AMD's stint as the gaming performance king may be short lived, as Intel's upcoming Alder Lake Core i9-12900K may be as much as 25% faster than the flagship AMD Ryzen 5950X. Some leaked performance numbers of the new CPU claim that a qualification sample (effectively a retail CPU without the branding) of Intel's 12900K was as much as 25% faster than the AMD ryzen 9 5950X in Cinebench 20. This is especially telling, as Cinebench has been an AMD stronghold in recent years.
Intel's upcoming Alder Lake processors make a stark departure from traditional desktop processor design. It features eight high performance cores, build on a new 10nm architecture, and with full hyperthreading support, and eight small efficiency-focused cores based on its older Atom architecture. This equates to 24 overall threads on a 16-core CPU, with the potential to boost at up to 5.3GHz on the high performance options — allegedly.
Although those clock speed claims seem a little dubious, considering Intel's difficulty in getting even over 4.0GHz with its 10nm processors in the past, that could be why this new generation hardware is reportedly so powerful. The rumored results from Twitter user OneRaichu suggest it could be monstrously powerful.
12900KS QS Non-OC
In water cooler.
Cinebench R20.
ST: >810
MT: >11600— Raichu (@OneRaichu) July 20, 2021
It could have monstrous power demands too, though, which could be why the efficiency cores are so necessary. Reportedly, the high power state for these chips will see them demand as much as 225W, which would mean a very hefty cooling solution would be required to make the most of it to avoid thermal throttling.