Intel Core i9-12900KF Desktop Processor 16 (8P+8E) Cores up to 5.2 GHz Unlocked  LGA1700 600 Series Chipset 125W

Product Information

Here the 7900X doesn't look great when including platform costs, it's slightly worse value than even the 12900K and considerably worse value than the 7700X and 7600X. Clearly, if you're just gaming the 6 and 8-core Zen 4 CPUs are far better value. For our testing we used the be quiet! Pure Loop 2 FX 360mm liquid cooler which is fully compatible with AM5. After an hour of looping Cinebench multi-core with the Pure Loop 2 FX installed inside the be quiet! Silent Base 802, we recorded a peak CPU temperature of 97C for the primary CCD and 94C for the secondary CCD, so just above the 95c TJMax. Cost vs. Performance Intel's Core i9-12900K CPUs have 8 Performance cores (P-cores) and 8 Efficiency cores (E-cores) for a total of 16 cores. As was the case with the 7950X, the 7900X is a bit broken in The Riftbreaker. Realistically it would be able to match at least the 7600X, if not the 7700X, but as we saw with the 7950X this game has an issue with the dual CCD design of the 12 and 16-core models, and this is something AMD is in talks with the developer to try and solve.

From a gamer's point of view, the Core i9 12900K can deliver the performance to game, stream, capture, and more, all at once. Though it must be said that cheaper chips such as the Core i5 12600K would appear the more sensible buy if you're primarily gaming, since even the Core i5 makes mincemeat of the 11th Gen Core i9 for PC gamers, and will only hinder your graphics card at 4K and beyond as much as most other modern processors. When it comes to productivity, the 7900X looks far more impressive from a value standpoint. It's not quite as good as the 7950X based on our Cinebench scores, but even so it's comparable to the Core i9-12900K. Based on our evaluation, the 12900KF's 5.10 GHz max turbo boost frequency of the Performance cores is excellent for performance with the latest graphics-intense games. P-core turbo boost frequencies can be maintained with a high-end cooler. AMD went on to say that 95C is not running hot, rather Zen 4 will intentionally go to this temperature when under load because the power management system knows that this is the ideal way to squeeze the most performance out of the chip without damaging it.AMD has stressed that this behavior is intended and that it's important to note TJMax is the maximum safe operating temperature – not the absolute maximum temperature. In the case of Zen 4, the processors are designed to run at TJMax 24/7 without risk of damage or deterioration. Based on our evaluation of using Intel's Core i9-12900KF CPU for professional tools, you can expect excellent tool performance with a high-performance CPU cooler. Time for the value analysis and as we found with the 7950X, the 7900X is overkill for gamers and largely a waste of money if all you plan on doing is gaming. With that said, the Core i9-14900K is in my opinion a really tough sell. There isn’t a lot of real differences between it and the previous gen the Core i9-13900K. It has the same number of cores, the same TDP, the same amount of cache … the only thing it has going for it, is the increased core speed. And I’ve said this already, it’s really just a “refresh” of the previous gen Raptor Lake, but the ability to support higher memory speeds of up to DDR5-8266. The Adobe Premiere Pro 2022 performance is impressive, as has been the case for all Zen 4 CPUs, particularly the 7700X and up. The 7900X was 33% faster than the 12900K and just 7% slower than the 7950X, another great result here.

To tie a bow on it, if you're genuinely in the market for a new processor at this moment and you want the best for gaming, the Core i9 12900K is that and more. The Z690 platform offers the only way into the most cutting-edge technologies around today, and for PC builders in 2021, it's sure nice to know you won't be falling behind the curve in 2022 once PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 are more widely adopted. Faster PC memory can improve game and professional tool performance by reducing the time it takes to perform calculations and data operations.

