Leaked benchmarks show Intel’s ‘Alder Lake’ Core i7 beating AMD’s top processor with DDR4 memory

Many PC technology enthusiasts and gamers are looking forward to the release of Intel’s 12th generation processors this fall. Codenamed “Alder Lake” this new batch of processors looks likely to deliver a big jump in performance when compared to the previous generation, finally letting Intel reclaim the performance crown it lost to its rival AMD when it comes to gaming.

And as the launch of the new Alder Lake processors looms closer, manufacturers are also gearing up to release a new batch of motherboards to accommodate Intel’s new processors, starting with the top end Z690 boards, which will also support the latest PC memory standard (DDR5 memory).

And likely a question that many PC gamers who are looking forward to upgrade to an Alder Lake processor have in their minds is whether a memory upgrade will also be needed to make the most of Intel’s CPUs?

This is because DDR5 memory is likely to be pretty expensive at launch, so upgraders would surely like to stick to their current DDR4 memory for the time being and make the switch later on.

And leaked benchmarks which emerged on Pugetbench (as spotted by twitter user @TUM_APISAK) suggest that you won’t be needing the latest and greatest DDR5 memory in order to make the most of Alder Lake, as was recently reported on Tom’s Hardware.

The tests were done on a machine equipped with a Z690 motherboard, a whopping 128 GB of DDR4 memory (clocked at 3200 MHz), a Nvidia GeForce RT 3070 graphics card and a 12th gen Intel Core i7-12700K processor.

The benchmark results certainly speak well for Intel’s SKU, as it managed to beat AMD’s top of the line Ryzen 9 5950X in Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

The Core i7-12700K managed a score of 1114 in Adobe Premiere Pro, while the Ryzen 9 5950X scored 981, meaning the Alder Lake part was almost 14 % faster than AMD’s top Ryzen when running with DDR4 memory in this benchmark.

Meanwhile, the Core i7 edged ahead in Adobe After Effects (1565 vs 1528) and Photoshop (1244 vs 1230) but by a slimer margin.

Granted, these are not gaming benchmarks but still offer evidence of how strong Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake line-up will be. And we did recently see Intel’s Alder Lake Core i9 beat the same AMD processor in the Ashes of Singularity benchmark too…

Of course, leaked benchmark results should always be taken with a grain of salt, as Intel is yet to release its new Alder Lake processors, plus there’s also the fact that the tests were run with Microsoft’s Windows 11 Pro OS, which has only been in the wild for a while and also contains optimizations to boost hybrid CPUs (and it may cause a performance dip for AMD Ryzen CPUs as AMD has reported).

Nonetheless, fans of the Blue Team (as Intel is known to its fans) will surely be looking forward to the launch of Alder Lake this fall. This is something which will also give people who have been running a tired, old processor for a while a reason to upgrade. And the fact Alder Lake can seemingly deliver great performance with current DDR4 memory is a plus too…

Of course, there’s also AMD and its next generation of Ryzen processors, which could surprise Intel with their increased performance. For the time being, though, the launch of Alder Lake is one event that PC gamers and technology enthusiasts will surely be waiting for this fall.