Seesawing Intel Core i9-12900K sample with disabled AVX-512 teeters against the i9-11900K in preview benchmarks and fails to overwhelm the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

SiSoftware has seemingly accidentally published a preview of the upcoming Intel Core i9-12900K, and while the post has now been removed it has already been shared in screenshots by data-miners such as APISAK. The preview does mention that the Sandra benchmark has been updated to make full use of Alder Lake’s hybrid architecture, even when running on Windows 10. It’s also worth noting that the data for the i9-12900K is obviously taken from tests involving engineering samples, so more can be expected from the final product. Last but not least, the SiSoftware preview fairly mentions that Alder Lake is focused more on efficiency than just raw performance unlike Rocket Lake, which was all about hitting big benchmark numbers.

A total of six comparison bar charts are offered up in the preview (see images below), with the entrants consisting of the Intel Core i9-10900K (Comet Lake 10C/20T), i9-11900K (Rocket Lake 8C/16T), i9-12900K (Alder Lake 8C + 8c/24T), and the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (Vermeer Zen 3 12C/24T). In many of the tests the Alder Lake sample produces a fluctuating performance against the previous-generation Rocket Lake chip. As mentioned above, the AVX-512 instruction set is disabled for the i9-12900K but this does not prevent it from holding up well in some native performance benchmarks. For instance, the Sandra preview notes that the 12th Gen engineering sample can tie with the i9-11900K and even perform at faster rates in some tests, especially when utilizing the AVX2 expansion.

However, it’s also clear to see that the i9-12900K could not convincingly outperform the older Zen 3 part from AMD. In addition, the Ryzen 9 5900X reports a lower Power TDP/Turbo than the Alder Lake chip: 105-135 W vs. 125-228 W. Being unable to outpace the Vermeer processor may not necessarily be a bad thing though, as it’s worth noting once more that Alder Lake’s hybrid combination of high-performance Golden Cove cores and efficient Gracemont cores is geared more towards efficiency. But it also means that for price/performance fans, AMD’s future Zen 4 “Raphael” chips are looking even more potent than ever. The final i9-12900K product should manage better performance than what is shown in this sample data, and there are the benefits of both DDR5 memory support and PCIe 5.0 to look forward to with the Alder Lake series, with prices expected to be in a similar region to those of Rocket Lake.

Buy the Intel Core i9-11900K on Amazon