Intel Alder Lake-S CPUs Rumored For Late October Announcement, Mid-November Launch
However, a new report from WCCFTech says that while the announcement will take place in late October (including the reveal of the entire lineup and pricing), the actual launch will be a couple of weeks later. The publication alleges that Alder Lake-S desktop processors will launch on November 19th. The accompanying Z690 enthusiast motherboards to support the new LGA-1700 processors will also be available on that date. The Z690 chipset will eventually be joined by H670, B660, and H610 chipsets that will hit lower price points.
Intel's Alder Lake-S processors will be the first to support DDR5 memory, and Z690 motherboards will support up to DDR5-4800. Alder Lake-S processors also support legacy DDR4 memory, but it will be up to motherboard manufacturers to decide which they want to use. We'd assume that some of the lower-end 600-Series motherboards will support DDR4, while mainstream and enthusiast-class boards will likely exclusively use DDR5.
Samsung is predicting a relatively swift transition from DDR4 to DDR5, with the latter becoming the dominant choice for PC systems in the 2023 to 2014 timeframe. In addition to the DDR5, Alder Lake processors also support the PCIe 5.0 interface, a first in the consumer space. Although we have heard anything about graphics cards using the new interface, SSD manufacturers are already ready for the next major leap in storage performance with PCIe 5.0.
At this point, Intel will launch six Alder Lake-S SKUs: Core i5-12600K(F), Core i7-12700K(F), and Core i9-12900K(F). The "F" SKUs will have the integrated Xe graphics disabled, which should result in a slight price reduction for customers. The flagship Core i9-12900K and 12900KF will reportedly have a base clock of 3.2GHz, a maximum turbo clock of 5.3GHz, and will feature 16 cores capable of executing 24 threads.
We're eager to see what kind of performance improvements 12th generation Alder Lake-S processors will offer over their 11th generation Rocket Lake-S counterparts. However, those gains might come at the expense of increased power requirements.
