Intel's latest 12th Generation Alder Lake processors have cemented themselves as some of the best CPUs on the market. Chinese publication XFastest's review (opens in new tab) of the unreleased Core i3-12100 shows that the quad-core Alder Lake chip also packs some serious firepower.
Unlike high-end Alder Lake SKUs, the Core i3-12100 doesn't feature the hybrid design. This means that the quad-core chip with Hyper-Threading is only carrying Intel's Golden Cove cores. The processor is outfitted with 12MB of L3 cache. Previous retailer listings pegged the Core i3-12100 with a 3.3 base clock. XFastest observed the Core i3-12100 peaking at 4.3 GHz, which is likely the single-core boost clock. Since the news outlet's Core i3-12100 is an engineering sample, the final clock speeds for the quad-core part could vary. Therefore, we also recommend taking the test results with a bit of salt.
According to XFastest's other observations, the Core i3-12100 come with a 60W PL1 and 77W PL2 ratings. This means that the Alder Lake goes head-to-head with AMD's Ryzen 3 offerings, more specifically the Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3 3100 that compete in the 65W category.
Intel Core i3-12100 Specifications
| Processor | Cores / Threads | Base / Boost Clocks (GHz) | L3 Cache (MB) | PBP / MTP (W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i3-12100* | 4 / 8 | 3.3 / 4.3 | 12 | 60 / 77 |
| Ryzen 3 3300X | 4 / 8 | 3.8 / 4.3 | 16 | 65 |
| Ryzen 3 3100 | 4 / 8 | 3.6 / 3.9 | 16 | 65 |
*Specifications are unconfirmed.
The Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3 3100 are based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture and sport a quad-core, eight-thread configuration. On paper, AMD's processors have more L3 cache than the Core i3-12100 and better base clock speeds. While the Core i3-12100 and the Ryzen 3 3300X have the same 4.3 GHz boost clock, the latter rocks a 500 MHz higher base clock.
However, the Core i3-12100 wields Intel's latest Golden Cove cores that are slated to be up to 19% faster than the Cypress Cove cores inside Rocket Lake. The Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3 3100, on the other hand, are still on the two-year old Zen 2 cores so it isn't exactly a fair fight. With Zen 3, AMD has forsaken the Ryzen 3 lineup and preferred to concentrate on the Ryzen 5 and above SKUs. The chipmaker doesn't have a Zen 3 answer for the Core i3-12100 for the moment.
Intel Core i3-12100 Application Benchmarks
| Processor | PCMark | 7-Zip Compression | 7-Zip Decompression | Cinebench R23 Single-Core | Cinebench R23 Multi-Core | V-Ray | PugetBench for Premiere Pro (Export) | PugetBench for Premiere Pro (Playback) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i3-12100 | 6,988 | 47.092 | 44,840 | 1,649 | 8,474 | 5,952 | 100 | 72 |
| Ryzen 3 3300X | 6,140 | 42,833 | 50,979 | 1,280 | 6,723 | 4,926 | 55 | 55 |
| Ryzen 3 3100 | 5,755 | 38,647 | 46,226 | 1,145 | 6,031 | 4,926 | 54 | 54 |
Starting with PCMark, the Core i3-12100 put up a 13.8% higher score than the Ryzen 3 3300X. When it comes to 7-Zip, the Core i3-12100 was up to 9.9% faster than the Ryzen 3 3300X in the compression test, but the latter outperformed the Intel chip in the decompression test by 13.7%.
The Core i3-12100 demostrated up to 28.8% higher single-core performance than the Ryzen 3 3300X in Cinebench R23. When it comes to multi-core performace, the margin went up to 26% in Intel's favor. In V-Ray, the Core i3-12100 also dominated the Ryzen 3 3300X and boasted a 20.8% better score.
The biggest performance deltas between the Core i3-12100 and Ryzen 3 3300X came from the PugetBench for Premiere Pro benchmark. The Alder Lake chip scored 81.8% and 30.9% higher scores in the export and playback tests, respectively.
Intel Core i3-12100 Gaming Benchmarks
| Processor | Cyberpunk 2077 (1080, Ultra) | Cyberpunk 2077 (1080, Ultra + DLSS) | Cyberpunk 2077 (1080, Ultra+ RT + DLSS) | Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (4K, High) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i3-12100 | 80 | 145 | 110 | 256 |
| Ryzen 3 3300X | 80 | 126 | 93 | 236 |
| Ryzen 3 3100 | 80 | 100 | 76 | 232 |
For the gaming tests, XFastest paired the Core i3-12100, Ryzen 3 3300X and Ryzen 3 3100 with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.
All three processors performed similarly in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p resolution on the ultra preset. The Core i3-12100 distanced itself from the Ryzen rivals once XFastest started to enable other options. With Nvidia DLSS enabled, the Alder Lake chip pumped out 15.1% higher frame rates than the Ryzen 3 3300X. The gap jumped up to 18.3% when the Chinese news outlet added ray tracing to the mix.
In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on 4K and the high present, however, the Core i3-12100 only delivered 8.5% higher performance than the Ryzen 3 3300X.
As per XFastest's insider information, the Core i3-12100 could retail for 1,000 HKD, which translates to $128.32. The price sounds believable since we've already seen early retailer listings of the graphics-less Core i3-12100F going for $119.
