A user going by the call sign "foxed.in" has started to test Intel's Core i5-12600K "Alder Laker" processor with the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark, Benchleaks discovered. It's the same user who previously shared results for the Core i9-12900K with the same benchmark.
Thus far, the rumors for the Core i5-12600K point to a 10-core configuration with six Golden Cove cores and four Gracemont cores. Only the former features Hyper-Threading, bringing up an unorthodox setup with 10 cores and 16 threads. There's reportedly 20MB of L3 cache on the Core i5-12600K. The clock speeds are also a mess since there are two different cores in an Alder Lake chip. The Core i5-12600K is rumored to feature a 4.9 GHz dual-core core boost on the Golden Cove cores. The all-core boost is allegedly fixed at 4.6 GHz. The Gracemont cores, on the other hand, may check in with a 3.6 GHz dual-core boost and a 3.4 GHz all-core boost.
At the time of the article, foxed.in had performed 13 Ashes of the Singularity runs on the Core i5-12600K, however, only one of them completed successfully. Judging by the huge variations between the results, it's safe to assume that the benchmark isn't optimized for Alder Lake's hybrid design yet and fails to utilize the correct cores. This falls in line with previous speculation that Alder Lake gels with Windows 11, and that games need to be optimized for the hybrid chips.
On the Crazy 1080p preset, the results range from 39 framers per second to 110 fps whereas the chip was scoring between 37 fps and 40 fps on the Medium 1080p preset. It's improbable that the Core i5-12600K would put up the similar scores at different graphics presets. The low scores are probably work of benchmark tapping into the Gracemont cores instead of the Golden Cove cores. Therefore, the 110 fps submission (assuming it wasn't on exotic cooling) may be the only valid result where the software utilized the Golden Cove cores properly.
Unfortunately, foxed.in didn't run the Crazy 1080p preset on the Core i9-12900K so we couldn't compare the Core i5-12600K to the flagship SKU. As a result, we had to scour the Ashes of the Singularity database to find proper entries for comparison. Since the benchmark is light on details on the hardware used, we can't guarantee that the GeForce RTX 3080 in those submissions is the same as the one that foxed.in used. Furthermore, the software versions are different, which can also affect the scores. We suggest you look at the results with an open mind and a grain of salt.
The Core i5-12600K scored 10,800 points on the Crazy 1080p preset. The only Core i5-11600K entry with a GeForce RTX 3080 put up a score of 9,800 points. Alder Lake appears to usher in a 10.2% performance uplift. There weren't any entries for the Core i9-11900K (Rocket Lake) so we had to go as far back as the Core i9-10900K (Comet Lake). The Core i9-10900K had a score of 11,200 points, meaning it's only 3.7% faster than the Core i5-12600K.
Technically, the Ryzen 5 5600X (Vermeer) is the direct rival to the Core i5-12600K, although the latter does come with four small cores. We're unsure how they fit into the picture until we get a review sample in the lab, though. Neither the Ryzen 9 5900X or Ryzen 7 5800X showed up in the database. There were many Ryzen 9 5950X submissions, but none matched our criteria.
For comparison, the Ryzen 5 5600X scored 8,100 points on the Crazy 1080 preset so the Core i5-12600K delivered up to 33.3% higher performance than the Zen 3 chip. The margin is similar to that of the Core i9-12900K's dominance over the Ryzen 9 5950X in the same benchmark, albeit with a different graphics preset. Is it a fluke, or does Alder Lake really poses to be a thread to Zen 3? Luckily, we won't have to wait long to find out if the rumors of a November announcement is accurate.
