12th Gen Intel Core processors announced from $264 — up to 5.2GHz boost, 16-cores, DDR5 and PCIe 5.0

Intel has finally officially taken the wraps off the 12th Gen Intel Core family, or more specifically, six unlocked desktop processors. The full 12th Gen Intel Core family will include 60 processors, scaling from 9W to 125W TDPs, enabling all sorts of PC form factors. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and focus on the aforementioned six processors.

12th Gen Intel Core – the world’s best gaming processors, again

The biggest paradigm shift for the 12th Gen Intel Core processors is its hybrid architecture. If you would like more details about the architecture, you can read more about it here. The gist of it is that Intel is combining two different architectures for better scaling with multi-threaded workloads. With Thread Director, the cores will be optimally utilized as the OS will know which core to use, and Intel is working with developers to further improve the optimization for the hybrid architecture.

We did mention that the 12th Gen Intel Core processors are the world’s best gaming processors, and a major focus for Intel is indeed PC gaming. The Intel Core i9-12900K, Intel’s flagship Alder Lake processor, is up to 28% faster than the 1th Gen Core i9-11900K in games. With its 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores, which allows it to offload parallel tasks like streaming for up to 84% more FPS when streaming and recording gameplay.

The multi-threaded performance uplift also comes in handy for creators, with the performance of the 12th Gen Intel Core processors combined with the immense bandwidth of DDR5 enabling up to 36% faster image editing performance, 32% faster video editing performance, 37% faster 3D modeling performance and 100% faster multi-frame rendering.

While the competition is currently quite limited with their overclocking headroom, Intel is still promising the best overclocking experience on 12th Gen Intel Core processors. You can independently overclock the P-cores and E-cores, and use the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility 7.5 for more platform overclocking features than ever before. For those who aren’t inclined to get their hands dirty with manual tuning, there’s also the Intel Speed Optimizer feature for one-click overclocking.

Along with debuting DDR5 on the platform, Intel is introducing Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 3.0, with support for up to 3 profiles and even rewriteable custom profiles. The 12th Gen Intel Core platform will also support flexible tuning for ardent memory overclockers on both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, making it one of the best overclocking platforms for enthusiasts.

On top of that, you get 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes for your graphics, and 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes, that will usually be configured for storage. You can check out the specifications of the newly announced 12th Gen Intel Core processors below:

12th Gen Intel Core Processors Specs and Prices

Prices range from $264 (~RM1097) to $589 (~RM2447), which is actually a very slight price hike from the 11th Gen Intel Core series. Pre-orders are available starting now, with them being officially available starting this 4th November. Supply is expected to be pretty good, with Intel expecting to ship hundreds of thousands of these unlocked 12th Gen Intel Core processors by the end of this year. Another 28 SKUs from the 12th Gen Intel Core family will be shipping next year, targeting the desktop, mobile and commercial segments.

Intel 600 Series Chipset – x8 DMI 4.0, up to 28 PCIe lanes

The interconnect between the CPU and chipset has been upgraded to an x8 DMI 4.0 link, which harnesses PCIe 4.0 for 16GT/s, or double the bandwidth that you would get with the 11th Gen Intel Core processors paired up with the Intel 500 series chipsets. Or quadruple the bandwidth between the 10th Gen Intel Core processors and the 400 series chipsets.

Intel also overcome the main bummers with the Intel 400 and Intel 500 series chipsets. This time, Intel finally brings PCIe 4.0 to the Intel 600 chipsets. The Intel Z690 will have up to 28 PCIe lanes, 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes and 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes.  There’s support for USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, WiFi 6E and Gigabit LAN, but these aren’t exactly all that different from what was already available on the Intel 500 series chipsets.

Overall, the 12th Gen Intel Core platform is a pretty momentous leap forward for Intel, and hopefully for PC users everywhere as well. Stay tuned for our reviews of these processors!

Pokdepinion: From the looks of it, the Intel Core i7-12700KF might be the best option for gamers who might not care as much about the multi-threaded performance that the Core i9-12900K can bring to the table. We need to wait for pricing though…