Sleeper CPU: close to the 10th generation Core i9, disguised as the 12th generation Core i5
For PC gamers and creative types with limited budgets, Intel's "Alder Lake" Core i5-12600K far exceeds its weight in gaming and content creation. Just knowing the cost of adoption (memory, motherboard, heatsink) might make you wait a moment to upgrade a better bet.
"Alder Lake" is Intel's 12th-generation CPU family, with three main members at the time of release: two high-performance parents (Core i9-12900K and Core i7-12700K), and junior (Core i5-12600K). Well, that kid is premature: Intel’s new Core i5-12600K ($289) desktop CPU may become the back of the company’s first set of 12th-generation chips, but compared to the predecessors of Intel’s product line, it has achieved Some impressive gains.
Core i5-12600K found itself caught in a series of nearly impeccable mid-range CPUs launched by AMD in the past year, but there is no denying the strength of Core i5-12600K shown here. It matches the content creation results of older, previous giant core monsters such as the $989 Intel Core i9-10980XE Extreme Edition and the $499 AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. It even beat the 10-core, $449 Core i9-10900K in some of the same tests. In other words, its integrated graphics performance is still dwarfed by the similarly threaded Ryzen 7 5700G and six-core Ryzen 5 5600G that won the Editor's Choice Award, and they provide a stronger value proposition for gamers who want to build the next equipment around the system- On-chip (SoC), no graphics card.
If you want to get serious content creation capabilities from the historically famous chip category for mid-range games, then the Core i5-12600K is undoubtedly suitable for this job. Just be prepared to spend a penny to get your product off the ground, thanks to the brand new (and expensive) Z690 motherboard platform, and tickets can be purchased at the door.
Based on Intel’s new “7 process”, the company’s 12th-generation desktop CPU is based on 10 nanometer lithography technology and uses a new motherboard socket (LGA 1700), which finally frees the company from the 14-nanometer process. Five years of love and hatred, and its iteration lasted for many years. You can read more about how Intel defines its "7 processes" in depth on ExtremeTech.
You will notice in the specification table below that some new CPU core types are thrown out, such as "P core" and "E core". To learn all you need to know about these terms and more information, check out our in-depth review of the Intel Core i9-12900K for the complete breakdown of Intel Performance Hybrid Architecture, an important reading for understanding the new features of Alder Lake . We will not repeat all these details here.
Although the Ryzen 5 5600X may seem to be an obvious AMD foil in direct comparison with the Intel Core i5-12600K at first glance, in fact the Core i5-12600KF will be a more suitable opponent because it and AMD chips do not have CPU graphics. (Intel is providing "KF" versions of its original Core i9, i7, and i5 Alder Lake chips, and a total of six chips were produced at the time of launch.) Then, we turned our attention to how Intel Core i5-12600K tested with us The two best mid-priced Ryzen chips and AMD’s recently released Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 7 5700G in the field of desktop games compete with each other.
The prices of these two products are located on both sides of the Core i5-12600K, respectively, at 239 US dollars and 329 US dollars. (These are the current street prices; the list prices are $259.99 and $359.99 respectively.) And both have integrated AMD Radeon RX Vega integrated graphics, as we will show in detail below, can usually be called at this moment.
With this brief introduction, let's get into some specifications...
As the 12th generation Intel Core processor, the Core i5-12600K, like other Alder Lake relatives, is equipped with two different core types: in this case, six performance cores (the “P cores” we mentioned earlier ), and four "E-cores", where "E" is the abbreviation for efficiency. The maximum number of concurrent processing threads combined is 16, and this time only the P core has got the hyperthreading support of two threads per core.
In terms of cost, Intel Core i5-12600K has not broken any major obstacles. As far as price increases are concerned, it is still between several members of AMD Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 chip series, just in the mid-range.
The Intel Core i5-12600K is equipped with the same integrated graphics as other "K" series CPUs in the 12th generation-the company's new Iris Xe UHD Graphics 770 chip-although the "new" is a bit hypocritical. The main changes in UHD Graphics 750 are a slight reduction in the base clock speed (300MHz, down from 350MHz), and an increased peak dynamic frequency (from 1GHz to 1.55GHz).
Now that we know the inside story of Intel's latest mid-range product, how did it perform in the test? Let's get into the results and see what surprises Intel has...
We tested Core i5-12600K on MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WiFi motherboard, 32GB DDR5 Corsair Dominator memory clocked at 4,800MHz, 4TB Sabrent Rocket Q4 PCI Express 4.0 boot SSD can also be used as our game drive.
All of these are housed in Corsair's iCue 7000D Airflow case, equipped with Corsair iCue H150i Elite Capellix 360mm liquid cooler and Corsair 1,000 watt RM1000X power supply. For our gaming test, we used Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, under the Founders Edition clock, as we did in all recent mainstream and high-end CPU reviews.
