Intel Core i9-12900K Smashes Multiple World Records at 6.8 GHz

Overclocking Alder Lake
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

After an amazingly long wait, Intel has officially announced the 12th Generation Alder Lake processors, the first heterogeneous mainstream parts that support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. Our resident overclocking guru Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch didn't waste any time in breaking a couple of world records with the new hybrid chips during Intel's livestreamed event. 

With the help of a few tanks of liquid nitrogen, Splave pushed the Core i9-12900K to 6.8 GHz on the Golden Cove Performance cores (P-cores), and 5.3 GHz on the Gracemont cores Efficiency cores (E-cores). He also dialed in 5.5 GHz on the ring/cache. For reference, the Core i9-12900K features 5.2 GHz P-core and 3.9 GHz E-core boost clocks. That's a 31% and 36% overclock on the P-and E-cores, respectively.

ASRock's Z690 Aqua OC Edition was Splave's motherboard of choice. The OC Edition is almost a carbon copy of the vanilla Z690 Aqua, except with two fewer DDR5 memory slots. The dual-DIMM design aims to improve memory overclocking. The ASRock Z690 Aqua OC Edition is limited to 500 units. The Core i9-12900K system also included Klevv's DDR5-4800 memory, which was overclocked to DDR5-6200 C34, a Reaktor 2.0 LN2 pot, and EVGA's SuperNOVA 1600W power supply.

Intel Core i9-12900K World Records

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Header Cell - Column 0 ScoreSingle-CoreMulti-Core (16-Core)
XTU 2.012,765N/AN/A
Geekbench 4N/A11,66993,232
Geekbench 5N/A2,74026,649

Splave set the new single-and multi-core (16-core) Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5 world records with the Core i9-12900K at 6.8 GHz/5.3 GHz. For XTU 2.0, however, he had to drop the Golden Cove cores down to 6.7 GHz to achieve enough stability to finish the benchmark run.

The Core i9-11900K (Rocket Lake) and the Ryzen 9 5950X (Zen 3) were the previous record holders for Geekbench 5 single-and 16-core benchmarks at 2,309 points and 20,929 points, respectively. Therefore, the Core i9-12900K outclassed Intel's own chip by 19% and AMD's chip by 27%.

Alder Lake is available for preorder at the majority of U.S. retailers, however, the chips won't ship out until November 4, 2021. The Core i9-12900K retails for $589, which is only $40 more expensive than the previous Core i9-11900K. However, the flagship Alder Lake processor costs $210 less than AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core monster.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • ThisIsMe
    gfg said:
    World record MT GB5?
    https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/9980150ST... yes OK

    The article clearly refers to 16 core CPU scores numerous times. Your link to the score of a 64 core Threadripper is irrelevant.
    Reply
  • Brian28
    So it's a best-in-class record, but "world record" is usually reserved for best of any class.
    Reply
  • passivecool
    What an amazing waste of life time, resources and skills.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    Lol why were they afraid to list the power consumption.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Brian28 said:
    So it's a best-in-class record, but "world record" is usually reserved for best of any class.
    All of these are world records in running, the only difference being the distance.
    Every class has its own world record.
    https://runhive.com/running/world-records
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Makaveli said:
    Lol why were they afraid to list the power consumption.
    They would have if there where a world record for most power use.
    Also e cores apparently can also be overclocked.
    "and 5.3 GHz on the Gracemont cores Efficiency cores (E-cores) "
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    TerryLaze said:
    They would have if there where a world record for most power use.

    lol
    Reply
  • Zerk2012
    Makaveli said:
    Lol why were they afraid to list the power consumption.
    Why would they need to?

    Ever since they been leaks of this processor all the AMD fanboys are saying yes but how much power!

    Most people that just look for the best performance don't really care about power draw. You buy a video card that takes over 300 watts and it really don't matter if the processor draws 200 or 150 watts.

    EDIT Still the OC all time record FX 8370 @ 8.7
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    I mean, even if you care about power draw in general, there's still no reason to care about power draw during extreme OC. It clearly has nothing to do with the power draw you'll actually see if using this CPU.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    TJ Hooker said:
    I mean, even if you care about power draw in general, there's still no reason to care about power draw during extreme OC. It clearly has nothing to do with the power draw you'll actually see if using this CPU.
    If they are going to post "world records" at least have all the details.

    The fact that power draw is irrelevant in this extreme case makes it all the more interesting to see how high the power draw is.

    If their goal is to brag about large numbers then you might as well include them all.

    6.8 Gigahertz while drawing a hypothetical 680 watts is still respectable even with a draw of 680 watts.
    Reply