The Fastest Gaming CPU: Intel's 12-9000K

Simply put, this is the fastest gaming CPU that you can buy right now, topping the chart pretty much 90% of the time. Having said that, the gains are marginal compared to last year's Ryzen 5000 chips and even over Intel's i5-12600K in fact, if you're looking for a new gaming-focused CPU, the 12-9000K simply can't be beaten. It's pretty much as fast as the more expensive i9-12900K in a lot of these games.

Gaming Benchmarks

We've taken some popular gaming benchmarks to see how the Intel Core i9-12,9000K performs compared to AMD's Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X. In Cyberpunk 2077, which is one of the most demanding games for CPUs, the 12-9000K showed the best performance, with a slight lead over the two Ryzen 9 chips.

Hybrid Workloads

We also tested some hybrid workloads to see how the 12-9000K performs in more real-world scenarios. We ran OBS while recording and simultaneously running the benchmark for F1 2021. While we don't get a significant performance boost, it's interesting to note that the 12-9000K does lead the Ryzen 9 5900X by a margin of about 12.

Proxy Transcoding Benchmark

However, when we take the proxy transcoding benchmark and run it in the background while gaming, the 12-9000K leads the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X by a significant margin. This could be due to Intel's new Thread Director technology or just poor optimization on AMD's part.

Overclocking

As for overclocking, we plan on doing a follow-up video for this one because we believe there is a lot more optimization to be had for the 12-9000K compared to what you're getting out of the box. With a load voltage of 1.21 volts, we were able to achieve 5Ghz on the performance cores and 4.2Ghz on the efficiency cores.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, the Intel Core i9-12,9000K is an excellent CPU that beats AMD's Ryzen 9 5900X in everything and even the more expensive 5950X in most cases. It seems like the first i9 processor from Intel that really deserves that core i9 title. I mean, the 10900K and the 11900K don't even come close to this level of performance. This is a massive step in the right direction for Intel, and it's huge competition for AMD.

Building a New Machine

If you're building a new enthusiast-grade machine, the 12-9000K is an excellent option. However, if you do need to render on the CPU, you still have a monster 16 cores at your disposal. And even if you don't need to do that, it's still cheaper than a Ryzen 5950X.

Memory Upgrade

As for whether you should go for DDR4 versus DDR5 memory kits, the most economic option at the moment is to go with a low-latency 3200MHz DDR4 kit running synced with the memory controller in gear one. Not only is that the best value option, but even when it comes to performance, sometimes you're actually beating a DDR5 5200MHz kit in some production workloads.

