About three months after the official announcement at CES 2022, Intel finally seems ready to launch the Core i9-12900KS, probably the most advanced processor seen so far in the consumer segment. After several rumors and more or less official benchmarks, the confirmation comes directly from the company which, through a post on Twitter, confirms how the new top of the range Alder Lake-S will debut on April 5th.
For those who have not followed the news of recent weeks, Core i9-12900KS will basically be an overclocked version of the already extreme – at least in some ways – Core i9-12900K (Review), taking up all the basic features, but with decidedly higher clock frequencies: 5.2 GHz all-core and 5.5 GHz Boost, or 300 MHz more than its predecessor.
This postponement – three months practically – could be sought in the manufacturer’s desire to counter AMD and its Ryzen 7 5800X3D, also announced during ces in Las Vegas, but “planned” as you will know by AMD only for next April 20th. If AMD had no problem announcing the Ryzen 7 5800X3D as the fastest gaming processor, Intel is no different and promises a sharp increase in performance that, according to unofficial sources, in some areas could reach up to 15%. Recall that Intel Core i9-12900KS is a 16-core and 24-thread processor, equipped with 8 P-Cores and 8 E-Cores, the latter should operate at 3.9 GHz (without HT support of course).
This CPU, remember on LGA 1700 socket, comes with 30MB of L3 cache, PCI-E 5.0 / DDR5 support and an iGPU of the Intel Xe-LP series; excellent specifications that, at the same time, also travel with TDP values higher than the Core i9-12900K (260W vs 241W peak). Regarding the price, Intel has not provided official information, however the rumors about an MRSP of 799 dollars are increasingly concrete and, at least on paper, partially justified if we look at what this CPU could offer; AMD for its part will respond with a solution – Ryzen 7 5800X3D – from $ 449, we will see how the performance challenge will end.
