Intel Core i9-12900KF: specs and benchmarks

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Combined performance score

Summary

Intel started Core i9-12900KF sales 4 November 2021 at a recommended price of $564. Based on an Alder Lake, Golden Cove, Gracemont architecture, this desktop processor is primarily aimed at home systems. It has 16 cores and 24 threads, and is based on Intel 7 manufacturing technology, with a max turbo frequency of 5200 MHz and an unlocked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA1700 processor with a TDP of 125 Watt and a maximum temperature of 72 °C. It supports DDR5-4800, DDR4-3200 memory.

It provides good benchmark performance at 26.81% of a leader's which is AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX.

Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WXRyzen ThreadripperPRO 7995WX
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General info

Core i9-12900KF processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in performance ranking151
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Value for money71.51
Market segmentDesktop processor
SeriesIntel Core i9
Architecture codenameAlder Lake, Golden Cove, Gracemont (2021)
Release date4 November 2021 (2 years old)
Launch price (MSRP)$564of 305 (Core i7-870)
Current price$376 (0.7x MSRP)of 17802 (Threadripper PRO 7995WX)
Value for money

Performance per price, higher is better.

Technical specs

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores16 (Hexadeca-Core)
Threads24
Base clock speed3.2 GHzof 4.7 (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed5.2 GHzof 6.2 (Core i9-14900KS)
Bus support8 × 16 GT/s
L1 cache80K (per core)of 7475.2 (Apple M2 Pro 10-Core)
L2 cache1.25 MB (per core)of 36 (Apple M2 Max)
L3 cache30 MB (shared)of 768 (EPYC 7373X)
Chip lithographyIntel 7 nmof 3 (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size215.25 mm220.5 mm × 10.5 mm
Maximum core temperature100 °Cof 110 (Atom x7-E3950)
Maximum case temperature (TCase)72 °Cof 105 (Core i7-5950HQ)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility+
Unlocked multiplierYes

Compatibility

Information on Core i9-12900KF compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketFCLGA1700
Power consumption (TDP)125 Wattof 400 (Xeon Platinum 9282)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i9-12900KF. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2
AES-NI+
AVX+
vPro+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Speed Shift+
Turbo Boost Technology2.0
Hyper-Threading Technology+
Idle States+
Thermal Monitoring+
Turbo Boost Max 3.0+
StatusLaunched

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

EDB+
Secure Key+
OS Guard+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i9-12900KF's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR5-4800, DDR4-3200of 5600 (Ryzen 9 7940HS)
Maximum memory size128 GBof 786 (Xeon E5-2670 v3)
Max memory channels2of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth76.8 GB/sof 460.8 (EPYC 9124)

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version5.0 and 4.0
PCI Express lanes20of 128 (EPYC 7551P)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i9-12900KF. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

i9-12900KF 26.81

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

Benchmark coverage: 68%

i9-12900KF 41174

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

Benchmark coverage: 42%

i9-12900KF 2542

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

Benchmark coverage: 42%

i9-12900KF 14891

Gaming performance

Relative perfomance

Overall Core i9-12900KF performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop CPUs.


AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i9-12900KF is Ryzen 9 5900X, which is slower by 5% and lower by 11 positions in our ranking.

Ryzen 9 5900XRyzen 95900X
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Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i9-12900KF:

Intel Core i9-12900KF 100

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

i9-12900KCore i912900K
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i7-13700FCore i713700F
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Ryzen 9 5900XRyzen 95900X
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Ryzen 9 3950XRyzen 93950X
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i9-12900KSCore i912900KS
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i5-13600KCore i513600K
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Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i9-12900KF, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i9-12900KF in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 6261 configurations based on Core i9-12900KF in our database.

RTX 4090 GeForce RTX 4090
6% (374/6261)
RTX 4080 GeForce RTX 4080
1% (61/6261)
RTX 4070 Ti GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
2.1% (130/6261)
RX 7900 XTX Radeon RX 7900 XTX
0.08% (5/6261)
RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
20.2% (1262/6261)
RX 7900 XT Radeon RX 7900 XT
0.1% (8/6261)
RX 6950 XT Radeon RX 6950 XT
0.2% (14/6261)

User ratings: view and submit

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


4 452 votes

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Questions and comments

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