Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors OUT, are more like Apple M1 and mobile chips

Intel has revealed the 12th Gen Alder Lake processors for desktop PCs, promising substantial performance boosts and better power efficiency.

Intel is promising significant performance boosts with the 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs. (Intel)

Intel's much hyped Alder Lake processors are now public! At the Intel Innovation event, Intel announced its 12th Gen Alder Lake processors for desktop PCs. There are three models at launch: Core i9-12900K, Core i7-12700K, and the Core i5-12600K. You will also find the “KF” versions of these chips that will come without an integrated GPU. The processors are based on the 10nm fabrication process.

Intel is promising significant performance boosts with the 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs. There are major changes underneath, which also includes the basic architecture of the processor. Intel has taken inspiration from ARM's big.LITTLE architecture for these desktop CPUs to have better power efficiency.

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors are out

The Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors have a combination of multiple P-cores for intensive tasks and E-cores for lighter tasks that don't need a lot of power. Hence, the 6-core i9-12900K has 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores for a total of 24 threads. The 10-core i5-12600K has 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores for a total of 16 threads.

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors (Intel)

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors (Intel)

The 12th Gen processors offer DDR5 memory for up to 4800MT/s, as well as PCIe 5.0 (up to 16 lanes), which offers up to 2X I/O throughput over PCIe 4.0, with up to an additional four lanes of PCIe 4.0 support. These also offer up to 30MB Intel Smart Cache (L3) and 14MB L2 cache for increased memory capacity with reduced latency. The 12th Gen processors will also require a new motherboard based on the new Intel Z690 chipset, whihc adds Wi-Fi 6E and USB 3.2 Gen 2X2 data transfers.

Intel has also worked with Microsoft to better optimize the performance of these processors on the new Windows 11 machines. “We're at the beginning of a new era for the PC led by the introduction of Windows 11,” said Panos Panay, executive vice president and chief product officer, Microsoft. “With Windows 11 and Intel's new Thread Director technology, users will see their PC performance reach new heights on the new 12th Gen Intel Core family of processors.”

Intel is also calling the Core i9-12900K the world's best gaming processor, promising up to 28 percent gains in popular gaming titles. Content creators are promised to see a 36 percent faster photo editing performance, 32 percent faster video editing performance, 37 percent faster 3D modelling and 100 percent faster multi-frame rendering.