The Ryzen 7 5800X does fair better in the Photoshop benchmark, but even so the 12700KF was still 7% faster with a score of 1312 pts, making it just 4% slower than the 12900K.

Here comes our second Alder Lake review after looking at the flagship Core i9 on launch date, and this time we're testing the more mainstream Core i7-12700KF. For those of you wondering, the 12700KF and 12700K are the same CPU with the minor exception of the integrated graphics (Intel UHD 770) which are disabled in the KF version. Besides from that omission, they're exactly the same, although the KF chip will also save you some money.Another fairly heavily GPU limited game is Horizon Zero Dawn. When using these high-end CPUs the 5800X took the lead, beating the new 12700KF by a 5% margin. Not exactly a devastating difference, but this one was a win for AMD. As we said in our 12900K review, there's no tangible difference in gaming performance between most of these high-end CPUs as you'll almost always be GPU limited in today's games, even with an RTX 3090 or 6900 XT at 1080p with dialed-down quality settings. Whatever the case may be, Intel crushes AMD in this benchmark as the 12700KF was 34% faster than the 5800X. Sure, you can argue that the Ryzen 7 5800X is a year old by now, but that doesn't change the fact that the 12700KF is an impressive CPU that often destroys the 5800X in all-core workloads as seen in Cinebench, Chromium, Blender and basically any other application that leans of these CPUs hard. Starting with Cinebench R23, we find some brutal results for AMD, here the 12700KF is seen delivering almost 50% more performance than the 5800X and 54% more than its predecessor, the 11700K. In fact, the new 12th-gen Core i7 processor was 11% faster than the 5900X, a part that costs ~25% more.

With a TDP of 125 W, the Core i7-12700KF consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. Intel's processor supports DDR4 and DDR5 memory with a dual-channel interface. For communication with other components in the computer, Core i7-12700KF uses a PCI-Express Gen 4 connection. This processor does not have integrated graphics, you will need a separate graphics card. Like Cinebench R23, the Chromium Code Compile results are just brutal for AMD. Here the 12700KF delivered 44% more performance than the 5800X and even managed to edge out the more expensive 5900X as it was just 12% slower than the Core i9-12900K. It's also incredible to see a 36% generational leap from the 11700K. Moreover, those running a 10th or 11th-gen Core processor, or any previous Intel processor for that matter, won't be able to upgrade to Alder Lake on their existing motherboard. So then, Alder Lake is for new PC builders, those doing away with their existing platform for something completely new. The 12700KF was 17% slower than the 12900K, which is a decent margin, and this will be a result of those missing E-cores, along with the smaller L3 cache and slightly lower operating frequencies. But still an incredible result, especially given the 12700KF is a little over 30% cheaper than the 12900KF. But it's not just multi-core applications. The mighty strong single-core performance of Alder Lake makes it a weapon for applications such as Adobe After Effects and Photoshop.

AMD had the edge on the Rainbow Six Siege testing, beating the 12700KF by a mere 3% margin, so gaming performance between these two CPUs looks to be nearly identical so far. The 12700KF did budget ahead for the average frame rate with a 5% margin, which is still rather insignificant, and the 1% low performance was identical. So even in the relatively CPU intensive Watch Dogs Legion we're looking at comparable performance between these two processors.

As you can see, the new Core i7 performs exceptionally well relative to the 5800X and in particular its predecessor, the 11700K. Basically we're looking at a 9% performance boost over the Ryzen 7 part and then 21% over the 11700K, so another impressive round of results for Intel. The Blender Open Data benchmark is another bloodbath with the 12700KF beating the 5800X by a 31% margin with 5900X-like performance. We're also once again looking at over a 30% improvement from Intel's previous generation counterpart. Power Consumption The new Core i7 processor was outright faster in Hitman 3, though the margins aren't extreme with the 12700KF up to 4% faster than the 5800X. Once again we're finding that despite the often massive difference in core-heavy applications, gaming performance is as close as it gets. When it comes to power draw while gaming, we see little difference between the CPUs tested. Whereas the 12700KF pushed total system power usage 31% higher in Blender, here we're looking at just a 5% increase over the 5800X when playing games. So it'd seem that gamers not need to concern themselves with CPU power draw for now, assuming they're mostly just gaming and not running core heavy applications, though as we've seen the 12700KF also does very well there anyway. 10 Game Average Max Turbo Frequency refers to the maximum single-core processor frequency that can be achieved with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology. See www.intel.com/technology/turboboost/ for more information and applicability of this technology.

