The 5.2 GHz of Core i9-12900K
are not enough for you? Take back 300 MHz more with the Core i9-12900KS.
Intel began seeding its twelfth generation, Alder Lake, in early November. At the time, the company unsheathed the flagship of the Core i5, Core i7 and Core i9 desktop, i.e. six references, the Core i9-12900K and i9-12900KF, Core i7-12700K and i7-12700KF, Core i5-12600K and i5 -12600KF. At 7pm tonight, Intel will formalize new non-K desktop references and probably quite a few laptop chips. But the company may have a surprise in store for us: in a recent tweet, it mentioned a Core i9-12900KS capable of reaching a frequency of 5.5 GHz.
Up to 5.5 GHz on one core
Our test shows that the Core i9-12900K is already an excellent processor capable of operating at high frequencies. Indeed, the current flagship, which is a 16 cores / 24 threads, officially goes up to a Turbo frequency of 5.2 GHz. But according to Intel, which backs up its words with an HWiNFO screenshot, the Core i9-12900KS would for its part peak even higher, at 5.5 GHz (on a core). That’s an improvement of 300 MHz and about 5.7%.
Fortunately, this excess velocity obviously does not come at the expense of other P-cores, whose frequencies remain at 5.2 GHz according to the capture. As for the E-cores, they are all flashed here at 4 GHz (3.90 GHz in Turbo for the Core i9-12900K).
The cream of the crop Core i9-12900K
Concretely, it is probable that the Core i9-12900KS (S for Special Edition ?) are exceptional Core i9-12900K, in other words “binned” processors, sorted and selected for their increased tolerance to overclocking, like what Silicon Lottery did in particular.
For the rest, they are similar to the Core i9-12900K / KF: they naturally keep the 8 Golden Cove / 8 Gracemont cores and the 30 MB of L3 cache.
Finally, the value PL1 (which corresponds to the TDP) will most certainly be maintained at 125 W. However, it is not excluded that the PL2, initially set at 241 W, may change a little.
On the same subject :
Alder Lake: what temperature for the Core i5-12400 with its standard Intel cooling?
Source: Intel
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