, 16C/24T at up to 5.2GHz

Can you believe the day is here? Intel has launched its next-gen Alder Lake CPU architecture, the largest shift in Intel CPU architecture in over 10 years -- a shift into hybrid architecture, and a shift away from the problematic 14nm process node and onto Intel 7.

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Intel's new 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" range of CPUs is led by the flagship Core i9-12900K processor, which packs 16 cores and 24 threads of CPU power under its hood. We have 19% IPC improvement over the current-gen 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake" CPUs, new hybrid-based Performance and Efficiency cores, DDR5 memory support, PCIe 5.0 support, and Intel Smart Cache architecture which shares its L3 cache with the p and e cores.

If we go from pure gaming benchmarks on the new Intel Core i9-12900K, which Intel has compared against its Core i9-11900K and AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor -- the new Alder Lake flagship Core i9-12900K beats everything across the board in a decent spread of games including Far Cry 6, F1 2021, Crysis: Remastered, and Troy: A Total War Saga.

• Read more: Intel's next-gen Alder Lake architecture: everything you need to know
• Read more: ASUS teases Z690 mobos: Intel Alder Lake CPUs, DDR5, PCIe 5.0 tech
• Read more: ASUS ROG Strix Z690-I mini-ITX mobo: ready for next-gen SFF gaming PCs
• Read more: Intel confirms Alder Lake CPUs, Z690 platform launches November 4

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One of the bigger areas of improvement is in the power consumption side of things, with MT performance on the new Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake" CPU beating the pants off of the Intel Core i9-11900K. We're looking at PAR performance on the Core i9-12900K using just 65W, while the Core i9-11900K uses 250W.

That is crazy, and shows two things: the shift away from the 14nm process node to Intel's new 'Intel 7' node which is equivalent to TSMC's 7nm process node that it has had for a few years now. But when power is unleashed, so too is the performance -- with 125W pushing 30% more performance, and 241W delivering +50% more performance... and yet it still uses less power than the previous-gen Core i9-11900K processor.

Intel 12th Gen Core CPUs

• Intel Core i9-12900K: 16C/24T @ up to 5.2GHz -- $589
• Intel Core i7-12900KF: 16C/24T @ up to 5.2GHz -- $564 (no iGPU)
• Intel Core i7-12700K: 12C/20T @ up to 5.0GHz -- $409
• Intel Core i7-12700KF: 12C/20T @ up to 5.0GHz -- $384 (no iGPU)
• Intel Core i5-12600K: 10C/16T @ up to 4.9GHz -- $289
• Intel Core i5-12600K: 10C/16T @ up to 4.9GHz -- 264 (no iGPU)