The prices for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake 12th-generation processors may have leaked in early listings on retailer Provantage, which showed the cost of everything from the mid-range Core i5-12600K, all the way up to the flagship Core i9-12900K. KF versions of the chips look a little cheaper this generation, so you can save a little if you don't need the onboard graphics, but overall, prices aren't too extreme. Especially considering the cost of AMD's recent Ryzen 5000 generation.
Alder Lake is the first range of high-performance desktop processors to ever use the big.LITTLE core design mantra, including both high performance and efficiency cores, in a strange mix of designs. The base Core i5-12600K has six performance cores with four efficiency cores, for a total of 16 threads, The Core i7 12700K has eight performance cores and four efficiency cores, for a total of 20 threads, and the top Core i9-12900K has eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores, for a total of 24 threads.
The pricing for these chips, is as follows:
12600K: $289
12700K: $422
12900K: $605
Each of the F variants are around $20 less.
Early performance results suggest these chips should be exceedingly good. Perhaps even good enough to take on AMD's upcoming 3D V-Cache refresh of its Ryzen 5000 series. The question is, can they do so without enormous power and thermal demands?