In short: Intel's 12th generation of core processors are coming out, and everything we've seen so far suggests they'll be faster than their Rocket Lake predecessors and at least as fast as AMD's Ryzen 5000 series. A recently leaked benchmark appears to confirm that the Alder Lake CPU achieves higher performance at a higher power cost.
Intel's first Alder Lake CPUs are officially on the market now, but aside from a few lucky Newegg users and a few prolific leakers, few people have had access to one for real-world testing.
If we go by the Blue team's marketing rhetoric, these new processors should be the first salvo against AMD in the x86 performance crown race. However, they are also not directly comparable to AMD's existing x86 processors, as well as Intel's products, because they use hybrid architectures and can be more power-intensive under certain workloads.
One notable change brought about by Alder Lake is that Intel is redefining its CPU power requirements to provide a more realistic picture in the spec sheet. Specifically, the company is ditching the term "TDP" in favor of two new metrics — processor base Power (PBP) and Maximum Turbine Power (MTP). These are essentially the power limits of the PL1 and PL2, defined in previous generations of Intel CPUs, and will allow consumers to make more informed decisions when purchasing these new models.
A detailed analysis of the performance of these new CPUs under various workloads is forthcoming, but because it is still classified, we can only look at performance data leaked over the past few months.
As Twitter user @9550Pro discovered, Weibo user WolfStame, who happens to be the gaming desktop product planning manager at Lenovo China, accidentally posted a chart comparing the Cinebench R20 test results of the Alder Lake CPU with the previous generation of Rocket Lake components.
As you might expect, all of the Alder Lake Fanatic processors were smoking in the multithreaded test. The more interesting aspect of the leaked chart, however, is that it includes ratings for both the 125-watt base power and the 241-watt turbine power modes.
As a result, the Core i9-12900K scored 7,492 points at base power and 10,180 points at maximum turbine power, improving performance by 36% at nearly twice the power consumption. The Core i7-12700K scores 6,689 and 8,677 points, respectively, which means up to 30% performance improvement in Turbo mode (190 watts). That's not surprising, but if you look at the Core i5-12600K, the performance improvement is a modest 10% — hardly worth the jump from 125 watts to 150 watts.
This seems to confirm previous rumors that the Alder Lake CPU will become a cutting-edge space heater. Intel sweetened the deal with new processors at aggressive prices, but we'll have to see how that affects consumers in the coming weeks and months. However, LGA 1700 motherboards aren't cheap, and DDR5 memory kits are already expensive — that is if you can find them in stock at retail stores. Overall, early adopters of Alder Lake will have to pay dearly for the privilege.
