The latest leaked benchmarks for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake platform suggest that it could be exceedingly fast, potentially leading to even mid-range processors dominating AMD's best at gaming. The CPUz scores show even the mid-range 12600K holding over a 20% lead on the 5900X -- an even greater one over the 5600X it is likely to match up against. In multi-threaded tests, performance was even more impressive, with the 12600K beating both the last-generation Intel king, the 11900K, and the AMD Ryzen 5800X, a likely far more costly CPU.
The real kicker there though, is that it's over 50% faster than the 5600X, potentially meaning it could be the new top gaming chip when it launches in just over a week's time.
Intel Alder Lake is a seminal release for the company, introducing a new big.LITTLE core architecture and Intel's first 10nm desktop process, in one go. Performance is still rather nebulous, with many wondering how such a design will perform, especially considering Intel's difficulties with achieving high clock speeds on its 10nm process in the past. However, more and more leaked results suggest Alder Lake could be absolutely fantastically powerful.
In these new results, only the AMD 5950X holds an advantage in multi-threaded results. The 12900K is close behind, but what's stark is that's a CPU with just eight performance cores alongside eight slower efficiency cores. In comparison, the AMD CPU has 16 full fat Zen 3 cores.
Further down the range, the 5900X with its 12 cores matches up well against the 12700K, and the 5800X the 12600K. The 5600X, though, with its six cores, falls way, way behind.
AMD better have some big price drops planned, or its platform is likely to look outdated very quickly, even with Alder Lake's reported high power demands.
Intel will announce Alder Lake CPUs officially today, October 27, and is rumored to release them on November 4.
Image: WCCFTech