Disclaimer

AMD is looking to follow up this Intel launch with a 3D cache update for their current ships in early 2022, so if you don't need to upgrade right away, I would highly recommend waiting to see what the competition looks like.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right so yesterday we had a look at the i5 12600k which is easily the best 300 cpu that you can buy right now if you're interested i will have that linked down below but today we're reviewing the big boy the i9 12 900 k and just like the i5 we're getting two different types of cores here we're getting eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores all in all it's a 16 core 24 threaded processor turboing up to 5.2 gigahertz on the performance cores and 3.9 on those smaller efficiency calls and what's really interesting is that pricing should come in around the 600 us mark that means not too different to the 12 core ryzen 5900x and a good chunk below amd 16 core the ryzen 5950x so let's take a look at performance i've tested every cpu heap head with an rtx 3080 and 32 gigabytes of ddr4 clocked at 3200 megahertz cr14 that is except for the new older lake cpus where i've primarily tested with a ddr5 5200 megahertz kit but the performance difference between these two kits honestly is not that different from what i've tested so far tomorrow though i will be doing a more focused video on ddr4 versus ddr5 to just evaluate the performance differences a little bit better and especially testing this 6000mhz kit from g-skill so definitely stay tuned for that i've also used a 360 ml cooler for all of my testing here the msi s360 and that is an important note because the new i9 does get pretty toasty this will vary heavily between which motherboard you're using and which applications you're running but here in blender the 12900k was chugging back around 230 watts out of the box with cpu temps looking very warm considering that we're using an open test bench with a 360 ml liquid cooler surprisingly it gets even warmer when running the new version of cinebench with power exceeding 260 watts and cpu temps for the performance cores well into the 90s so is the new 12 900k an absolute heater is the new thermal interface design just completely pointless well not really because part of this is just kind of due to the motherboard's design and how they're configured to run the cpus and most of the time it is just completely just sub-optimal we've actually seen the same thing happen with the 10900k and the 11900k where the motherboards are just running a bit more higher voltage than they really should be that might be enough to push a core i9 cpu over the edge especially when you're running an unlocked power limit so bottom line i would highly recommend putting some time aside to better optimize the voltage and power that your 12 900k runs at if you plan on buying one because default motherboard settings are usually very sub-optimal otherwise granted that you're not running into any thermal problems we're looking at boost clocks for all eight performance cores sitting at a speedy 4.9 gigahertz and all eight efficiency cores still running at a respectable 3.7 so what does this mean for production workloads well cinebench shows just how strong the new i9 12 900k actually is beating the rival 5900x here by a monster 32 and even beating the more expensive ryzen 5950x by about 9 as for single-threaded performance well that gets even more impressive about 25 percent faster than the two ryzen 9 processors absolutely insane when we're looking at cinebench here in v-ray though ryzen is definitely a bit more competitive the 5950x is still the fastest consumer-grade cpu for this task but the 12900k honestly is not far behind and is a fair bit cheaper next up i compared how fast these cpus could transcode a bunch of 4k footage using adobe media encoder the purpose of this is to take heavy high resolution 4k footage and transcode that to lighter easier to work with files called proxies which for some workflows are absolutely necessary in some video production workflows especially when you're working with really stubborn compressed footage this step is pretty much essential and it can take a long time so transcoding about 50 gigabytes of 4k footage here intel's older lake is looking really really good overall the i9 can save us about five and a half minutes compared to either of the ryzen 9 processors or another way of looking at this is that we save about seven seconds per gigabyte of footage so if you're working with 500 gigabytes of footage for example which is not too uncommon almost an hour of time will be saved we can also see that this workflow doesn't scale that well with big increases in core count and even the i5 is pretty optimized for this specific workflow even in pure video exporting something that ryzen has been absolutely dominating in recently intel reclaimed their former dominance now it's not by much it's also a year later than ryzen 5000 and with much more power consumption i will add but it is a big step for intel in the right direction rendering performance in blender is quite similar between ryzen 9 and the new intel i9 basically a 15 swing either way still though i would probably pick the new 12 900k here if i was building an all-out rendering focused machine you're likely going to be rendering on an rtx gpu anyway and the strongest single threaded performance of the new i9 means that it can pick up the slack in those other tasks and effects that might be exclusively single threaded now let's talk about gaming simply put this is the fastest gaming cpu that you can buy right now topping the chart pretty much 90 of the time having said that the gains are marginal compared to the one year ryzen 5000 chips and even over intel's i5 12 600k in fact if you're looking for a new gaming focus cpu the 12600k simply can't be beaten it's pretty much as fast as the more expensive 12 900k in a lot of these games so we'll move through these gaming benchmarks pretty quickly because honestly it's just not worth wasting time picking out the 1 or so differences in the end it was cyberpunk 2077 that showed the best performance for the new i9 particularly the 1 low performance which is about 12 ahead of the two ryzen 9 chips next up i wanted to test a couple of hybrid workloads so we've taken obs and started recording on the cpu and at the same time run the benchmark for f1 2021 and we do get a bit more scaling for the new 12 900k but