PC gamers and technology enthusiasts the world over surely are looking forward to the launch of Intel’s 12th gen processors, which according to the company would be coming in the last quarter of the year.
Codenamed “Alder Lake” this new generation of processors differ from what Intel has delivered before in the sense that they feature a hybrid architecture. Boasting both “performance” and “energy efficient” cores on the same chip, Alder Lake could deliver the biggest gen-to-gen performance jump yet seen from Intel.
Of course, all this new-fangled tech won’t come cheap, especially at launch date, and a recent leak from a European retailer suggests that those wanting to get hold of an Intel Alder Lake processor this year will have to dig deep into their wallets…
As reported on Tom’s Hardware, Intel’s flagship processor, the Intel Core i9-12900K will cost €736 ($872 US dollars) according to this leak, which is quite a bit more than what Intel is charging for the top of the line 11th gen chip, the Intel Core i9-11900K, which at the time of writing is available for less than $550 US dollars on Amazon.
Meanwhile the Intel Core i7-12700K will presumably hit shelves at €524 ($621 US dollars), while the Intel Core i5-12600K will be launching at €365 ($432 US dollars), all these parts being more expensive than the equivalent 11th gen SKUs. Also, there are the “KF” parts which lack built-in graphics, and cost about $40 US dollars less each, but are still more expensive than their 11th gen equivalent CPUs.
These prices were spotted by a Twitter user who uses the handle @momomo_us, and include what’s known as BTW (Belgian and Dutch sales tax). So on one hand the higher pricing (especially of the flagship i9-12900K, which boasts 16 cores) could reflect the fact that Intel sees this processor as a challenger to AMD’s world-conquering Ryzen 9 5950X, which is currently the best gaming processor money can buy, or either this retailer could be pumping up prices expecting a very high demand for Intel’s new processors this fall, as Tom’s Hardware points out.
Either way, we already know that Alder Lake has the potential to be special – a leaked benchmark which emerged earlier this year showed an underclocked Alder Lake processor outperforming an i9-9900K and doing pretty well against AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs.
Here’s hoping, though, that this won’t be a paper launch like that of Intel’s 8th gen, “Coffee Lake” processors back in 2017, with most gamers having to wait months in order to get hold one of these CPUs due to their general unavailability at launch.
But after having lost market share to AMD’s world-conquering Ryzen processors in the last couple of years, Intel will surely want to deliver a great product with Alder Lake, so it would be a great thing for those looking to upgrade their gaming PC or wanting to get hold of a new one featuring an Alder Lake processor if Intel’s new CPUs really are the bee’s knees, something we’ll find out later this year.
Tiger Lake 11th gen (Intel Corporation)