[Hardware] Intel Alder Lake Core i3-12100F CPU Is The Fastest Quad-Core Ever Made, Beats LN2 Overclocked Chips at Stock Clocks With Stock Cooler

[luminox™-]

 

While quad-core CPUs aren't as attractive as they used to be since they got replaced by 6 and 8 core offerings, it looks like they can offer some insane results when overclocked and the recently released Intel Alder Lake Core i3-12100F CPU does just that, offering the highest-performance of any quad-core CPU to date.

 

Intel Core i3-12100F Alder Lake CPU Flexes Its P-Core & AVX-512 Muscles, Crushes All Quad-Core LN2 Results With Stock Clocks & Stock Cooling

The Intel Core i3-12100F is an entry-level chip, in fact, it is the most entry-level LGA 1700 Alder Lake chip that you can buy for a price of just $97 US. The chip features 4 cores and 8 threads, all based on the Golden Cove 10nm ESF core architecture. The CPU has a base clock of 3.3 GHz and boosts up to 4.3 GHz. It has a base TDP of 58W and a maximum turbo power of 89W. The CPU comes with Intel's brand new Laminar RM1 series cooler which has adequate cooling capacity for these 65 Watt chips.

 

 

Well-known overclocker, Alva Jonatha or LUCKY_NOOB, used his Intel Core i3-12100F to run some benchmarks at the stock clocks with the stock CPU cooler and ended up with some impressive performance numbers. In the Y-Cruncher (PI-1B) benchmark, the CPU is now the fastest quad-core chip, even faster than an AMD Ryzen 3 5300G overclocked to 5.6 GHz on LN2. It only trails behind the Core i3-12100 with AIO cooling which is around 4% faster but compared to the AMD LN2 overclocked APU, the 12100F is up to 18% faster, an impressive showcase of its stock (AVX-512) performance. Even without AVX-512, the CPU offered a similar performance to an LN2 overclocked AMD chip.

 

That's not it though, the Intel Core i3-12100F also manages to deliver the same performance of an LN2 overclocked Ryzen 3 3100 CPU (5.6 GHz) at stock clocks in Cinebench R20. In GPUPI (1B), the i3 chip is faster than the Core i7-7740X (LN2 cooler at 7 GHz).

This is the highly disruptive performance of an entry-level chip and at stock, this should easily make the Alder Lake Core i3 CPUs the fastest of all quad cores in existence. It is also interesting to see just how much of a performance difference AVX-512 makes though unfortunately, Intel is forcing motherboard makers to do away with its support through an upcoming BIOS and all 600-series mainstream boards that are shipping now will come with that BIOS by default. Regardless of that, Intel's Core i3 and Core i5 Alder Lake CPUs will make for some really great budget gaming PCs when paired with DDR4 memory.

 

Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake Desktop CPU Specs "Preliminary"

CPU Name	P-Core Count	E-Core Count	Total Core / Thread	P-Core Base / Boost (Max)	P-Core Boost (All-Core)	E-Core Base / Boost	E-Core Boost (All-Core)	L3 Cache	TDP (PL1)	TDP (PL2)	Expected (MSRP) Price
Core i9-12900KS	8	8	16 / 24	3.2 / 5.5 GHz	5.2 GHz	2.4 / 3.9 GHz	3.7 GHz	30 MB	125W	TBC	TBC
Core i9-12900K	8	8	16 / 24	3.2 / 5.2 GHz	5.0 GHz	2.4 / 3.9 GHz	3.7 GHz	30 MB	125W	241W	$599 US
Core i9-12900	8	8	16 / 24	2.4 / 5.1 GHz	TBA	1.8 / 3.8 GHz	TBA	30 MB	65W	202W	$489 US $464 US (F)
Core i9-12900T	8	8	16 / 24	1.4 / 4.9 GHz	TBA	1.0 / 3.6 GHz	TBA	30 MB	35W	106W	$489 US
Core i7-12700K	8	4	12 / 20	3.6 / 5.0 GHz	4.7 GHz	2.7 / 3.8 GHz	3.6 GHz	25 MB	125W	190W	$419 US
Core i7-12700	8	4	12 / 20	2.1 / 4.9 GHz	TBA	1.6 / 3.6 GHz	TBA	25 MB	65W	180W	$339 US $314 US (F)
Core i7-12700T	8	4	12 / 20	1.4 / 4.7 GHz	TBA	1.0 / 3.4 GHz	TBA	25 MB	35W	99W	$339 US
Core i5-12600K	6	4	10 / 16	3.7 / 4.9 GHz	4.5 GHz	2.8 / 3.6 GHz	3.4 GHz	20 MB	125W	150W	$299 US
Core i5-12600	6	0	6 / 12	3.3 / 4.8 GHz	4.4 GHz	N/A	N/A	18 MB	65W	117W	$223 US
Core i5-12600T	6	0	6 / 12	2.1 / 4.6 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	18 MB	65W	74W	$223 US
Core i5-12500	6	0	6 / 12	3.0 / 4.6 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	18 MB	35W	117W	$202 US
Core i5-12500T	6	0	6 / 12	2.0 / 4.4 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	18 MB	35W	74W	$202 US
Core i5-12400	6	0	6 / 12	2.5 / 4.4 GHz	4.0 GHz	N/A	N/A	18 MB	65W	117W	$192 US $167 US (F)
Core i5-12400T	6	0	6 / 12	1.8 / 4.2 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	18 MB	35W	74W	$192 US
Core i3-12300	4	0	4 / 8	3.5 / 4.4 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	12 MB	60W	89W	$143 US
Core i3-12300T	4	0	4 / 8	2.3 / 4.2 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	12 MB	35W	69W	$143 US
Core i3-12100	4	0	4 / 8	3.3 / 4.3 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	12 MB	60W 58W (F)	89W	$122 US $97 US (F)
Core i3-12100T	4	0	4 / 8	2.2 / 4.1 GHz	TBA	N/A	N/A	12 MB	35W	69W	$122 US
Intel Pentium Gold G7400	2	0	2 / 4	3.7 GHz	N/A	N/A	N/A	6 MB	46W	N/A	$64 US
Intel Pentium Gold G7400T	2	0	2 / 4	3.1 GHz	N/A	N/A	N/A	6 MB	35W	N/A	$64 US
Intel Celeron G6900	2	0	2 / 4	3.4 GHz	N/A	N/A	N/A	4 MB	46W	N/A	$42 US
Intel Celeron G6900T	2	0	2 / 4	2.8 GHz	N/A	N/A	N/A	4 MB	35W	N/A	$42 US