Intel Core i9-12900K vs Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X: Alder Lake and Ryzen 5000 Face Off

Intel Core i9-12900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
(Image credit: Intel, AMD)
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The Intel Core i9-12900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X rivalry is a heated battle for supremacy at the top of the mainstream desktop PC market. Make no mistake, Alder Lake represents a cataclysmic shift in Intel's battle against AMD's potent Ryzen 5000 chips, throwing the AMD vs Intel wars into a state of disarray. We've become accustomed to easy wins for the Ryzen chips — they've absolutely dominated our list of Best CPUs for gaming and our CPU Benchmark hierarchy for the last year — but Intel's new design philosophy is a game-changer.

Alder Lake's new hybrid x86 design represents Intel's most disruptive architectural shift in a decade. The chips combine big and fast Performance cores (P-cores) for latency-sensitive work with a smattering of small and powerful Efficiency cores (E-cores) that chew through background and multi-threaded workloads. Alder Lake's new next-gen connectivity technologies also bring big increases in throughput via DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0 interfaces, outstripping AMD's venerable AM4 platform.

But pricing trumps all. Intel has decided to be incredibly aggressive with its newest line of chips, perhaps looking to smash the Ryzen revolt once and for all. As a result, the $589 Core i9-12900K's pricing lands between the $799 Ryzen 9 5950X and the $549 Ryzen 9 5900X. Still, it regularly trades blows, and even beats, the 5950X in many threaded applications that have become Ryzen's uncontested stomping grounds, like Cinebench.

It isn't all sunshine and roses for Alder Lake, though. Intel made a few decisions that impacted the value proposition, like launching the chips without the affordable B- and H-series motherboards that tend to be the favorite for mainstream gamers. The new hybrid design also has a few early teething pains in Windows 10.

All of this means this is anything but the clear-cut victory it appears to be on the benchmark charts. Below we've put the Core i9-12900K vs Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5590X in a six-round faceoff to see which chip takes the crown in our gaming and application benchmarks, along with other key criteria like power consumption and pricing. Let's see how the chips stack up. 

Features and Specifications: Intel Core i9-12900K vs Ryzen 9 5950X and Ryzen 9 5900X 

Paul Alcorn
Editor-in-Chief

Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

  • spongiemaster
    As such, we expect AMD to reduce pricing soon, perhaps bringing 5950X pricing closer to the 12900K.

    That's wishful thinking. Where can you buy a 5950x in the US for MSRP? There's no reason to lower the price on a CPU that has almost never been available since its launch a year ago. It's unlikely you'll be able to find a 12900k any time soon either. The prices AMD needs to lower are the 5600x and 5800x. Both are often in stock, and the 5600x has been a terrible value since day one, now that the 12600k is just beating it into submission at only $10 more, the 5600x needs to be dropped to the $200-$250 range it should have been all along. Same thing with the 5800x. It's in stock and basically trading blows with the $319 12600k (in stock at that price now at Newegg and Amazon). 5800x is selling for 386 at Newegg right now. Needs to come down another $50 or so.
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  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    spongiemaster said:
    That's wishful thinking. Where can you buy a 5950x in the US for MSRP? There's no reason to lower the price on a CPU that has almost never been available since its launch a year ago. It's unlikely you'll be able to find a 12900k any time soon either. The prices AMD needs to lower are the 5600x and 5800x. Both are often in stock, and the 5600x has been a terrible value since day one, now that the 12600k is just beating it into submission at only $10 more, the 5600x needs to be dropped to the $200-$250 range it should have been all along. Same thing with the 5800x. It's in stock and basically trading blows with the $319 12600k (in stock at that price now at Newegg and Amazon). 5800x is selling for 386 at Newegg right now. Needs to come down another $50 or so.

    B&H has it for $750 on sale right now.
    AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core AM4 Processor 100-100000059WOF (bhphotovideo.com)
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  • Makaveli
    spongiemaster said:
    That's wishful thinking. Where can you buy a 5950x in the US for MSRP? There's no reason to lower the price on a CPU that has almost never been available since its launch a year ago. It's unlikely you'll be able to find a 12900k any time soon either. The prices AMD needs to lower are the 5600x and 5800x. Both are often in stock, and the 5600x has been a terrible value since day one, now that the 12600k is just beating it into submission at only $10 more, the 5600x needs to be dropped to the $200-$250 range it should have been all along. Same thing with the 5800x. It's in stock and basically trading blows with the $319 12600k (in stock at that price now at Newegg and Amazon). 5800x is selling for 386 at Newegg right now. Needs to come down another $50 or so.

    Can't speak for the US however in Canada there is plenty of stock of all 3 ADL-S cpu's aswell as all the Zen 3 cpu's.


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  • spongiemaster
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    B&H has it for $750 on sale right now.
    AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core AM4 Processor 100-100000059WOF (bhphotovideo.com)
    Looks like Newegg has it in stock currently for $740. Maybe demand tanked in anticipation for Alder Lake, as there's no denying this hasn't been an easy CPU to track down in the US since launch.
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  • spongiemaster
    Makaveli said:
    Can't speak for the US however in Canada there is plenty of stock of all 3 ADL-S cpu's aswell as all the Zen 3 cpu's.

    The 12600 and 12700's are readily available (You taking notes AMD?), only the 12900k seems to be in shortage. For some reason, it doesn't even appear on Newegg right now.
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  • Makaveli
    spongiemaster said:
    The 12600 and 12700's are readily available (You taking notes AMD?), only the 12900k seems to be in shortage. For some reason, it doesn't even appear on Newegg right now.

    You have to remember AMD is much smaller than Intel and they don't own their own fab. It should be expected Intel will have more available at launch.
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  • SkyBill40
    Makaveli said:
    You have to remember AMD is much smaller than Intel and they don't own their own fab. It should be expected Intel will have more available at launch.

    This is only because TSMC perhaps slowed down fabrication of other vendor wafers so that Intel could get their stuff out. Intel did NOT produce these chips as they couldn't make it work. That much is evident with their desktop 10nm parts getting kicked to the curb because their QC was poor.
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  • ingtar33
    SkyBill40 said:
    This is only because TSMC perhaps slowed down fabrication of other vendor wafers so that Intel could get their stuff out. Intel did NOT produce these chips as they couldn't make it work. That much is evident with their desktop 10nm parts getting kicked to the curb because their QC was poor.
    this is false; alder lake was make at intel fabs.

    that said this whole article is hilarious since there currently are hundreds of modern games which cannot run on alderlake due to the denuvo anti piracy junk included with them thinking the big/little core design is some sort of piracy mechanic

    Until that is addressed, alderlake is dead in gaming circles. still beautiful chip from intel; only took them 7 years to actually improve upon skylake.
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  • robert3892
    The test setup for AMD is 3200 Mhz memory versus DDR5 4400 MHZ. It's a skewed test setup in my personal opinion. A more correct test setup would have been a higher DDR4 frequency memory as close to DDR5 4400 Mhz as possible.
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  • Co BIY
    No need for AMD to lower prices. I bet a lot of AMD builds were started after the Alder Lake reviews showed a narrow intel lead but no blowout.

    AMD still has the motherboard advantage (lots of motherboards to upgrade, lots of boards on the market and available, and some price advantage).

    AMD also benefits from the DDR4/DDR5 confusion with Intel 12.

    If they needed or wanted to it's not clear that AMD can lower prices very much. They have to pay for production and TSMC is raising prices and reducing discounts.

    Also, In this inflationary environment holding prices steady is an effective price reduction.
    Reply