The 12th generation of Core processors for desktops (Alder Lake-S) was announced in late October and officially launched on Thursday (4). With this, the first independent analyses began to appear. They indicate that Intel’s new models can beat AMD Ryzen Zen 3 chips in performance, but at a high price: too much power consumption.
The tests were mostly done with the Core i9-12900K, the most powerful processor in the Alder Lake-S family. The model is equipped with 16 cores and 24 threads.
But what draws more attention in this configuration is its hybrid proposal: eight of the cores are of the Performance type (P) and, therefore, assume the processes in the foreground that are more demanding; the others are Efficient (E) cores, which are left with processes that are in the background or are less complex.
This approach is primarily aimed at helping the computer save energy, after all, the simplest tasks are performed by the less consuming cores. This does not imply performance swell, however. On the contrary.
In The Verge’s tests, the Core i9-12900K surpassed its predecessor, the Core i9-11900K (11th generation), in all benchmarks. In Geekbench 5, for example, the most recent model was 12% higher in single-threaded tasks; in multi-threaded tasks, the Core i9-12900K had 137% more performance.
Compared to AMD Ryzen 9 5950X — a 16-core chip (all performance), 32 threads, and Zen 3 architecture —, Ars Technica points out that Intel’s chip got the better of multi-threaded cinebench R20 (10,323 points vs. 10,085) and Geekbench 5 (18,241 vs. 15,102), losing only on Passmark (39,232 vs. 47,835).
Ars Technica also rated the Core i5-12600K, a ten-core processor (6P + 4E) and 16 threads. Compared to the Ryzen 5 5600X, Intel’s chip beat AMD’s in all tests: Cinebench R20 (6,540 points vs. 4,390), Geekbench 5 (12,710 vs. 8,186) and Passmark (29,755 vs. 22,191).
But in energy efficiency…
If on the one hand alder lake-s chips showed very interesting results in performance, on the other hand, they disappointed in energy efficiency. The expectation was that such a hybrid approach would improve this aspect, but tests showed AMD chips as unbeatable in this parameter.
In an Ars Technica test made with the Cinebench R20, the Core i9-12900K reached a consumption peak of 307 W vs. 204 W of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X.
Another test, this one done on the Gamers Nexus channel with Blender Benchmark, shows intel’s model surpassing 240 W while the AMD chip was only 120 W.
These are stark differences. But it’s important to consider that Alder Lake-S chips are aimed at high-performance PCs —they’re an option for players, especially. So the performance factor has more weight here.
The energy efficiency factor should not be overlooked, of course, but will be more relevant in 12th generation notebook chips, which are expected to be officially announced by early 2022.