The core types are "P-cores" ("P" being short for "performance") and "E-cores" (with the "E" for "efficient"). Intel is touting Performance Hybrid Architecture as the company's "biggest architectural shift in a decade." In the technology's Alder Lake debut, the Core i9-12900K (along with the rest of the chips announced thus far in the 12th Generation desktop stack) will each come with two sets of heterogenous cores, instead of the monolithic core design we've seen in generations past. But it set the pace for Intel's big announcement this year: Intel Performance Hybrid Architecture. It's also not technically new for Intel, either-the company first launched an x86 processor based on a big.LITTLE design back in 2020, known as "Lakefield." The Lakefield silicon made it into only a few scattered laptops and mobile-device experiments, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold. That philosophy is nothing new smartphone processors have been employing versions of a big.LITTLE architecture for years as an efficiency measure. In a big.LITTLE approach, a chip design stacks a set of cores focused on peak performance alongside cores focused more on efficiency and power management, both on the same die. (Read more in-depth about how Intel defines its "7 Process" at ExtremeTech.) (Opens in a new window) Leveraging Intel's so-called "7 Process," the company's launch of its new 12th Generation desktop CPUs sees the new chips built on 10nm lithography, finally breaking the company out of its half-decade love/hate affair with the 14nm process and its subsequent "14nm+"-based iterations that followed for years after. The Alder Lake Basics: A Whole Lotta 'New' Our initial Alder Lake takeaway is "Intel's on the upswing, with some caveats." But read more about our findings below. That-and a not-insignificant problem in which our test platform, and several prebuilt Alder Lake PCs, could not launch certain popular games that use specific DRM-temper Alder Lake with a bit of wait-and-see caution. The high cost of a new Z690 motherboard (the cheapest are just under $200, per our Z690 motherboard guide) and DDR5 adoption, along with Intel's insistence on upgrading your system to Windows 11, are all front-facing considerations for anyone who's considering 12th Generation Core as their next big desktop upgrade. Read our editorial mission (Opens in a new window) & see how we test (Opens in a new window). Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. Intel's older-yet-still-reliable "Comet Lake" Core i9-10900K kept itself in the race during several benchmarks, while the eight-core, rather cheaper AMD Ryzen 7 5800X ($449 list price, but currently snipe-discounted to $386 on Amazon and Newegg) proves itself a worthy contender on performance-versus-price in PC gaming. For all the outright wins we saw in our benchmarks (and there were many), the added cost of upgrading to yet another new motherboard platform won't outweigh the win percentages for many shoppers. Intel also worked closely with Microsoft to optimize the new CPUs for Windows 11, adding new scheduling features that intelligently load up the Core i9-12900K depending on which cores are being used where, and for what.Īlder Lake and the Core i9-12900K indeed impress, but our relationship with the CPU.is complicated. These tick-ups include support for the new, high-speed DDR5 RAM standard, as well as an upgrade to PCI Express 5.0, on the first new motherboard platform to support the latest chips, the Intel Z690. ![]() Intel's Core i9-12900K desktop CPU ($589) leads the pack of the company's 12th Generation processors, and brings with it a whole host of upgrades and innovations to the desktops of now and tomorrow. "Alder Lake," Intel's family of 12th Generation processors, has arrived-and with it, a new CPU paradigm. How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication.How to Record the Screen on Your Windows PC or Mac.How to Convert YouTube Videos to MP3 Files.How to Save Money on Your Cell Phone Bill.How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad.How to Block Robotexts and Spam Messages.
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