Intel 12th Gen Core Alder Lake Performance Review: Chipzilla Is Back
When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers necessary for our components, disabled Auto-Updating and Windows Defender, and installed all of our benchmarking software. When that process was done, we performed a disk clean-up, cleared any temp and prefetch data, and optimized all of the SSDs using Windows' built-in utility. Finally, we enabled Windows Focus Assist to minimize any potential interruptions and let the systems reach an idle state before invoking a test.
HotHardware's Test Systems: Revamped For Windows 11

SiSoft SANDRA 2021 Benchmarks


Intel Core i9-12900K Processor Arithmetic |
Intel Core i9-11900K Multi-Media |


Intel Core i5-12600K Processor Arithmetic |
Intel Core i5-12600K Multi-Media |
AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency & Cache Latency

In terms of memory bandwidth, the 12th Gen Core processors fall within the 66GB/s - 75GB/s range, when paired to DDR5-4800 CL38 memory in dual channel mode (bandwidth will be higher with faster memory). That puts memory bandwidth way above previous-gen mainstream platforms, but a notch behind the HEDT platforms that leverage quad channel memory configurations.

In contrast to the increased bandwidth afforded by DDR5's higher clocks, the higher CAS latency of current DDR5 memory kits results in significantly increased memory latency versus 11th Gen Core processors and AMD's Ryzen 5000 series.

Geekbench v5.4.1 CPU Compute Benchmark

With our first set of comparisons in Geekbench, the new 12th Gen Core processors look great. The Core i9-12900K puts up the best single-thread score by far followed by the Core i5-12600K. The Core i9-12900K also puts up the best multi-threaded score of all the mainstream processors, besting even the Ryzen 9 5950X -- only the 24-Core HEDT Threadripper 3960X is faster in the multi-threaded test.
UL PCMark 10 Benchmarks
Next, up we have some full-system testing with PCMark. We're reporting all test results from the PCMark 10 benchmark suite, including the Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation and and total PCMark score. The Essentials test covers workloads like web browsing, video conferencing and app start-up times, while Productivity tests everyday office apps from spreadsheets to word processing. Finally, the Digital Content Creation test evaluates performance of a machine with respect to photo and video editing, as well as rendering and visualization.
The new 12th Gen Core processors also put up strong scores in PCMark 10. Here, the Core i9-12900K takes the pole position, besting every other platform we tested. The Core i5-12600K can't muster a content creation score quite as high with its lower core count and clocks, but it still manages to land in 4th place, sandwiched between the Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X.
Bapco Crossmark Testing
Crossmark is a new cross-platform benchmark from Bapco that's available for Windows, Android, iOS and MacOS. Like PCMark, Crossmark measures overall system performance and using real-world applications. It characterizes system responsiveness as well, based on the results of its Creativity and Productivity benchmarks.
The new 12th Gen Core processors take first and second place, outclassing all of the other platforms we tested by far. The Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K both put up strong scores across the board in Crossmark, which may seem skewed until you see how these processors perform in some browser-based tests...
Browser & Web App Benchmarks: Jetstream 2 And Speedometer 2
These benchmarks measures performance of an array of browser-based technologies used on modern, rich web applications. Scores in these benchmark are an indicator of the performance users would see when browsing the web and running advanced web apps. All of the systems were tested using the latest version of Microsoft's Edge browser, with default browser settings, on a clean, fully-updated install of Windows 11.


7-Zip Data Decompression Tests
