[PLUS] Intel Core i9-12900KS vs. AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D in the big test

Cache vs Clock Monster

It will be about half a year before Zen 4 and Raptor Lake appear, the new Ryzen and Core generations. AMD and Intel have come up with something to bridge this time: Today, the two fastest gaming CPUs in the world are competing against each other. Intel throws 16 cores, 24 threads, 5.5 GHz and a purchase price of almost 800 euros into the ring, AMD uses a whopping 96 MiByte L3 cache and wants to defeat the Intel giant with efficiency. It’s been a long time since a duel between the two CPU manufacturers has been this exciting.

Half a year after entering the hybrid era, there is the crème de la crème of the Intel socket 1700: the Core i9-12900KS. The 16-core with 24 threads combines eight fast performance cores with eight small efficiency cores. Thanks to Thermal Velocity Boost and Adaptive Boost, the new flagship reaches up to 5.5 GHz in single-core workloads. The E cores, on the other hand, calculate up to a maximum of 4.0 GHz. This means that the new 16-core works 300 MHz faster than an ordinary Core i9-12900K in every situation, provided there is no limit. The TDP is 150 watts on the sheet, but it has long been known that Intel no longer differentiates between the regular and the boost TDP, at least as far as K-CPUs are concerned. Accordingly, the TDP of the i9-12900KS is a whopping 241 watts, just like the i9-12900K. The official recommended price is 739 US dollars, the CPU is available in various shops from 800 euros. The other technical data correspond to a normal i9-12900K: Both DDR5 memory up to 2,400 MHz (DDR5-4800) and DDR4 memory up to 1,600 MHz are officially supported. Of course, this also includes support for PCI Express 5.0. The CPU has 30 MiByte L3 cache, which has a positive effect on performance in games.

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You will find the following products in the test:

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
• Intel Core i9-12900KS
• Plus 13 more CPUs

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