Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs have been listed by a US retailer

Over in the US, the retailer Provantage has listed Intel’s upcoming 12th generation Core Alder Lake processors, giving the company’s next-gen flagship, the i9-12900K, a price tag of $605. 

If these prices are legitimate, Intel’s i9-12900K will be priced lower than AMD’s Ryzen 9 5950X processor (MSRP $799) and above AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X (MSRP $549). This suggests that Intel will be aiming to deliver to consumers more value than AMD, especially with their lower-end CPU models. 

Intel’s upcoming i7-12700K will allegedly cost around $421, while the company’s i5-12600K will cost $287. Cheaper KF series i5, i7, and i9 CPUs, which lack integrated graphics, will be available at discounted prices that are typical $20-$30 cheaper than their standard K counterparts.  

Below is a list of prices from Provantage, as reported by Videocardz. Note that the specifications of many of the CPUs below are incorrect, as Provantage is not listing the core counts of these hybrid-core CPUs correctly. Unlike traditional x86 CPU designs, Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs feature two CPU core designs. Intel calls these cores their Performance Cores (P-Cores) and Efficient Cores (E-Cores). 

Intel has previously stated that Alder Lake’s performance cores will deliver a 19% IPC uplift over today’s Rocket Lake series processors, enabling higher levels of single-threaded performance for the company’s latest processors. When combined with the throughput of Alder Lake’s Efficient cores, Alder Lake CPUs should deliver much more single-threaded and multi-threaded performance than their predecessors. This makes Alder Lake a big deal for Intel, but will it be enough to dethrone AMD?