With a TDP of 65 W, the Core i9-12900 consumes typical power levels for a modern PC. Intel's processor supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory with a dual-channel interface. For communication with other components in the computer, Core i9-12900 uses a PCI-Express Gen 5 connection. This processor features the UHD Graphics 770 integrated graphics solution. By most of the measures we've gathered here today, it's clear that the move to 10nm and Intel 7 Process has done wonders for Intel's competitiveness on the desktop in mainstream content creation on chips like the Core i9-12900K versus previous generations. But those wins come at a price. Here we can see that the effect of Windows 11 and Thread Director on the Intel Core i9-12900K's benchmark results. In some cases it was within the margin of error, but it did also correct for the issues we saw in HandBrake and POV-Ray during the Windows 10 test set. Moving to Windows 11 also adds a not-insignificant boost to the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere test runs (using the Puget Systems PugetBench test utilities), which showcases usage scenarios more along the lines of what Intel says Thread Director was made to handle. The culprit? All that P-core/E-core stuff we mentioned up above. During the course of our testing—which includes two runs of the popular title Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, one in 1080p and the other in 4K—we found the game would either crash halfway through the test run, or simply not boot in at all. We tried to test as many titles as we could ahead of this review, but time was already a factor with the benchmarking suite we had, let alone following behind Intel's late-stage answer about DRM compatibility with a trail of games that may or may not launch on the first go.

We'll be testing more Denuvo-protected titles in the coming weeks to get a more complete picture of how widespread the issue may be on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, but until then we would advise gamers to use this list to look for (possibly) unlaunchable titles. We tested the CPUs here on their respective platforms in Windows 10 using a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti card. As you can see from our gaming runs above, things are actually quite close between the two processors, despite 12th Gen's ostensible platform and newness advantage. Between the two, the difference falls nearly within the margin of error for all tests aside from 3DMark, and that score is one that more accurately reflects the system advantage as a whole, rather than just the performance of the chip on its own.

Intel® Thread Director

We also need to close out this section with a caveat: Intel's 12th Gen processors may not work on every single game, regardless of your operating system. During our testing, we found that our Assassin's Creed: Valhalla benchmark title wouldn't boot in. Only after consulting with Intel did we find out this is due to an issue with the DRM service Denuvo, which can confuse the two core types of 12th Gen as two separate systems as tasks shift in and out of the cores. You can read all about the issue, as well as look through a list of the affected titles and their timetables for an applied fix, in our full breakdown here.

The 12600K comes with six threaded P-cores that operate at 3.7 / 4.9 GHz and four E-cores that run at 2.8 / 3.6 GHz, for a total of 16 threads. That's paired with 20MB of L3 and 9.5MB of L2 cache. DDR5 supports the new XMP 3.0 standard that supports up to five memory profiles (SPDs) to define unique frequency, voltage, and latency parameters, and XMP 3.0 also lets you write and name two of the profiles. That means you can adjust the frequencies and all the timings and voltages to your liking, assign a profile name, and save the settings directly to the XMP profile stored in the SPD. Note: All of these test runs above were performed on their respective AMD and Intel testbeds under Windows 10.) First up, CPU tests. We ran the various CPUs below (including the Alder Lake chips) under Windows 10, on appropriate testbeds built fresh for this generation of CPUs. (We also reran some of the tests on the Core i9-12900K under Windows 11 to get Thread Director into the mix.) All models support: SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, FMA3, Speed Shift Technology (SST), Intel 64, XD bit (an NX bit implementation), Intel VT-x, Intel VT-d, Hyper-threading, Turbo Boost 3.0, AES-NI, Smart Cache, Thread Director, DL Boost, and GNA 3.0.

Secure Key

All models support up to DDR5-4800, LPDDR5-5200, DDR4-3200, or LPDDR4X-4266 memory, and 28 lanes of PCI Express 4.0/3.0. Intel's new chip puts a teraflop in your desktop. Here's what that means". PopSci. June 1, 2017 . Retrieved June 2, 2017. Alder Lake chips expose up to 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and an additional four lanes of PCIe 4.0 from the chip for M.2 storage.Those lanes are split into x16 or x8 for GPUs, or x4/x4 for storage slots. PCIe AICs (Add-In Cards) that support PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs (which don't exist yet) are already in the works.

While Intel's approach to big.LITTLE may be old hat for smartphones and mobile devices, there's a lot of "new" on tap here for the laptop and desktop scene. To compensate for that newness, Intel has worked closely with Microsoft this time around, joint-developing a new scheduler for Windows 11, Intel Thread Director.

Which means I don't give my money to those companies that do NOT: in this case, intel and nvidia. At least not until they prove they are atoning for all the s * they did up until now and start to do better. But if they never change and keep doing s *, then it's a no from me. It's as simple as that and I don't see a problem with this whatsoever. I may be in a minority thinking like this, but I know I'm not the only one. We test CPUs using a variety of synthetic benchmarks that offer proprietary scores, as well as real-world tests using consumer apps such as 7-Zip, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere (the latter two using Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop and Premiere extensions), multiplayer games like Rainbow Six: Siege, and AAA 3D games such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla. CPU-Centric Tests Cutress, Ian (October 28, 2019). "The Intel Core i9-9990XE Review: All 14 Cores at 5.0 GHz". AnandTech . Retrieved November 2, 2019.

The Core i9-12900K is Intel's first truly innovative high-end desktop CPU in years, showing great potential in its performance/efficiency mixed-core design and support for DDR5 memory. Just expect a high initial cost of adoption—and, perhaps, some PC-gaming growing pains. Meanwhile, the Photoshop and Premiere Pro benchmarks designed by Puget Systems involve many different task types—file retrieval, storage, image rendering, editing operations, and the like—that are run in sequence. This gives Thread Director "something to do," as it were, sidelining resources when the load of the run is lighter, and then redistributing them when it's time to render or edit. The result is a clear improvement in the overall score, and at face value, it suggests that you could save a reasonable amount of time working in an Adobe program on a Windows 11-based Intel Core i9-12900K machine, versus on an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, or on a Core i9-12900K running on Windows 10. In contrast, Alder Lake supports DDR4-3200 in Gear 1 mode for all processors. That can yield latency and performance advantages for the tried and true memory. Intel even provided several custom "workflow" benchmarks to its reviewer pool this time, designed to simulate those scenarios where the impact of its hybrid-architecture approach (and Thread Director's effect) would be most apparent.Overall, there's little contest to be shown here; overwhelmingly, the Intel Core i9-12900K, with its 16 available cores and 24 available threads, was able to beat out the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X's 32 threads in almost every content-creation task we threw its way. And that's without Thread Director in play.