Intels 12th Gen Alder Lake chips usher in a new generation of x86 processors

Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake chips have finally arrived, ushering in a new era of the company’s chips, lead by the flagship Core i9-12900K CPU, which Intel promises is the “world’s best gaming processor.”

The company has been teasing Alder Lake since CES 2021 in January, and it revealed a lot more details on the specifics of its hybrid architecture approach at its 2021 Architecture Day in July. But today’s announcement marks the culmination of those efforts in the form of actual hardware that you can buy and use.

Intel is kicking things off with three new chips, led by the Core i9-12900K model, which offers a total of 16 cores (split between eight performance forced “P-cores” and eight efficient “E-cores”) and 24 threads and is capable...

Continue reading…