Purported Alder Lake Core i9-12900KS could hit 5 GHz on all cores, but 5 percent clockspeed boost may not be enough to tackle AMD's 3D V-Cache Ryzens

Intel is working on a performance-tuned version of its flagship Alder Lake part, the Core i9-12900K, according to sources close to Videocardz. The upcoming CPU, the Core i9-12900KS, is reportedly a pre-binned variant of the 12900K, guaranteed to run 200 MHz faster, out of the box. This would mean that the 12900KS should achieve a 5 GHz clock across all performance cores, without any additional tuning required. 

In real world terms, we're talking about a fairly marginal increase to performance here. Standard Core i9-12900K SKUs hit 4.8 GHz on all performance cores, and can manage 5.2 GHz in lightly threaded workloads. The binned i9-12900KS will likely tack on an extra 5 percent.

Performance in gaming and other applications doesn't tend to scale linearly with clockspeed, so we could be talking about a 2-3 percent boost to real world performance at best.

In contrast, AMD's planning a more substantial update to Zen 3 hardware, courtesy of its 3D V-Cache technology. Vertical stacking will allow AMD to add 256 MB to 512 MB of additional Infinity Cache to its Zen 3 chips, with an expected performance uplift of around 15 percent.

Even now, the standard Core i9-12900K is only around 9 percent ahead of the Ryzen 9 5900X in gaming workloads. 3D V-Cache could push Zen 3 past Alder Lake, and it remains to be seen whether the 12900KS' minor clock speed bump will be enough to make a difference. 

Check out the Core i9-12900K here on Amazon.