We use various comprehensive benchmarks that provide proprietary scores to test the CPU, as well as consumer applications (such as 7-Zip, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere) (pass the workload test of workstation manufacturer Puget Systems Adobee Application) for actual testing. PugetBench extension). We also tested multiplayer games (such as Rainbow Six: Siege) and AAA 3D games (such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla).
First, the CPU test. These were run on various Windows 10 test benches, which were newly built for the advent of the 12th generation. We benchmarked all listed AMD processors and back-tested Intel processors on Windows 10; due to time constraints, we have not yet entered Windows 11, and some additional Alder Lake chips have been performed on Win 11 test. (Windows 11 testing will make Intel's Thread Director work. For more information on its importance, please check our Core i9-12900K review again.)
One thing to note here: With the advent of Z690, Intel has obstacles on the platform, so we tested our AMD Ryzen 9 5950X on our most advanced liquid cooling system Maingear Turbo, which is AMD’s high-end mainstream Ryzen (2021 ). Although the graphics test cannot be directly compared (the RTX 3080 Ti we used and the RTX 3090 in Maingear are a few percentage points different in most games), Maingear’s productivity test, combined with its over-killing liquid cooling, should be in AMD’s 16 The core Core i9 chip and Intel's latest 16-core products bring more parity. But this is just for context, and it is also a side display of the Core i5 we are discussing here.
Well, to say the least, this is of course a surprise! Again: Remember, these are mainly Windows 10 results. Even without Thread Director taking action behind the scenes, Intel's latest mid-range processors still performed consistently impressive in almost all benchmark tests we ran. Exception 7-Zip more directly represents the capabilities of the kernel itself, and we have achieved considerable success in running Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, showing that a little adjustment can increase the Core i5-12600K to Some impressive heights.
Also, remember: this is a Core i5 chip! Compare it with Core i9-11900K. In some tests, the Core i9-11900K does not match the Core i5-12600K, such as Blender and Adobe Photoshop/Premiere tests, although compared with i9-10900K, the number of cores of 11900K is reduced (8 cores to 10 A) Compared with other recent Core i9, it is already at a disadvantage in content creation.
Two tests that seem to challenge the chip are POV-Ray and HandBrake. Here, the 12th generation i5 and i9 limped to the finish line. Considering our other benchmarks (especially the real-world Adobe benchmarks) other strong performance, this question will guarantee Future testing stops completely.
The following are the results we saw when we tested the game with GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition graphics card under Windows 10. This high-end consumer graphics card is the main arbiter of 4K performance, with all the CPUs we have listed below. However, at 1080p, the card will avoid a little bit, allowing the CPU difference to shine. (We use 3DMark Time Spy and three games for testing.)
It is foreseeable that during our gaming test of i5-12600K: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, the same issue we encountered when reviewing the Core i9-12900K could not be launched on the 12th generation Intel Core chip. As we explained in this review, in many games that use Denuvo DRM, this may be a broader issue, or just a few. (Intel acknowledged this in our briefing, more about the Core i9 comments.) We don’t have time to test any other content on this Denuvo list, but like the overall Thread Director test, we will go deeper Dig in the next few weeks, what role the Intel Core 12th generation stack can (or can’t) play in late 2021. In short: For this problem, Denuvo confuses the two core types of Alder Lake into two separate machines, triggering DRM and crashing the game. Again, this issue is discussed more in our Core i9-12900K review.
[Editor's note: Intel has released a statement regarding Denuvo features on Intel's 12th generation processors. A solution is about to emerge, but there is no firm figure yet. )
The chip recovered a bit in "Rainbow Six: Siege" at some cadenced frame rate, although at 1080p it also far exceeds the fastest refresh rate on today's displays. Therefore, if you want to downgrade to a product like Ryzen 5 5600G, it may be a better choice in this case. Speaking of Ryzen 5000G series chips is a better choice...
As a mid-range CPU with integrated graphics processing (IGP) on the chip, Intel Core i5-12600K is located at the high end of the CPU (mid-range, stick with us), gamers may consider building a new gaming system without a discrete graphics card. In today's market where GPUs are scarce, having an IGP that can dutifully replace the video card at a critical juncture is a big selling point. In the minds of many gamers, it can determine the success or failure of a purchase. So, how does the company's UHD Graphics 770 (Iris Xe Graphics) perform? Let us find out.
Note: These multiplayer game results are combined with our recent test Can You Game without a Graphics? We tested 11 desktop CPUs to find content in comparable games, as well as from Intel Core i5 during the testing period of this review -12600K The latest results collected. Please also note: "WNR" means "will not run".
Although the latest 12th-generation stack (UHD graphics 770) and 11th-generation (UHD graphics 750) on-board graphics were updated earlier this year, Intel’s IGP platform still cannot be compared with AMD’s aging Radeon RX Vega IGP. The result is so biased towards AMD and chips like Ryzen 7 5700G that the value proposition of Intel Core i5-12600K as a viable SoC for PC games without graphics cards does not exist.
