Intel Finds Its Mojo With New Processors

Intel is back in the game taking a lead with its new 12^th Gen Alder Lake processors. This after a troubling hiatus with older manufacturing technology losing ground to AMD’s aggressive Ryzen 9 5000 X 7 nanometer series that had become the PC enthusiast’s favourite go to processor.

But things change as these two chip giants slug it out back and forth. I have been using my newly built evaluation 11^th Gen Intel Core i9 – 12900K for a month noticing clear improvements and then some. In summary, Intel takes back the crown for gaming enthusiasts and creators with faster processing, lower running temperatures, lower power consumption and impressive benchmarking results. All this and cheaper than its competitors.

The previous Intel 11^th Gen Core i9-11900K Tiger Lake which launched last spring was fast – and still is – in terms of a single core gaming screaming to 5.3GHz. It basically came pre-clocked to run most applications at 4,800 GHz along with higher-than-average temperatures and power consumption. When approaching maximum performance, the cooling fans roared away.  But it lacked multi-tasking power with far fewer cores leaving AMD’s multicore processing prowess the choice for consumers who wanted it all.

How 12^th Gen Intel Processors are different

Intel made important changes in its 12^th Gen processors making it difficult to compare tech specs on paper with competitors. Gone are X number of cores doubling up with an equal number of threads. The Core i9 – 12900K for example, has 8 “performance” and 8 “efficient” cores and a total of 24 threads. It leverages revolutionary Thread Director Technology, a new performance hybrid architecture that integrates two groups of cores into a single CPU. Performance-cores or P-cores are built for performance across singe and lightly-threaded workloads, enhancing activities like gaming and productivity. Efficient-cores or E-cores are optimized for multi-threaded performance, minimizing interruptions from secondary tasks. Intel Thread Director basically manages workloads, sending tasks to the best core for the job. Hey, what happened to the rest of the 8 threads in that Intel Core i9 – 12900K processor? No one cares as the benchmarking results with the new 10 nanometer manufacturing processor are raising eyebrows. The chip giant has managed better performance scores in the majority of benchmarks by 10% compared to AMD which still manages well in extreme multi-tasking. The Intel 12^th Gen chipset also supports the much faster PCIe 5 card slots ready for the next generation of graphics cards as well as DDR5 memory, both with much higher throughput.

My Benchmarking Results

My testing rig

• 12^th Gen Intel Core i9 – 12900K CPU 3.2 GHz – 5.2 GHz
• 32 GB DDR5
• NVIDIA RTX 3080 Graphics Card (still a PCIe 4 card that still works on the new PCIe 5 slot.
• Kingston KC3000 2TB SSD PCIe M.2*
• Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD PCIe M.2*
• Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Pro PCIe 5 DDR5 motherboard
• Gigabyte AORUS Waterforce X360 Cooler with live LCD screen*
• Corsair RM850 W ATX Power Supply

*It should be noted that the new Kingston and Samsung SSD ‘s were equally matched in top performance as was the Aorus AIO Cooler with an extra large water more efficient water hose and quieter lower RPM fan cooling

Here are some of my benchmarking results comparing my previous Intel 11^th Gen CPU to my current 12^th Gen CPU, both with the NVIDIA RTX 3080 graphics card, Windows 11 with all OS/Benchmark Apps Including Office 365 and Adobe CC updated to current.   

Bold results mean better	Intel 11th Gen i9-11900K DDR4	Intel 12th Gen i9-12900K DDR5
MonteCarloBlackSholesOptionPricing Excel  300002 rows, 10 col, 300K iterations/sec	0.45 secs	0.364 secs
UL PCMark Applications	13882	15030
UL PCMark Extended	10703	12070
Pugetbench Lightroom Classic Score	NA	1401
Pugetbench Photoshop Score	NA	1379
Pugetbench Adobe AfterEffects Score	NA	1541
Pugetbench Adobe Premiere	NA	1470

UL Procyon Office Productivity overall score	7980	8451
Sysmark 25 1.0.0.24 Productivity	1720	1830
WebXPRT 3 Chrome Browser score	329	389
UL 3DMark CPU Profile Max Threads	7923	11892
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 4K default settings NVIDIA 3080	46.6 fps	60.0 fps
GEARS 5 (1080P high settings) NVIDIA 3080	178 fps	201 fps
Nero Score CPU/ GPU	Overall 6536, CPU 2269, GPU 4267, AI Tagging 3025,                    System AVC Decode/ Encode 5780	Overall 7084, CPU 2604, GPU 4348, AI Tagging 2803,  Decode/ Encode 6884
UL 3DMark Fire Strike	14474	15985

Observations

As expected, the Intel 12^th Gen i9-12900K outperformed the Intel 11^th Gen i9-11900K by an average of 17.8 %. Obviously, faster processing power using Thread Director Technology seems to have paid off for Intel. Comparing from a wide gathering of various benchmarks reported by dozens of tech reviewers online in the last month, the Intel 11^th Gen i9-11900K performed about 10% better on most benchmarks than the top two AMD Ryzen 9 9500 X series.

TOP TWO INTEL AND AMD PROCESSORS, SPECS AND PRICES 

	Performance Cores	Efficiency Cores	Threads	Idle Speed	PCIe 5  DDR5 support	Price from Memory Express
Intel Core i9 12900K	8	8	24	3.2 GHz	Yes Yes	$720
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X	16 (Cores)		32	3.4 GHz	No No	$930
Intel Core i5 12600K	6	4	16	3.7 GHz	Yes Yes	$360
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X	12 (cores)		24	3.7 GHz	No No	$610

Should I upgrade my PC?

Observations: The 12^th Gen Intel processors are more affordable with about 10% better performance than AMD, But the added cost of more expensive DDR5 memory and new model motherboards outweigh the current Investment AMD chip owners have on DDR4 memory and motherboards that can easily be used with all current Ryzen chips. Both top processor brands will work for anyone seeking the fastest computing.  But if “future-proofing” is your priority then check out Intel’s 12th Gen chip impressive Thread Director Technology above, with included DDR5 and are PCIe 5 expansion card support. Not to mention Intel gives you a choice of built in Intel UHD Graphics driven by Xe Architecture graphics. Not for extreme gaming, but you can plug that monitor in while you wait for that pricey graphics card. AMD fans might have to wait for those features and more in AMD’s next major processor and motherboard model, confirmed next year – the Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000) chip line will be upgraded with a revolutionary new V-Cache technology, and the next-gen Zen 4 architecture will debut as well. This also means a new motherboard. If you are OK with your current PC, I advise you wait. If anything, add more RAM and a new hard-to-get good graphics card (or more affordable 60 to 70 percentile performance) that will improve your computing experience now. Then see how the latest processing technologies from Intel and AMD play out in 2022. See you then!