SiSoftware has a preview of Intel Core i9-12900K Alder Lake CPU
SiSoftware Sandra benchmark developer shares preliminary test results of the flagship Alder Lake SKU.
It is very important to note that this is not a review. The data is not sustained by any physical evidence such as a photo of the Intel Core CPU. Thus, the preview is not based on an independent test but rather collected from the results obtained by the software developer from engineers and reviewers who already have the processor and are actively testing it.
The data is also not attached to any platform, such as memory configurations, motherboard, and their BIOSes. We have learned with the early Rocket Lake-S (11th Gen Core) series reviews how important was the choice of the final BIOS. That said, the results may and probably are not representing the final state of the CPU.
In some tests the Core i9-12900K matches the i9-11900K CPU, sometimes offering lower performance. The charts are missing a lot of data because the tests were simply not performed by the people actually testing the CPU. Only three charts have been compiled, while the rest is clearly a leftover from the copy-paste of the previous reviews. It appears that this article was not meant to be posted at this moment, otherwise, it contains a lot of missing data and charts.
Despite those facts, the CPU shows strong AVX2 performance while it does not support AVX512 instructions. The Sandra software has been optimized for hybrid architectures and it will work even on Windows 10.
Intel Core i9-12900K in SiSoftware Sandra, Source: SiSoftware
Intel Core i9-12900K in SiSoftware Sandra, Source: SiSoftware
Intel Alder Lake-S will launch in November with the announcement expected at the Innovation event on October 27th. The series will introduce a new heterogeneous architecture featuring Golden Cove and Gracemon microarchitectures combined into a single desktop CPU. Alder Lake CPUs will support either DDR4-3200 or DDR5-4800 memory as well as the latest PCI Gen5 interface. The new CPUs will require new motherboards which are equipped with LGA1700 sockets.
The motherboards used in this preview are not named. However, parts of the data are likely based on the individual tests which were discovered just recently. With that in mind, some results may be coming from Windows 11 and Intel reference platform and the other tests from Windows 10 and ASRock Phantom Gaming 4 test.
| Specifications | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specifications | Intel Core i9-12900K 8C+8c/24T (ADL) | Intel Core i9-11900K 8C/16T (RKL) | AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12C/24T (Zen3) | Intel Core i9-10900K 10C/20T (CML) | Comments by Sisoftware |
| Arch(itecture) | Golden Cove + Gracemont / AlderLake | Cypress Cove / RocketLake | Zen3 / Vermeer | Comet Lake | The very latest arch |
| Cores (CU) / Threads (SP) | 8C+8c / 24T | 8C / 16T | 2M / 12C / 24T | 10C / 20T | 8 more LITTLE cores |
| Rated Speed (GHz) | 3.6 | 3.5 | 3.7 | 3.7 | Base clock is a bit higher |
| All/Single Turbo Speed (GHz) | 5.0 – 5.3 big / 3.7 – 3.9 LIT | 4.8 – 5.3 | 4.5 – 4.8 | 4.9 – 5.2 | Turbo is a bit lower |
| Power TDP/Turbo (W) | 125 – 228 | 125 – 228 | 105 – 135 | 125 – 155 | TDP is the same on paper. |
| L1D / L1I Caches | 8x 48kB/32kB + 8x 64kB/32kB | 8x 48kB 12-way / 8x 32kB 8-way | 12x 32kB 8-way / 12x 32kB 8-way | 10x 32kB 8-way / 10x 32kB 8-way | L1D is 50% larger. |
| L2 Caches | 8x 1.25MB + 2x 4MB (18MB) | 8x 512kB 16-way (4MB) | 12x 512kB 16-way (6MB) | 10x 256kB 16-way (2.5MB) | L2 has more than doubled per core |
| L3 Caches | 30MB 16-way | 16MB 16-way | 2x 16MB 16-way (32MB) | 13.75MB 11-way | L3 is almost 2x larger |
| Microcode (Firmware) | 090672-0F (early) | 06A701-40 | 8F7100-1009 | 06A505-C8 | Revisions just keep on coming. |
| Special Instruction Sets | VNNI/256, SHA, VAES/256 | AVX512, VNNI/512, SHA, VAES/512 | AVX2/FMA, SHA | AVX2/FMA | Losing AVX512 |
| SIMD Width / Units | 256-bit | 512-bit (1x FMA) | 256-bit | 256-bit | Less wide SIMD units |
| Price / RRP (USD) | ? | $539 | $549 | $499 | Rumoured same price |
Source: SiSoftware via @TUM_APISAK