Blocked Alder Lake-S processors (out of the K-series) are on the way and everything points to a presentation at CES 2022 in Las Vegas. Without an official list from Intel that we can offer you, momomo_us (another of the well-connected product leakers) has posted a preview of what’s to come.
Intel last month launched the 12th generation of Core processors, Alder Lake, starting with those designed to power desktop computers like the Core i9-12900K that we had a chance to analyze in depth. It is common for manufacturers to start at the top and the first to be marketed were aimed at the high end, the “K” and “KF” with unlocked multiplier for gamers and enthusiastsAlong with the new motherboards, also the top of the range with the Z690 chipset.
As not all users practice overclocking or need that level of performance, nor can they afford the high price that the high-end demands, Intel will market other series such as the ones we are dealing with in this article and cheaper motherboards with B660 and H670 chipsets.
Alder Lake-S locked
Intel is preparing an expansion of this line with -at least- seven additional new SKUs, plus other variants that you will see with the suffix “F” and that lack integrated graphics. The image below shows the following to be traded, according to rumors:
Above, we see a powerful Core i9-12900 only missing the unlocked multiplier. It has 8 high-performance cores plus 8 efficient cores for 24 total threads and a frequency higher than 5 GHz. In the mid-range, this Core i5-12400 With 6 cores and 12 threads, 18 Mbytes of cache and a frequency of 4.4 GHz, it can be interesting for many. As an entry-level, we see a quad-core Core i3-12100.
Core i5 SKUs are based on “H0” silicon, physically have only six “Golden Cove” P-cores and no high-efficiency E-core cluster. Neither do the Core i3s. All include an integrated graphic Xe LP Gen12, but some will have “F” variants that do not include this graph.
These locked Alder Lake-S processors (Core i5 and Core i3) will support DDR4 and also DDR5 memory, but the question is if they will be compatible with the new PCI-Express Gen 5 interface. The rumors that have come up so far are that the B660 chipset lacks this support.
As for the Core i3s, it is believed that they are also based on “H0” silicon and simply have two of their cores disabled. We wish there were some model with efficient cores, but we will have to wait for the official launch of Intel that in all probability we will see at CES. Throughout 2022, other Alder Lake CPUs will arrive aimed at laptops or servers, since Intel will cover all the market segments in which I work under this architecture.