Under normal graphics card inventory conditions, we would not let Intel's feet get so close to the fire. But now is 2021, when the price of GPU will be over-inflated. Considering that AMD's Ryzen G series CPUs can obviously be completely independent of low-end GPUs, if you want to play casual PC games through IGP, the value proposition of i5-12600K will inevitably be hit.
That, and the large number of non-operations (WNR) we encountered during the IGP test of i5. The latest graphics driver provided to us by Intel for the Intel Core i5-12600K evaluation does not seem to be fully implemented yet. We did manage to finish a few races in F1 2021, but due to Intel's eventual disqualification, the entire suite is still dominated by AMD's numbers. If a more reliable driver set is released in the next few weeks, we will update this story.
Quick note: Due to the increased complexity of adding to the Z690 platform for overclockers, we will soon publish a separate article that delves into everything that is offered. At the same time, for this review, we chose to use the latest version of Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) and its simple slider to see what we can accomplish within our time budget.
In those runs on Core i5-12600K, we were able to achieve "enough for one-click slider" results, which is less than 10% faster than the boost clock, which means that the performance is improved in F1 2021 and Adobee About 6% is used for Photoshop/PugetBench for Photoshop test runs.
Finally, we tried to push the Intel Core i5-12600K to its thermal limit within 10 minutes through Cinebench R23 in CoreTemp. In our test of the new Corsair iCue 360mm closed-loop liquid cooler, we found that the maximum temperature of the CPU is only 66 degrees Celsius. (But remember, this is the 360mm liquid cooler on the i5. Salt pellets, etc.; the air cooler makes more sense with a CPU at this price.)
Therefore, all these attractive results in content creation and gaming are piled up on the board, without some Denuvo DRM-related issues, is the Intel Core i5-12600K a dunk for Intel in the mid-market? A strong competitor for AMD to launch affordable game engines in the Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 series?
Not yet. We say this because, unlike some previous releases, this time Intel only provides an advanced chipset to install your new processor: Z690. This means expensive motherboards, plus new DDR5 RAM (some motherboards are DDR4, some are DDR5; we tested with DDR5), if you want to go that way, plus a new LGA 1700 CPU for heat dissipation Device. Core i5-12600K is not equipped with a radiator.
If you want, please continue to scroll through our huge Z690 motherboard super guide, but to save your finger strength, we will spoil the ending: the cheapest motherboard you will find there starts at $179.99 and gets the same performance according to us As a result, you also need to start the DDR5 memory to start.
What will all this affect you? This is an estimate...
At the same price as the barebones 10-core Core i5-12600K system, you can get a 12-core/24-thread Ryzen 9 5900X version with a similar configuration, and you still have a gaming mouse or keyboard of your choice for less than $80. The Intel Core i5-12600K is very good at content creation in many situations, and if you are looking for a processor that can handle hobbyist workloads without spending a lot of money, then it's great...outstanding. But due to the overall cost of using Alder Lake, Ryzen 9 5900X is still a better overall deal.
Insult to hurt? In the IGP game test, the Intel UHD XeLP graphics platform continued to lag behind AMD's Radeon RX Vega graphics in Ryzen 5 5600G and Ryzen 7 5700G. If Intel wants to remain competitive in the eyes of budget PC makers that rely on integrated graphics, a fast-growing market segment in today’s GPU desert, its XeLP graphics chip will require major upgrades in the near future. (Hopefully before AMD’s Zen 4 debuts, but it’s unlikely.)
Because of the cost of adopting a brand new platform around your CPU, Core i5 chips rarely become the best value when Intel introduces new chip stacks and platforms. Intel just changes its sockets often, usually every few generations. This is especially true for releases like Alder Lake one, where only high-quality Z-series motherboards will be available for at least the next few months. Therefore, as a value-centric choice, today, Intel Core i5-12600K requires too much expensive supporting hardware to make it more competitive than AMD’s ruthless 7nm chiplet-based desktop gaming CPU series.
However, leaving aside the total cost of using Alder Lake, the Core i5-12600K has many advantages and shows great hope for the future of the Intel 7 process. If you are willing to wait and see on cheaper motherboard platforms in the future, then the Intel Core i5-12600K is a strong contender for one of the best mid-range processors that the company has launched over the years. (As long as it finally plays AC: Valhalla. Keep tinkering, guys!)
For PC gamers and creative types with limited budgets, Intel's "Alder Lake" Core i5-12600K far exceeds its weight in gaming and content creation. Just knowing the cost of adoption (memory, motherboard, heatsink) might make you wait a moment to upgrade a better bet.
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Chris Stobing is a hardware analyst at PCMag. He brings his experience in benchmarking and reviewing consumer gadgets and PC hardware (such as laptops, pre-built gaming systems, monitors, storage, and network devices) to the team. Prior to this, he was a freelancer for Gadget Review and Digital Trends, where his time was often involved in the hardware ocean. In his free time, you will find him chopping up local mountain peaks on skis, or using his now defunct cooking degree to prepare a dish for friends in the kitchen.
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