Alleged 12th Generation Intel Core i7, Core i5 CPU Details Appear Online

By now, there’s been a fair bit of news about Intel’s 12th generation Alder Lake-S desktop CPU lineup and more recently, alleged details about the Core i9-12900K and its performance. Now it appears Intel’s pipes has sprung more leaks and this time, the details seemingly belong to two other Alder Lake-S CPUs: a Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K.

Like the 12900K, both the 12700K and 12600K share an uneven number of cores and threads, brought about by the odd-coupling of Golden Cove and Gracemont cores. With the 12700K, the CPU will seemingly have a 12-cores, 20-thread layout, with a boost clock of 4.7GHz, while Turbo Boost will bring that number up to 5GHz. Moreover, it will also have a 20MB L3 Cache and a TDP of 125W.

As for the 12600K, the Alder Lake-S Core i5 is expected to sport a 10-core, 16-thread design, comprising 12 Golden Cove cores and four Gracemont cores. In terms of speed, it should come with a boost clock of 4.5GHz and a Turbo boost clock of 4.9GHz. By contrast, we’re looking at performance similar to the Intel’s current mid-range Rocket Lake-S CPU, the Core i5-11600K.

Sadly, that’s all the alleged information there is about the Core i7-12700K and Core i5-12600K. Once again, these details are merely rumours and hearsay at this stage, so as always, we do advise you to take it with a grain of salt. That said, what is confirmed is that, as part of the Alder Lake-S lineup, these CPUs will most certainly benefit from its upcoming support for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0.

Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake CPU Samples Allegedly Being Sold Early In China

It seems that the wait for Intel’s 12th generation Alder Lake-S desktop CPUs may not be as long as we initially expected. According to prominent hardware blogger and leakster, YuuKi_AnS, early samples of the unreleased CPU lineup are currently being sold in China.

According to their sources, samples of the top-of-the-line Core i9-12900K were being sold between 6900 Yuan (~RM4516) and 7500 Yuan (~RM4909). Bear in mind, these prices are not reflective of the product’s final SRP, which we’re certain will be different once the lineup officially launches.

That said, the early sales of qualification samples also point towards Intel’s progression with the chips; if samples are already out this early on the market, it’s clear that the chipmaker’s development of its 12th generation desktop CPUs is ahead of schedule.

As pointed out by PCGamer, one of the more interesting aspect of Alder Lake-S is its unique and uneven core-to-thread ratio, brought about through the “big.LITTLE” combination of Golden Cove and Gracemont cores. For example, the Core i9-12900K is expected to feature 16-cores, 24-threads, while the Core i7-12700K will reportedly have a 12-cores, 20-threads layout.

It’s also been somewhat confirmed the upcoming 12th generation CPU lineup will support next-generation features, such as PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory, all through a new 600 series chipset that, surprisingly, will also be backwards compatible with the following 13th generation Raptor Lake-S CPU lineup.