It feels like it was just yesterday that we presented and reviewed the i9-11900K and i5-11600K. Almost 7 months later, it’s the new generation of processors Intel Alder Lake which has arrived. In the end, Intel did not wait long to offer what we can call THE new generation, because indeed, we expect a lot from Alder Lake. Therefore, it is with great excitement that we received two Alder Lake processors: the i5-12600K and the i9-12900K.
Obviously, we aren’t able to offer you everything on release day. So we made a choice. Today we’ll have an article on Alder Lake’s i9-12900K and i5-12600K performance, and at 5pm we’ll review and test the ROG Maximus Z690 APEX motherboard. Articles on the MSI MPG Z690 Carbon Wifi and the Maximus Z690 EXTREME will be available early next week. We’re also currently preparing a full review about gaming performance.
This new generation has forced us to make choices. Between the discovery of these hybrid processors, our desire to test them under both Windows 10 and 11, as well as being able to get a first glance at their overclocking potential, some details had to be left aside for the moment. We haven’t tested them in games here, but we’ll do a full dedicated review about it in a later article.
In the next few days we will also begin testing DDR5 kits to give you a performance comparison and benchmark, such as we do with DDR4.
A very special thanks to the brands (Asus, MSI, GSKill and Corsair) who responded to the launch of Alder Lake and to Intel France for providing the two CPUs, and thus making this article possible.