it's not by a whole lot likely because the recording just isn't that demanding what's really interesting though is when we take the proxy transcoding benchmark and run that in the background in addition to gaming there we see some really interesting results i'm not sure yet if this is the magic work of intel's new thread director and the hybrid architecture maybe it's ddr5 or just poor optimization on amd's and but it definitely is a dramatic lead here for the 12 900k then as for overclocking i do plan on doing a follow-up video for this one because i do believe there is a lot more optimization to be had for the 12900k compared to what you're getting out of the box for now though 5 gigahertz seems achievable on the performance cores while 4.2 seems like a nice bump on those efficiency cores this was with a load voltage of 1.21 volts which means both a performance increase and a power decrease compared to what you're getting at stock again follow-up video on how to do this will be coming out soon so yeah overall closing thoughts the 12-900k is a really solid cpu it beats amd's ryzen 9 5900x in everything and even the more expensive 5950x in most in fact for me at least this seems like the first i9 processor from intel that really deserves that core i9 title i mean the 10900k and the 11900k they don't even come close to the this is just a massive step in the right direction for intel and really some huge competition for amd if you are building a new enthusiast grade machine this is an excellent option an argument still can be made of course for the ryzen 5950x for some cpu-only rendering workflows but i do feel that the number of those workflows is decreasing as gpu rendering with rtx becomes a lot more popular and significantly more powerful than rendering on any cpu like i mentioned earlier i do think an argument can definitely be made for the faster single threaded performance of the 12 900 k which can help uh pick up the slack in those tasks that aren't as multi-threaded and i mean even if you do need to render on the cpu you still have a monster 16 cores at your disposal which uh you know let's not forget that it is still cheaper than a ryzen 5950x as for whether you should go for ddr4 versus a ddr5 memory kit though the most economic option at the moment is to go with a low latency 3200 megahertz ddr4 kit running that synced with the memory controller in gear one not only is that the best value option but i mean even when it comes to performance sometimes you are actually beating a ddr5 5200 megahertz kit in some production workloads only to lose a few fps when it comes to gaming again more testing coming up talking about this in depth very soon and again just a little disclaimer amd are looking to follow up this intel launch with a 3d cache update for their current ships in early 2022 so if you don't need to upgrade right away then i would highly recommend waiting to see what the competition looks like so again for production focus systems enthusiast builds stuff like that i would say core i9 12900k paired with like a 3080 that would be an excellent say rendering focused configuration in my opinion and again it's just really good to see intel moving in the right direction with the 12900k definitely we'll leave these linked down below so definitely check them out as always a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next oneall right so yesterday we had a look at the i5 12600k which is easily the best 300 cpu that you can buy right now if you're interested i will have that linked down below but today we're reviewing the big boy the i9 12 900 k and just like the i5 we're getting two different types of cores here we're getting eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores all in all it's a 16 core 24 threaded processor turboing up to 5.2 gigahertz on the performance cores and 3.9 on those smaller efficiency calls and what's really interesting is that pricing should come in around the 600 us mark that means not too different to the 12 core ryzen 5900x and a good chunk below amd 16 core the ryzen 5950x so let's take a look at performance i've tested every cpu heap head with an rtx 3080 and 32 gigabytes of ddr4 clocked at 3200 megahertz cr14 that is except for the new older lake cpus where i've primarily tested with a ddr5 5200 megahertz kit but the performance difference between these two kits honestly is not that different from what i've tested so far tomorrow though i will be doing a more focused video on ddr4 versus ddr5 to just evaluate the performance differences a little bit better and especially testing this 6000mhz kit from g-skill so definitely stay tuned for that i've also used a 360 ml cooler for all of my testing here the msi s360 and that is an important note because the new i9 does get pretty toasty this will vary heavily between which motherboard you're using and which applications you're running but here in blender the 12900k was chugging back around 230 watts out of the box with cpu temps looking very warm considering that we're using an open test bench with a 360 ml liquid cooler surprisingly it gets even warmer when running the new version of cinebench with power exceeding 260 watts and cpu temps for the performance cores well into the 90s so is the new 12 900k an absolute heater is the new thermal interface design just completely pointless well not really because part of this is just kind of due to the motherboard's design and how they're configured to run the cpus and most of the time it is just completely just sub-optimal we've actually seen the same thing happen with the 10900k and the 11900k where the motherboards are just running a bit more higher voltage than they really should be that might be enough to push a core i9 cpu over the edge especially when you're running an unlocked power limit so bottom line i would highly recommend putting some time aside to better optimize the voltage and power that your 12 900k runs at if you plan on buying one because default motherboard settings are usually very sub-optimal otherwise granted that you're not running into any thermal problems we're looking at boost clocks for all eight performance cores sitting at a speedy 4.9 gigahertz and all eight efficiency cores still running at a respectable 3.7 so what does this mean for production workloads well cinebench shows just how strong the new i9 12 900k actually is beating the rival 5900x here by a monster 32 and even beating the more expensive ryzen 5950x by about 