In the last couple of years, intel hasn’t maintained the lead in innovating industry-leading chips that we have known them for since the 1980s. The lack of innovation could be one of the reasons Apple decided to start making its chips instead of using intel’s. However, with their new 12th gen desktop chips, things are about to change!
Intel finally announced the long-awaited 12th gen processors on 5th November. However, this was not like any other announcement intel has done in previous years. This time they had to respond to Apple’s M1 and AMD Ryzen 9 chips that have been making headlines for the last 12 months. The good news is they managed to pull this off because, after the announcement, everyone was convinced that intel was back in the game.
Features of the 12th gen chips
Intel announced three major lineups, including the Core i9, Core i7, and Core i5. All these lineups of desktop chips were manufactured using intel’s new 7nm process. The previous generation of chips was made using the 10nm process that was still behind AMD’s flagship chips built on the 7nm process. Let’s look at the key feature for each of these new chips.
Intel Core i9 Features
Core count: 16 cores (8 efficiency cores and 8 performance cores)
Base clock speed: 2.4ghz for the efficiency cores and 3.2 for the performance cores
Maximum clock speed: Up to 5.2ghz for the performance cores and 3.9 for efficiency core
Total threads: 24 threads
L3 cache: 30MB
Maximum RAM: Up to 128GB DDR4 or DDR5 RAM
Intel Core i7 features
Core count: 12cores (4 efficiency cores and 8 performance cores)
Base clock speed: 2.7ghz for the efficiency cores and 3.6ghz for the performance cores
Maximum clock speed: Up to 5ghz for the performance cores and 3.8ghz for efficiency core
Total threads: 20 threads
L3 cache: 25MB intel smart cache
Maximum RAM: Up to 128GB DDR4 or DDR5 RAM
Intel Core i5 features
Core count: 10 cores (4 efficiency cores and 6 performance cores)
Base clock speed: 2.8ghz for the efficiency cores and 3.7ghz for the performance cores
Maximum clock speed: Up to 4.8ghz for performance cores and 3.6ghz for efficiency cores
Total threads: 20threads
L3 cache: 20MB intel smart cache
Maximum RAM: Up to 128GB DDR4 or DDR5 RAM
So, why are these chips game-changing?
- They are over 50% faster than the previous generation
The early benchmarks made show that the 12th gen chips are 50% faster than 11th gen chips. This is mainly due to the new 7nm process and a slight increment in the maximum clock speeds these chips can achieve.
- They outperform AMD in most benchmarks
These chips also outperform AMD Ryzen 9 desktop chips in most of the CPU benchmarks. For the past couple of years, AMD’s chips have always been ahead of intel in most popular benchmarks. These 12th gen chips have changed this.
- They are more power-efficient
Due to the addition of efficiency cores, these 12th gen chips use less power to achieve the same performance compared to 11th gen chips.