Gamers are certainly better off going with the Ryzen 7 7700X as it's essentially as fast (or even slightly faster) and is much cheaper. Even when factoring in the platform costs, the 8-core model is considerably better value for gaming. There are also still some finer points to work out with Alder Lake as I write this, though it's been less hit-or-miss in testing than I had expected it to be at times during its development and unveiling. Ultimately, though, it feels like Intel has made forward progress with Alder Lake, and that can only be a good thing for our gaming PCs. More competition begets more aggressive prices, more competitive feature sets, and faster adoption of up-to-date standards. This article compares Intel's Core i9-12900K and Core i9-12900KF desktop CPUs. We evaluated Intel's Core i9-12900K and Core i9-12900KF desktop CPUs to determine which would be better for various use cases. We shaped our testing methodology to focus on each CPU's attributes rather than relying solely on benchmarks. The more cores a CPU has, the more applications you can run simultaneously without noticing a performance impact.

The 7900X doesn't disappoint in ACC, though it doesn't surprise us either, matching other Zen 4 CPUs almost exactly with 173 fps on average, making it just 5% faster than the 12900K. Intel said it was yet to remedy an issue with Denuvo on Alder Lake for 32 games, which was causing issues playing these games on the platform, but the remainder of the library was good to go. So you're looking at much higher frequencies with the trade-off being much higher memory latencies on early DDR5 kits. They also come with generally higher price tags, which isn't something PC gamers will want to hear in 2021—unfortunately, that's the reality of a brand new technology such as this coming to market. Perhaps especially so because of the ongoing global shortages affecting all manner of chips. F" means it requires discrete graphics. In other words, it doesn't have integrated graphics (basically a GPU built into the processor), thus requiring a standalone graphics card. That's probably going to have an impact on AMD's outlook, as the company no longer has a totally unmatched enthusiast desktop processor. The Core i9 12900K is a match, and it's cheaper, effectively shifting the bar for future enthusiast desktop processors from both companies.

Max Resolution (DP)‡

Today, we’ll be comparing Intel’s flagship processor the Core i9-14900K against the older Core i9-12900KF and the previous gen, the Core i9-13900K. Each P-Core has access to 1.25MB of L2 cache. From there, they're hooked up to 30MB of Intel Smart Cache, which is also shared between E-Cores and onboard integrated graphics (disabled in KF-series chips).

For AMD, that would appear to be its 3D V-Cache processors, which it says are already in production and should improve gaming performance by up to 15%. If you scan over my benchmarking numbers, that has the potential to once again give AMD a lead in many games. But these chips are going to have to deliver a significant boost to compete at their current prices, and for once it's AMD in the hot seat to justify its premium pricing rather than the other way around. The most significant is DDR5. For a long while now we've been happily plodding along with DDR4 machines, and admittedly these DDR4 kits have started to hit incredible speeds considering their humble beginnings, but times are a-changin'. DDR5 is already setting the bar higher for memory frequencies and performance, and Alder Lake is ready to meet it. This game can be useful for testing low-end CPUs, but for the 7950X it just shows us that we're able to max out the RTX 3090 Ti, matching other high-end CPUs.For the 12-game average, as expected the 7900X matched the 7950X making it a fraction faster than the 6-core 7600X overall and a mere frame slower than the 12900K, in other words the same performance as the Core i9. That was expected given what we've seen so far. Time for the gaming benchmarks and we'll start with Factorio which is very cache sensitive, and only looks at single core performance. Interestingly, the 7900X produces the highest score here of all the Zen 4 processors, though we're only talking about a 1% increase from the 7950X, so within the margin or error. Still, from our three run average it was consistently faster. As we found with the 7950X, the single thread performance of the 7900X is very strong, producing a score of 2034 pts. That's not a big improvement over the 12900K, a mere 3% difference, but it does mean the 7900X is often going to have the upper hand for productivity workloads given it's faster in Cinebench R23 for both multi and single core performance. In Cinebench R23, there’s a 9% improvement in the multi-core performance, and a 3% improvement in single-core performance over the Core i9-13900K. There I said it! … 3% improvement in single-core performance LOL! It appears as though we've reached the limits of the RTX 3090 Ti in Shadow of the Tomb Raider using the highest quality preset at 1080p with all high-end CPUs hitting a wall at around 190 fps. As a result the 7900X is only on par with the 12900K.