The rumors were right, Intel has indeed planned to release its 12th generation of desktop processors before the end of this year, on November 4th to be exact.
In preparation for several years, the Alder Lake range is a small revolution for Intel. The American manufacturer has high hopes for these processors, with which it hopes to return to the forefront of the scene, whereas the Comet Lake and Rocket Lake CPUs had all the trouble in the world to contain AMD and its remarkable Ryzen. To do this, Alder Lake uses a hybrid architecture, which Intel welcomed at its Intel On conference.
At first, however, there will be no question of drowning the market with Alder Lake processors since only six references will be available: the Core i9-12900K, i9-12900KF, i7-12700K, i7-12700KF, i5-12600K and i5-12600KF. References that will be in store from November 4 and which belong to two ranges, the 'K' on one side and the 'KF'. On the side of the common points, they all have an unlocked multiplier. On the side of the differences, the series 'KF' is deprived of the graphic solution integrated to the 'K', in this case it is besides a new graphic solution, an Intel UHD Graphics 770.
The Core i9-12900K and i9-12900KF take advantage of this hybrid architecture to combine 8 Golden Cove cores for power and 8 Gracemont cores for efficiency. We can thus count on 24 threads while the processor has 20 MB of L2 cache / 30 MB of L3 cache. A little less powerful are the Core i7-12700K and i7-12700KF. They have 8 Golden Cove cores and 6 Gracemont cores for a total of 20 threads. This time, the L2 cache is limited to 9.5 MB when we can count on 25 MB of L3 cache. Finally, to temporarily close its presentation, Intel has unveiled the Core i5-12600K and i5-12600KF. This time it is 6 Golden Cove cores and 4 Gracemont cores, or 16 threads. The L2 cache remains at 9.5 MB when the L3 cache goes down a little, to 20 MB.
The Alder Lake range does not allow to see the prices calm down and we climb a little more compared to the launch of Rocket Lake, the previous generation. If Intel communicates its recommended prices only in dollars, French retailers have already posted prices: Core i9-12900KF / i9-12900K at 719 / 749 euros, Core i7-12700KF / i7-12700K at 499 / 529 euros and Core i5-12600KF / i5-12600K at 329 / 359 euros.
