Review Roundup of the Intel Core i9-12900KS
5.4.2022
Translation: machine translated
The i9-12900KS goes on sale today. As the first reviews show, the special edition of the i9-12900K tops it in all aspects. However, at a (too) high price.
Intel releases another Alder Lake processor with the i9-12900KS. However, this model is not really a new one: The i9-12900KS is a particularly powerful i9-12900K, which gets the "S" at the end of the designation for it. Thus, a 12900KS is supposed to reach up to 5.5 GHz clock rates on the performance cores (P-cores).
Since architecture and chip are basically the same, I won't bombard you with known details. You can find them in the review of the i9-12900K. Here is a comparison of the 12900K and 12900KS:
| i9-12900KS | i9-12900K | |
|---|---|---|
| Kerne / Threads | 8 P-Cores + 8 E-Cores / 24 | 8 P-Cores + 8 E-Cores / 24 |
| Basis-/Boosttakt E-Cores | 3.4 / 2.5 GHz | 3.2 / 2.4 GHz |
| Basis-/Boosttakt P-Cores | 5.5 / 4.0 GHz | 5.2 / 3.9 GHz |
| L3 Cache | 30 MB | 30 MB |
| TDP | 150 Watt (PL1) / 241 Watt (PL2) | 125 Watt (PL1) / 241 (PL2) |
What does it do?
Paul Alcorn from Tom's Hardware writes that the 12900KS is 2.7 percent better than the 12900K in games in 1080p resolution. However, the special edition also costs 25% more. The GPU is the bottleneck in higher resolutions, which is why the difference is even smaller there.
According to Alcorn, the 12900KS is 4 percent faster than the 12900K in multi-thread applications and almost 8 percent faster in single-thread applications. Compared to AMD's competition, it is even almost 26 percent in single threads.
Therefore, the CPU is not really a good choice for gamers. Alcorn sees the field of application in the professional sector, where time is money and the price of hardware doesn't play a big role.
He also suspects that Intel is releasing the 12900KS because AMD wants to outpace Intel in gaming with the Ryzen 5800X3D. The Ryzen 5800X3D will be released on April 20 and triples the processor's L3 cache through 3D stacking. Especially the gaming performance is supposed to benefit from this.
W1zzard from Tech Power Up also suspects this reason. In his tests, the 12900KS is 4 percent faster than the 12900K across all tests. A good cooling is necessary for the processor to unfold its performance. The 12900KS can even get up to 115 degrees Celsius compared to 100 for the 12900K.
The price increase is not justified at all. The AMD processor is also the better choice in comparison to the Ryzen 9 5950X depending on the requirements - especially because it is more frugal.
Kevin Hofer
Senior Editor
kevin.hofer@digitecgalaxus.chFrom big data to big brother, Cyborgs to Sci-Fi. All aspects of technology and society fascinate me.
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