Back during CES 2022, Intel gave the world a brief glimpse of its Core i9-12900KS, a CPU that is basically assembled from the best bits and pieces of the chipmaker’s Alder Lake lineup. With production of the CPU already underway and the promise that the CPU will be launching this year, some retailers have seemingly jumped the gun and decidedly chosen to sell it well ahead of its official launch window.
Product shots of the 12900KS and its packaging have been posted by several lucky consumers, such as Reddit user Seby9123 and another individual by the name of DAGINATSUKO who were lucky enough to get their hands on the processor. This includes a shot of the CPU out of its box and on top of a mockup of its die. As for how much it was being sold for; the exact amount is unknown, but the listings (before they were removed) reportedly had them at US$790 (~RM3313) a pop, which is undeniably pricey.
As a quick recap, the 12900KS uses pre-binned cores, comprising 16-cores, 24-threads, and is capable of reaching a maximum boost clock of 5.5GHz for two P-Cores, and 5.2GHz across all eight P-Cores. Performance-wise, both Seby9123 and Tom’s Hardware’s Cinebench R23 tests of the CPU shows garnered 29164 points for the multicore test and 2162 points for the single-core test. To put it in another context, that is a 29.6% performance improvement over the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in the single-core test, and about 9.7% in multi-core performance. That said, it is important to note that these scores are considered an apples-to-oranges comparison, simply because of the different memory used by both parties.
At the time of writing, Intel still hasn’t released an official launch date for the Core i9-12900KS. However, seeing how AMD has already set 20 April as the official launch date for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, it is highly possible that the 12900KS’s launch window isn’t too far behind.
(Source: Videocardz [1] [2], Tom’s Hardware, Reddit)