Boxed Processor

When it comes to gaming, the 5800X and 12700KF are evenly matched, and there's no true winner. I could see myself happily gaming on either of these CPUs and their supporting platforms. Therefore arguing over which is the best gaming CPU is a complete waste of energy and we'll leave that to the good men and women of Reddit to work out. For testing 12th-gen Core series processors we've used the MSI Z690 Tomahawk Wi-Fi DDR4 motherboard. The Ryzen test system uses the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard with the latest BIOS update, and of course, all the latest Windows updates and drivers have also been installed. Finally, the last test system note worth mentioning is that all application and gaming data has been collected using the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. Then when it comes to decompression work, the 12700KF and 5800X are dead even, making them both around 17% slower than the 12900K. Now, due to the hybrid core design of Alder Lake, the 12700KF along with most of the 12th-gen processors are better of running Windows 11 and its improved thread scheduler for optimal performance. Therefore we've tested this and all other CPUs using a fresh install of Windows 11. That also includes Ryzen CPUs, especially after discovering that Ryzen gaming performance is typically a little faster using the more modern operating system. Now, when it comes to operating temperatures, the Core i7-12700KF was tested inside the Corsair Obsidian 500D with the glass doors closed. For cooling we've gone with the MSI CoreLiquid S360 as it's the only official LGA1700 cooler that we have on hand and here we see that the Core i7 processor peaked at 79 degrees after 30 minutes of looking at the Cinebench R23 multi-core test. That's quite hot, but it's also considerably better than the 96C the 12900K ran at under the same conditions.

Intel classifications are for general, educational and planning purposes only and consist of Export Control Classification Numbers (ECCN) and Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) numbers. Any use made of Intel classifications are without recourse to Intel and shall not be construed as a representation or warranty regarding the proper ECCN or HTS. Your company as an importer and/or exporter is responsible for determining the correct classification of your transaction. Here's a look at power consumption for the Blender benchmark and when compared to the 12900K, the new Core i7 model looks a lot more efficient. When compared to the 5900X, the 12900K pushed total system power usage 50% higher, for just 11% greater performance. The 12700K, on the other hand, pushed total system usage 24% higher but delivered 31% more performance doing so, and was therefore more efficient than the 5800X. That's a crazy turnaround given what we saw from the Core i9 model. The 12700KF also performed well in After Effects, producing a score of 2108 pts which placed it ahead of the Ryzen 9 5900X and just behind the 12900K, so a super result there and it also meant it was 8% faster than the 5800X. See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/hyper-threading/hyper-threading-technology.html?wapkw=hyper+threading for more information including details on which processors support Intel® HT Technology. The Core i7-12700KF destroyed the Adobe Premiere Pro 2021 benchmark with a score of 984 points, and that made it 10% faster than even the 12900K. We're not quite sure how that's possible, perhaps the higher E-cores count of the Core i9 part is to blame here, feeding them work in favor of the faster P-cores, so this could be a simple scheduling issue as there's no reason for the 12700KF to be faster.Some of the larger margins like what was seen in Age of Empires IV will evaporate almost entirely when jumping up to 1440p. When it comes to CPUs and gaming, good enough really is enough. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is heavily GPU limited when running high-end CPUs so again, the 5800X and 12700KF delivered the same level of performance, which was also comparable to other high-end CPUs such as the 12900K. Processors that support 64-bit computing on Intel® architecture require an Intel 64 architecture-enabled BIOS. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is about the most CPU demanding game we have to test with, especially in the village section of the game that we use for testing. Here the 12700KF was 4% faster than the 5800X when comparing the average frame rate and 2% slower for the 1% low. Either way performance was really close between these two competing parts. As expected, the single core performance is very mighty, here we're measuring P-core performance and this places the 12700KF at a 23% performance advantage when compared to the 5800X.