The freshly leaked benchmarks of the Core i9-12900KS 5.5 GHz reveal that it is faster than the Ryzen 9 5950X in single and multi-threaded performance tests, indicating that Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake portfolio continues to outperform AMD’s Ryzen products.

The Intel Core i9-12900KS isn’t due to ship until next month, but it’s already been listed and sold by some vendors. Some early adopters received their chips and proceeded to photograph the box, while others shared benchmarks. Seby9123, a Reddit member, was one of the first to obtain the chip and has released the first benchmarks of the retail version.

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).

The user was using an ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 APEX motherboard with 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6200 (CL36) memory modules for the benchmarks. The cooling solution is unknown, although the Intel Core i9-12900KS CPU appears to have been tested in both stock and overclocked conditions in the Cinebench R23 benchmark.

The CPU has some unusual clock speeds, with two P-Cores running at 5.5 GHz, the rest at 5.2 GHz, and the E-Cores at 4.0 GHz. The chip earned 2162 points in single-core tests and 29164 points in multi-core testing with these clocks.

The CPU was overclocked to 5.4 GHz across all P-Cores and 4.2 GHz across all E-Cores because it can be overclocked and does not have any restrictions like the Ryzen 7 5800X3D. The CPU V-Core voltage maxed out at 1.418V, which is on the high side, and the CPU got extremely hot, approaching 100C while using an astounding 319W of power, but it still managed to exceed the 30K mark on Cinebench R23.

In another run, the user simply enabled the P-Cores and overclocked them to 5.3 GHz at 1.341V. In the multi-threaded benchmark, the CPU scored 20510 points and drew a maximum of 187W of power. The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, for example, scores roughly 21K points with 12 cores and 24 threads, whereas the P-Cores only have 8 cores and 16 threads.

The Intel Core i9-12900KS is not only 6% quicker than the Core i9-12900K at stock, but it also outperforms the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X by up to 14%. And that’s only when it comes to multi-threaded performance, which is Zen 3’s strong point.

The Intel CPU is roughly 35% faster in single-threaded performance, which is outstanding and will help Intel maintain its king of the hill reputation in gaming even after the 5800X3D launches. The KS is more expensive than the normal K model and consumes more power, but it is designed for the enthusiast who wants the quickest processor available.