Core i7-12700 'Alder Lake' Geekbenched: Faster Than Rocket Lake

Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake
(Image credit: Intel)

Benchmarks of an alleged eight-core Intel Core i7-12700 'Alder Lake' processor have been added to Primate Labs' Geekbench 5 database. The new chip could join the list of the best CPUs when it becomes available later this year, but if these results are any indication, it already demonstrates some promising results.

If Geekbench 5's readings are accurate, then Intel's Core i7-12700 'Alder Lake' processor has eight high-performance (P) cores, an unknown number of energy-efficient (E) cores (which may be disabled on this unit), and can execute up to 16 threads while operating at 2.10 GHz ~ 4.80 GHz. The absence of E cores and/or the number of supporting threads might be a misreading since the unlocked Core i7-12700K is rumored to feature eight P cores, four E cores, and 20 threads. Either that, or Intel intends to offer a very differentiated products family. 

Before we proceed to the results, there is an important thing to note about Geekbench 5 and its single-core and multi-core scores. Both scores are heavily impacted by cryptography, and while cryptography performance is important, the benchmark gives this aspect of performance an unfairly high weight in the final overall score, something that the developer of the benchmark has admitted. Additionally, this segment of the workload responds exceedingly well to AVX-512 acceleration, which is supported on Rocket Lake but not on Alder Lake. That magnifies the impact of the already-existing disparity of the unfair weighting. 

To that end, it does not make a lot of sense to compare the overall Geekbench 5 results with Intel's Alder Lake processors without AVX-512 support against CPUs that support it. Instead, it makes more sense to compare the integer and float benchmark results to figure out what to expect from the upcoming CPUs.

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Header Cell - Column 0 Core i7-12700Core i7-11700Core i7-11700KRyzen 7 5800XApple M1
General specifications8P, ?E, 2.10 ~ 4.80 GHz, 32MB8P, 2.50 ~ 4.80 GHz, 16MB8P, 3.60 ~ 4.90 GHz, 16MB8P, 3.80 ~ 4.70 GHz, 32MB4P, 4E, up to 3.20 GHz
Single-Core | Integer14841365154615341597
Single-Core | Float18021649180219341896
Single-Core | Crypto18043593529740512783
Single-Core | Score15951562181017801746
Row 5 - Cell 0 Row 5 - Cell 1 Row 5 - Cell 2 Row 5 - Cell 3 Row 5 - Cell 4 Row 5 - Cell 5
Multi-Core | Integer9557921510649113637013
Multi-Core | Float114211002311468131408624
Multi-Core | Crypto1062362558711697510137
Multi-Core | Score10170930910798116777653
Linkhttps://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9487530https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9492098https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9494854https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9496721https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9496959

When compared to Intel's Core i7-11700 'Rocket Lake' processor, the i7-12700 has higher single-thread integer and floating-point performance when working at a very similar frequency. We can attribute this to either the microarchitectural advantages that the new Golden Cove core has over the Cypress Cove core or to the considerably larger L3 cache. Meanwhile, Apple's M1 remains the single-threaded champion. 

The i7-12700's multi-core scores are higher than the Core i7-11700, perhaps because the new CPU has an all-new Thread Director scheduler. Perhaps this is also why Alder Lake beats Apple's M1 in multi-threaded workloads.  

While we included performance numbers for AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X and Intel's Core i7-11700K processors in our table, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to compare what should be a 65W processor to chips that have a TDP that exceeds 100W and can consume even more when they essentially overclock themselves. 

In general, Intel's Core i7-12700 'Alder Lake' processor seems to perform quite well in Geekbench 5 if we filter the cryptography results out of the equation. Meanwhile, since we are dealing with leaked results obtained on pre-production hardware, take them with a grain of salt. 

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • hotaru251
    it doesn't really make a lot of sense to compare what should be a 65W processor to chips that have a TDP that exceeds 100W

    isnt this done frequently though?
    Reply
  • Sleepy_Hollowed
    hotaru251 said:
    isnt this done frequently though?

    All the time, and by default, on most boards, OC is disabled.

    I bet that the 5800x probably uses less power and overclocks itself less than that intel part.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    The 5800x is a 105W TDP part according to AMD, and not 65W.
    https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-5800xThe non-x 5800, OEM only part, is 65W TDP.

    Sleepy_Hollowed said:
    All the time, and by default, on most boards, OC is disabled.

    I bet that the 5800x probably uses less power and overclocks itself less than that intel part.
    The 5800x draws a tiny bit less power but is also a tiny bit slower than the 11700k.
    https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-11700k-cpu-review/3
    Reply
  • Historical Fidelity
    It’s okay to compare 125W TDP AMD parts with intel 65W parts because they use different math to compute TDP. AMD’s TDP is much more accurate to real power usage and Intel’s TDP is power consumption at base frequency. 65W intel parts often consume more than 100 watts under normal operation unless crappy oem coolers are used.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    TerryLaze said:
    The 5800x is a 105W TDP part according to AMD, and not 65W.
    https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-5800xThe non-x 5800, OEM only part, is 65W TDP.


    The 5800x draws a tiny bit less power but is also a tiny bit slower than the 11700k.
    https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-11700k-cpu-review/3

    The 11700k is slower than the 5800X when you have the AMD chip also hitting 5Ghz and there is no clock speed advantage for intel. Also faster than this specific Alderlake chip in geek bench.

    Reply
  • ThatMouse
    Isn't the real story here that Intel seems to have a next gen CPU is not even beating current gen AMD?
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Makaveli said:
    The 11700k is slower than the 5800X when you have the AMD chip also hitting 5Ghz and there is no clock speed advantage for intel. Also faster than this specific Alderlake chip in geek bench.
    Same amount of cores and same power why would anybody care about the clocks?
    Also how much power does the 5800x draw to get to 5Ghz? because obviously it already draws about 120W just with PBO.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    Ohh, who cares? Just show us the numbers that matter - from Userbenchmark.
    /S
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    TerryLaze said:
    Same amount of cores and same power why would anybody care about the clocks?
    Also how much power does the 5800x draw to get to 5Ghz? because obviously it already draws about 120W just with PBO.

    The clocks matter for the benchmarks scores.

    And I would assume only a few more watts I don't have anything here to check the power usage.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Makaveli said:
    The clocks matter for the benchmarks scores.

    And I would assume only a few more watts I don't have anything here to check the power usage.
    Tom's shows the same power draw between the 11700k and the 5800x when the 5800x uses PBO, it's impossible to get a lot more clocks out of it with manual overclock without using a lot more power.
    Reply