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Windows 11 gives Intel Core i9-12900K exclusive boost in benchmark comparison but the Alder Lake chip still lags behind the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

Windows 11 comes with support for Alder Lake's hybrid architecture. (Image source: Microsoft/Intel - edited)
Windows 11 comes with support for Alder Lake's hybrid architecture. (Image source: Microsoft/Intel - edited)
The Intel Core i9-12900K has been discovered being tested on Windows 11 where it produced up to double-digit performance gains over the same tests on Windows 10. However, despite the exclusive boost from Microsoft, the 16-core Alder Lake chip still lagged behind an older rival in the form of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X.

More synthetic benchmarks featuring the Intel Core i9-12900K have turned up, and while some of them are difficult to find credible, this particular believable leak offers up some good news and bad news for Team Blue. Once again, data-miner APISAK has been digging out information from SiSoftware and has come up with performance results for the 16-core (8C+8c) Alder Lake chip when running on Windows 11. We already reported about the rollercoaster performance the i9-12900K made against the i9-11900K and Ryzen 9 5900X on this particular benchmark, but it seems Microsoft has delivered on its promise to give Alder Lake a boost on Windows 11.

In the Vector SIMD Native tests, the i9-12900K produces scores that are generally around 10% greater on Windows 11 than Windows 10, with one test being quite a bit lower, one being a bit higher, and one with negligible difference. These are the apparent performance gains for each test:

SIMD test Windows 10 Windows 11 Difference
Quad Float 50.94 53.07 +4.18%
Double Float 979.66 1,097.06 +11.98%
Single Float 1,706.60 1,958.74 +14.77%
Quad Int 119.56 131.13 +9.68%
Long 626.95 691.90 +10.36%
Integer 1,691.01 1,691.13 +0.007%

It is a markedly better performance for the Intel Core i9-12900K and shows just how important Microsoft’s new operating system will be when the time comes for Intel to promote its Alder Lake (ADL) processors. However, while some benchmarks have been showing the i9-12900K blowing all competitors out of the water, including the Zen 3 family from AMD, there is a different story found here. Despite the gains made in Windows 11 over Windows 10, the 12th Gen Intel CPU still cannot overtake the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X in the majority of the individual tests:

SIMD test Intel Core i9-12900K
(Windows 11)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
(Windows 10)
Performance
difference
Quad Float 53.07 49.47 +7.28% for ADL
Double Float 1,097.06 1,190 +8.47% for Zen 3
Single Float 1,958.74 2,000 +2.11% for Zen 3
Quad Int 131.13 157 +19.73% for Zen 3
Long 691.90 805 +16.35% for Zen 3
Integer 1,691.13 2,000 +18.26% for Zen 3

So while the good news for Intel is that Alder Lake can seemingly produce higher scores on Windows 11 thanks to the operating system's optimizations for the hybrid chip family's big.LITTLE core architecture, the bad news is that the 12th Gen flagship processor cannot overtake the enthusiast-level Zen 3 part from AMD, which was released in November 2020.

Buy the Intel Core i7-11700K on Amazon

Alder Lake on Win 10 and Win 11. (Image source: SiSoftware via @TUM_APISAK)
Alder Lake on Win 10 and Win 11. (Image source: SiSoftware via @TUM_APISAK)

Source(s)

@TUM_APISAK (from SiSoftware)

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2021 10 > Windows 11 gives Intel Core i9-12900K exclusive boost in benchmark comparison but the Alder Lake chip still lags behind the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
Daniel R Deakin, 2021-10- 9 (Update: 2021-10- 9)