The Core i9-12900K never became the killer of the Ryzen 9 5950X. The first independent tests of Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K appeared in games, benchmarks and real applications

After the announcement of the Alder Lake-S processors, new details appeared, indicating that not everything is as clear with their performance as Intel would like. Much was expected from the new socket and new architecture, but according to official data, the flagship of the Core i9-12900K series is faster than the old AMD Ryzen 9 5950X flagship in games by only 15%. Now the first independent tests have appeared that allow us to understand how much faster Alder Lake-S is (and whether faster at all) Ryzen 5000 processors.

In games, Alder Lake-S really has an advantage, but it can hardly be called devastating or even significant – if we talk about the confrontation of the flagships (in Flight Simulator 2020 the Ryzen 9 5950X is even faster). The difference in performance between Core i5-12600K and Ryzen 5 5600X is slightly more pronounced, but even here the “old horse” does not spoil the furrows. At the same time, do not forget that the Core i5-12600K is $ 20 more expensive than its competitor (if we compare the official price lists) and requires a new motherboard based on the top Intel Z690 chipset (more affordable motherboards will be released early next year).

In Productivity tests (i.e. benchmarks and real applications), the Ryzen 5 5600X is already seriously lagging behind the i5-12600K – by 11-45% depending on the test. But with top-end CPUs, the situation is the opposite: the Core i9-12900K lost everywhere to the Ryzen 9 5950X, albeit not very much. At the same time, the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X is not much inferior to the 16-core Core i9-12900K. So when looking for a processor to work with, the choice is obvious.

It is also obvious because in applications that heavily load the processor (for example, calculating 3D models), the Core i9-12900K consumes an awful lot – about 250 watts. While the top-end AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs consume exactly 100 watts less. In games, the power consumption of the Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X and Core i9-12900K is about the same.

A similar picture is observed in terms of heating: under heavy load, the Core i9-12900K heats up more than the Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X, but in games the heating is about the same.

In general, judging by the first independent tests, the lousy killer Ryzen 9 5950X came out of the Core i9-12900K. In games, the new Intel flagship is not much faster, while in professional applications it is slower, hotter and consumes much more.