Intel Alder Lake-S Core i3-12100 4C/8T beats reigning US$120 champion AMD Ryzen 3 3300X with significantly higher performance and lower emissions

Intel recently launched the Alder Lake-S series of desktop processors. While the focus was generally on the top-rung chips such as the Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, and Core i5-12600K along with their KF variants, the low-end Core i3 variants were not made available so far. However, Hong Kong-based publication XFastest managed to get their hands on a Core i3-12100 Alder Lake processor and compared its performance to that of the current leader in this segment, the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X and also the Ryzen 3 3100.

The Core i3-12100 is a non-hybrid 4C/8T part that can apparently offer a 4.3 GHz boost on the single core with a PL1 of 60 W and a PL2 of 77 W. The CPU was tested on an ASRock Z690 Steel Legend motherboard and paired with 16 GB DDR4-3600 RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The AMD system was based on the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate. 

According to XFastest's results, the Core i3-12100 takes a good lead over the Ryzen 3 3100 and the Ryzen 3 3300X in various benchmarks. In PCMark, the Core i3-12100 is about 5-20% faster than the Ryzen 3 3300X while being about 13-25% faster than the Ryzen 3 3100. In Cinebench R23, the Core i3-12100 once again scores a 26% and 40% better performance over the Ryzen 3 3300X and the Ryzen 3 3100, respectively while also correspondingly being 28% and 44% faster in single-core.

In PugetBench for Premiere Pro, the Core i3-12100 is more than 80% faster than the Ryzen 3 3300X in Export and about 30% faster in Playback indicating that this is a very good option for editors on a budget.

When it comes to 3DMark and gaming, the differences between the Alder Lake and Ryzen processors seem to narrow down somewhat. That is until DLSS is added to the mix in Cyberpunk 2077 during which the Intel CPU has a decent 15% advantage of the Ryzen 3 3300X. This difference reduces to ~8.5% in CS: GO at 4K High, though a 1080p test would have been more appropriate since 4K is more limited by the GPU than the CPU.

The Core i3-12100 also seems to have an advantage when it comes to temperature and power consumption over its AMD rivals. In AIDA64 CPU, the Core i3-12100 is shown to consume just 38 W of power at 43 °C compared to the 50 W / 50 °C requirement of the Ryzen 3 3300X, though the AIDA64 FPU test shows the AMD chips to be slightly more economical. 

Overall, it seems like Intel may have a very efficient entry-level chip with the Core i3-12100 in the ~US$130 price range. The company is expected to reveal the rest of the Alder Lake lineup at CES 2022 in January, so hopefully we will get to see more broader testing and final numbers soon.

More information and comparative charts can be found in the Source link below.

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