Intel Core i9 (12th Gen) i9-12900 Hexadeca-core (16 Core) 2.40 GHz Processor - Retail Pack

Product Information

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. Though we didn't run any benchmarks on the integrated graphics processor (IGP) of the Core i9-11900K (partly because of time constraints, but mainly because few buyers will shop for this chip and not pair it with a graphics card), we recommend hopping over to our review of the Core i5-12600K to see just how much of an improvement gamers can expect. For those looking for an IGP that can just drive a display, though, the Iris Xe UHD Graphics 770 solution will support four 4K (up to 4,096-by-2,303-pixel) displays, at up to 60Hz. The issue with games like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla arises either on launch or on load, because Denuvo thinks that the P-cores and E-cores belong to two separate systems, rather than two different core types on the same chip. Once it detects that some portion of the load has been split between the P and E cores, it sees the new cores as a new license holder (a separate system), and force-quits the game to prevent what it believes is two PCs trying to play one game on the same key. Intel's chips are competitively priced, but PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 are also significant cost-adders for motherboards. All signs point to DDR5 kits being expensive in the early days, so it's good that some motherboards support the more affordable DDR4.

All models support up to DDR5-4800 or DDR4-3200 memory, and 16 lanes of PCI Express 5.0 + 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0. All models support up to DDR5-5600, or DDR4-3200 memory, up to 16 lanes of PCI Express 5.0, and up to 4 lanes of PCI Express 4.0. In our more limited run of benchmarks on Windows 11 we did find that, in certain circumstances, Thread Director provided a sizable benefit. Sometimes the difference was negligible (for example, Cinebench R23, POV-Ray, and gaming tests all stayed roughly the same), while in others like the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere runs, we saw an improvement of nearly 30% in both benchmarks. Whether that means it's 30% faster in Windows 11 or 30% slower in Windows 10 is all a matter of your vantage point. However, as you can see, there are still a few kinks that Intel has yet to work out when testing in Windows 10, such as in our POV-Ray run. It should be noted, though, that those aren't down to outright diminished performance as much as they are the idiosyncrasies that come with using an Intel Core i9-12900K on a Windows 10 system.As a result, threads can and will land on the incorrect cores under some circumstances, which Intel warned could result in higher run-to-run variability in benchmarks. It will also impact the chips during normal use with Windows 10, too. Max Turbo Frequency refers to the maximum single-core processor frequency that can be achieved with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology. See www.intel.com/technology/turboboost/ for more information and applicability of this technology. The P-cores and E-cores are at the heart of 12th Generation Core's new "big.LITTLE"-style architecture. This approach to chip design employs high-power and low-power processing cores. In this particular chip, the design pairs eight P-cores with eight E-cores, and divides the demands of your PC across them from moment to moment, depending on the task at hand. Only the eight P-cores are Hyper-Threaded in this new chip design, for two threads per core; that's why the number of supported threads isn't the usual double the number of cores. 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.

It took until late 2021, but chip giant Intel finally has a credible response to that marching line of Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 chips treading across its traditional lawn. Take its new desktop-CPU flagship: Its first real contender in quite some time is the Core i9-12900K, part of a six-CPU launch for 12th Generation Core processors (dubbed the "Alder Lake" family) that establishes the groundwork for how Intel Core chips on the desktop will look and work for years to come. Yes, competition is good, but only because it pushes AMD to be even better than if they did not have at all. That's the only part I care about. Find sources: "List of Intel Core i9 processors"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( May 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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.

Intel's new single-threaded Efficiency (E) core comes with the Gracemont microarchitecture to improve multi-threaded performance and provide exceptional area efficiency (small footprint) and performance-per-watt. Four small cores fit in roughly the same area as a Skylake core and deliver 80% more performance in threaded work (at the same power). A single E core also delivers 40% more performance than a single-threaded Skylake core (at the same power) in single-threaded work (caveats apply to both). 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.) Thread Director is informed by a new microcontroller on the CPU itself, which will feed Windows 11 more detailed hardware telemetry about the current status of the chip and its cores, versus older releases in Intel's desktop line. Information that was previously left a mystery to Windows—think aspects like thermals, power settings, and which threads can take more instructions—is now communicated to the scheduler in microseconds, leaving almost no impact and (in theory) adding considerable performance gains, depending on the workflow and the various kinds of overhead that can be leveraged. 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. VforV said:I'm glad for competition, but no Alder Lake is not an outstanding success beating Zen3 from A to Z and at everything and anything. Far from that...