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An indepth look at the next-generation hardware from Intel and co.
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It’s finally here! Intel has finally unveiled its sub-10nm desktop CPU lineup and it looks set to impress across the board. We were lucky enough to receive early access to an Intel i9-12900K CPU, Geil Polaris 4800MHz DDR5 RAM (alongside some Corsair Dominator DDR5), and an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard, allowing us to fully benchmark the next-gen hardware to see how it stacks up against Ryzen and previous generation products.
In this guide, we’ll be performing full performance benchmarks for the next-gen build, including gaming and workflow scenarios. We’ll also be comparing the CPU and RAM against previous-gen alternatives to see how it stacks up.
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We used the same build across the entirety of the tests you’ll see. The only time the benchmarking rig changed was when we tested 4800MHz vs 5200MHz – which saw the Geil Polaris replaced by the Corsair’s Dominator Platinum.
Below is a full list of the specs of the PC used for these tests:
With Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake launch, we thought it’d be a good time to compare the differences between next-gen Intel and previous Gen Ryzen. Let’s take a look at the side by side comparison so you can get a taste of how the new chips sit within today’s market:
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Wasting no time, we’ll jump straight into the raw benchmarking data. We’ll be splitting this section into the various tests we ran for the build. We’ll kick start proceedings with a straight benchmark of the build itself.
We tested several games and Cinbench’s R23 to get an idea of the performance we can expect from the components in mind.
To get a better idea of how these results compare to alternatives, we ran a straight comparison between the i9-12900K and Ryzen’s 5900X – utilizing the same GPU in the process.
As you can see from the results above, performance was fairly level when comparing the 5900X to the Intel i9-12900K. Depending on what game we ran, performance yielded varying results where sometimes the Intel would provide higher frames and others AMD. New World seemed like a clear winner for camp Intel, while Cyberpunk 2077 sat firmly with team red.
Surprisingly, the synthetic benchmarks finished in quicker times than the 5900X, something I wasn’t expecting.
We ran the same set of games when comparing big vs little cores. The results show a clear boost in performance for the big cores (to be expected) in everything from gaming to synthetic workloads.
We decided to do a generational comparison after this, letting us see the difference between 10th, 11th, and 12th Gen processors.
Interesting results for this category, with most games seeming to utilize the GPU more than the CPU. Often, performance across generations would be equal. However, in more CPU-intensive titles such as CS:GO and New World, the 12900K clearly excelled. Synthetic benchmarks were, once again, dominated by the 12th Gen hardware.
We got similar results when testing single channel vs dual channel performance to the generational comparison. Most games offered up pretty similar FPS figures, however, CS:GO and a few others did favour the dual-channel configuration.
We didn’t see a great deal of difference when comparing the different RAM speeds. Blender offered absolutely no difference while Cinebench provided a slight increase for 5200MHz speeds. That said, both Cyberpunk 2077 and Days Gone saw a healthy uplift in performance for the 5200MHz variant.
Finally, we ran a quick test using the Intel i9-12900K comparing the performance of Windows 10 vs Windows 11 in various gaming scenarios. Synthetic benchmarks fell in the favour of the more optimized Windows 10, while gaming was fairly level on performance.
So, there you have it, our comprehensive review of the latest next-gen Intel 12th Gen CPU, DDR5 memory, and Z690 ASUS ROG Maximus Hero motherboard. Overall, I wasn’t hugely impressed with the figures we received. That being said, it was a return to the top of the gaming hierarchy for Intel, something they’ve desperately needed since the launch of Ryzen’s hugely impressive 5000 series lineup.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a comment in the section below.