After the official tests of the Intel Alder Lake processors, notably the i5-12600K to the i9-12900K, it is the turn of the i5-12400 to show itself in China.
A good replacement for the Intel Core i5-11400 ?
Currently, only the Alder Lake processors in K and KF versions are available since the beginning of November. The next models in non-K versions should arrive around the first quarter of 2022, including the i5-12400 which is already in the hands of some testers in China.
The i5-12400 is a processor of the Alder Lake generation, but with only P core (6 cores and 12 threads) with a boost frequency at 4.4 GHz and an all core at 4 GHz, all contained in a TDP of 65W. The processor tested today is a QS version, whose characteristics should not change compared to the retail model. Interesting detail, it is accompanied by DDR4-4400 and an RTX 3080 Ti.
Under Prime95, the i5-12400 caps out at 4 GHz on all cores, all while consuming 113W, against 4.2 GHz and 150W for the i5-11400, but in return for a higher temperature reaching 88 degrees against 77.
In terms of benchmark performance on 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme, the i5-12400 is ahead of its predecessor by almost 15% with 24,106 points against 21024. The observation is identical on Time Spy with also performances higher than 15% on average, but going down to 7% on Time Spy Extreme.
On a panel of 7 games tested including Cyberpunk 2077 and GTA5, the i5-12400 beats the i5-11400 by 2 to 24%, with about 16 and 18% respectively for the two examples mentioned above. The i5-12400 would thus be an excellent low/mid-range processor, offering very good performance and power consumption compared to the previous generation. The price-performance ratio of the CPU should play in its favor and will probably not have any difficulty in facing the R5 5600X from AMD.