Several consumers have already received the Intel Core i9-12900KS ‘Special Edition CPU ahead of schedule, thanks to retail sites that offered pre-orders and sales before the official debut. The chip is also available through Newegg for $799 US, which is the same MSRP as the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. This chip is now the most costly mainstream CPU available, as AMD Ryzen 9 5950X prices have plummeted to roughly $600-$700 US in anticipation for the Zen 4 ‘Ryzen 7000’ family, which will ship in the second half of 2022.
HXL (@9550Pro) was able to identify the 3DMark Benchmark results in the Fire Strike, Time Spy, and CPU Profile tests. In the Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme, and Fire Strike Ultra tests, the CPU received 44439 points, 44497 points, 41525 points, 20263 points in Time Spy, 9816 points in Time Spy Extreme, and 12462 points in the CPU profile tests. This is a performance increase of up to 15% and an average improvement of 6% over our own Core i9-12900K CPU sample.
The Intel Core i9-12900KS will cost $150 more than the Core i9-12900K and will have a 19W greater maximum turbo power limit than the ordinary model. It will have a significantly higher all-core and single-core boost speed of up to 5.5 GHz, but it will need a lot of cooling to stay within specifications. Overclockers may target its severely binned nature to set world records, and it may wind up as the world’s fastest clock CPU, but the 12900K will remain the better option in terms of price and performance.
The flagship processor in the 12th Gen Alder Lake Desktop CPU family will be the Intel Core i9-12900KS. It will have 16 cores (8+8) and 24 threads (16+8), including 8 Golden Cove cores and 8 Gracemont cores.
The P-cores (Golden Cove) will have a maximum boost frequency of up to 5.5 GHz with 1-2 active cores and 5.2 GHz with all cores active, while the E-cores (Gracemont) will have a maximum boost frequency of 3.90 GHz with 1-4 active cores and up to 3.7 GHz with all cores loaded. L3 cache will be 30 MB on the CPU.
The biggest difference is that Intel increased the basic TDP by 25 Watts over the Core i9-12900K to handle the higher frequency. As a result, the 12900KS will have a base TDP of 150W and a maximum turbo power rating of 260W, up to 19W. (vs 241W). Intel has yet to publicly announce the chip, but it is expected to do so in the coming days, and motherboard manufacturers have begun to release support BIOS with revised microcode for the device.
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Intel’s Core i9-12900KS is now being sold at Newegg
