We need to emphasize the word alleged here, but we know some ES samples of the Core i9-12900K "Alder Lake-S" processors have been floating around in China, and some numbers have been posted on social media.
One of the most remarkable posts is that the i9-12900K outperforms Cinebench's Ryzen 9 5950X flagship, the most popular multi-threaded benchmark of AMD. The i9-12900K is reportedly 810 points in a single-threaded test with AIO liquid cooling and 11600 points in multi-threaded ratio at stock rates. Honestly, we doubt this to be true as that would be insane, but one can only hope.
While the 12900K seems to outperform its AMD counterpart in this benchmark, it comes with higher power consumption. For example, more specifications have surfaced over the past week, showing that Alder Lake K-skus can have a PL2 (boost) of more than 200 watts (228 W).
The core i9-12900K is composed of 16 core components, 8 Golden Cove and 8 Gracemont core components. There is 30MB L3 cache available in the Alder Lake flagship SKU. The Core i9-12900K offers an unlocked overclocking multiplier. It's a K-series SKU.
The flagship will (not surprisingly) be called Core i9-12900K in the 12th Gen Core lineup series, and will succeed the i9-11900K with the maximum configuration of 8+8 (P+E), unlocked multipliers, the highest cache, and the fastest clock speed. The P (performance) core ("Golden Cove" core) is clocked at 5.30 GHz and the all-core core is clocked at 5.00 GHz / 8 cores. Its gracemont core (energy efficient) is clocked at 3.90 GHz (1 to 4 cores boost) with the all-core boot of 3.70 GHz / 8 cores. The silicon's total L3 cache is 30 MB. The TDP is 125 W for the i9-12900K (PL1) and 228 W PL2 for this product. Intel is introducing numerous new overclocking capabilities, including memory gear ratios.
The 12th gen core i7 is configured as 8+4 core (P+E), has somewhat lower clock rates than the i9 core, and some boost functions may be missing. The Core i7-12700K is the highest geared Core i7. The highest P-core boost frequency is 5.00 GHz and the all-core booster is 4.70 GHz, while the top boost for E-cores is 3.80 GHz with an all-core of 3.60. The chip contains 25 MB of L3 and is similar to the i9-12900K for PL1 and PL2 values.
Up to 6+4 core (P+E) cores are supplied for the Core i5 series. The unlocked Core i5-12600K operates the P-cores to 4.90 GHz with an all Core of up to 4.50 GHz, while the E-cores are up to 3.60 GHz with an entire Core of up to 3.40 GHz. 20 MB of L3 cache, and the same 125 W PL1 and 228 W PL2 values as the other two unlocked parts.
We placed the leaked numbers in a chart, have a peek below.
Alleged Intel Core i9-12900K beats AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with Cinebench R20 (bigtime)
