A mysterious chip running DOTA 2 at 120 frames per second seems to be the first glimpse of Alder Lake-S , AKA Intel’s 12th-generation desktop CPUs. As spotted in the CapFrameX database by German tech site ComputerBase , the CPU identifies itself as Alder Lake, but is running at just 2.2GHz. As this is unverified information it is best taken with a pinch of salt.

The DOTA 2 benchmark took place on April 5, and has taken this long to work its way out of the system. And while the game, a MOBA from 2013 favoured by esports types, may not be the most stressful test of the rig - which was also equipped with an RTX 3080 and 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM - the presence of an engineering sample in a real-world situation is a good indication that Intel is on course to release its 12th-gen chips later this year.

Alder Lake , you’ll no doubt recall, marks a change for Intel, in that it will be the firm's first 10nm chip design, made up of a mix of high-performance cores built on the Golden Cove architecture that succeeds the 11th-gen Core chips’ Cypress Cove, and power-saving cores utilising Gracemont cores that have more in common with Atom processors. This is the same trick phone manufacturers have been using for a while now, and is also behind the choice of Firestorm and Icestorm cores in the Apple M1 SOC .

The new chip also brings a next-generation hardware scheduler with it, which will require an update to Windows to use, along with support for DDR5, PCIE 5.0, and a new LGA 1700 socket that’s 7.5mm longer than existing Intel CPU sockets, and will require new cooling solutions as a result.