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 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.