9 as for single-threaded performance well that gets even more impressive about 25 percent faster than the two ryzen 9 processors absolutely insane when we're looking at cinebench here in v-ray though ryzen is definitely a bit more competitive the 5950x is still the fastest consumer-grade cpu for this task but the 12900k honestly is not far behind and is a fair bit cheaper next up i compared how fast these cpus could transcode a bunch of 4k footage using adobe media encoder the purpose of this is to take heavy high resolution 4k footage and transcode that to lighter easier to work with files called proxies which for some workflows are absolutely necessary in some video production workflows especially when you're working with really stubborn compressed footage this step is pretty much essential and it can take a long time so transcoding about 50 gigabytes of 4k footage here intel's older lake is looking really really good overall the i9 can save us about five and a half minutes compared to either of the ryzen 9 processors or another way of looking at this is that we save about seven seconds per gigabyte of footage so if you're working with 500 gigabytes of footage for example which is not too uncommon almost an hour of time will be saved we can also see that this workflow doesn't scale that well with big increases in core count and even the i5 is pretty optimized for this specific workflow even in pure video exporting something that ryzen has been absolutely dominating in recently intel reclaimed their former dominance now it's not by much it's also a year later than ryzen 5000 and with much more power consumption i will add but it is a big step for intel in the right direction rendering performance in blender is quite similar between ryzen 9 and the new intel i9 basically a 15 swing either way still though i would probably pick the new 12 900k here if i was building an all-out rendering focused machine you're likely going to be rendering on an rtx gpu anyway and the strongest single threaded performance of the new i9 means that it can pick up the slack in those other tasks and effects that might be exclusively single threaded now let's talk about gaming simply put this is the fastest gaming cpu that you can buy right now topping the chart pretty much 90 of the time having said that the gains are marginal compared to the one year ryzen 5000 chips and even over intel's i5 12 600k in fact if you're looking for a new gaming focus cpu the 12600k simply can't be beaten it's pretty much as fast as the more expensive 12 900k in a lot of these games so we'll move through these gaming benchmarks pretty quickly because honestly it's just not worth wasting time picking out the 1 or so differences in the end it was cyberpunk 2077 that showed the best performance for the new i9 particularly the 1 low performance which is about 12 ahead of the two ryzen 9 chips next up i wanted to test a couple of hybrid workloads so we've taken obs and started recording on the cpu and at the same time run the benchmark for f1 2021 and we do get a bit more scaling for the new 12 900k but it's not by a whole lot likely because the recording just isn't that demanding what's really interesting though is when we take the proxy transcoding benchmark and run that in the background in addition to gaming there we see some really interesting results i'm not sure yet if this is the magic work of intel's new thread director and the hybrid architecture maybe it's ddr5 or just poor optimization on amd's and but it definitely is a dramatic lead here for the 12 900k then as for overclocking i do plan on doing a follow-up video for this one because i do believe there is a lot more optimization to be had for the 12900k compared to what you're getting out of the box for now though 5 gigahertz seems achievable on the performance cores while 4.2 seems like a nice bump on those efficiency cores this was with a load voltage of 1.21 volts which means both a performance increase and a power decrease compared to what you're getting at stock again follow-up video on how to do this will be coming out soon so yeah overall closing thoughts the 12-900k is a really solid cpu it beats amd's ryzen 9 5900x in everything and even the more expensive 5950x in most in fact for me at least this seems like the first i9 processor from intel that really deserves that core i9 title i mean the 10900k and the 11900k they don't even come close to the this is just a massive step in the right direction for intel and really some huge competition for amd if you are building a new enthusiast grade machine this is an excellent option an argument still can be made of course for the ryzen 5950x for some cpu-only rendering workflows but i do feel that the number of those workflows is decreasing as gpu rendering with rtx becomes a lot more popular and significantly more powerful than rendering on any cpu like i mentioned earlier i do think an argument can definitely be made for the faster single threaded performance of the 12 900 k which can help uh pick up the slack in those tasks that aren't as multi-threaded and i mean even if you do need to render on the cpu you still have a monster 16 cores at your disposal which uh you know let's not forget that it is still cheaper than a ryzen 5950x as for whether you should go for ddr4 versus a ddr5 memory kit though the most economic option at the moment is to go with a low latency 3200 megahertz ddr4 kit running that synced with the memory controller in gear one not only is that the best value option but i mean even when it comes to performance sometimes you are actually beating a ddr5 5200 megahertz kit in some production workloads only to lose a few fps when it comes to gaming again more testing coming up talking about this in depth very soon and again just a little disclaimer amd are looking to follow up this intel launch with a 3d cache update for their current ships in early 2022 so if you don't need to upgrade right away then i would highly recommend waiting to see what the competition looks like so again for production focus systems enthusiast builds stuff like that i would say core i9 12900k paired with like a 3080 that would be an excellent say rendering focused configuration in my opinion and again it's just really good to see intel moving in the right direction with the 12900k definitely we'll leave these linked down below so definitely check them out as always a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next one\n"