Smart Wizard
Get a complete build plan based on budget and goals.
Build Comparison
Compare complete builds side by side.
Part Comparison
Check specs, price, and value across parts.
Bottleneck Calculator
Measure CPU and GPU balance before you buy.
Power Calculator
Estimate wattage and PSU headroom.
Will It Run?
Test your hardware against popular games.
Smart Wizard
Get a complete build plan based on budget and goals.
Build Comparison
Compare complete builds side by side.
Part Comparison
Check specs, price, and value across parts.
Bottleneck Calculator
Measure CPU and GPU balance before you buy.
Power Calculator
Estimate wattage and PSU headroom.
Will It Run?
Test your hardware against popular games.
Smart Wizard
Get a complete build plan based on budget and goals.
Build Comparison
Compare complete builds side by side.
Part Comparison
Check specs, price, and value across parts.
Bottleneck Calculator
Measure CPU and GPU balance before you buy.
Power Calculator
Estimate wattage and PSU headroom.
Will It Run?
Test your hardware against popular games.
Intel
Detailed architecture, platform, memory, and feature data for this CPU.
Instruction Sets
About This Product
The Intel Core i9-12900 is a 16-core (8 P-cores, 8 E-cores), 24-thread desktop processor from the Alder Lake-S generation. It offers strong multi-threaded performance suitable for demanding applications and content creation. Compared to similarly priced AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, it generally provides competitive multi-core performance and good single-core speed, though power consumption can be higher.
Performance Benchmarks
Scores are grouped by benchmark family so it is easy to compare raw speed, threaded output, and real-world value without mixing scales.
Render Workloads
Next-Gen Scale
Cross-Platform
Large Sample Pool
Value & Efficiency
These derived metrics use Cinebench R23 multi-core performance to keep the value calculation consistent across the catalog.
Performance per Watt
407.0 pts/W
Performance per Dollar
63.9 pts/$
Gaming Performance
These results come from real submitted gameplay sessions, so the reference GPU matters as much as the CPU itself.
Reference GPU
Path of Exile
Mixed player settings
88 FPS
Smooth
Popular Comparisons
These pairings are pre-ranked from the comparison engine so readers can jump straight into the most relevant alternatives.

Multi-core 27,966 Β· $285
"21% better single-core, 5% slower multi-core, $103 more expensive"
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GPU Bottleneck & Pairing
These pairings are pre-calculated around 1440p balance so you can move quickly from CPU research to a realistic gaming build.
High-confidence pairings that stay balanced at 1440p.
Recommended GPU
RTX 6000 Ada Generation
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
GeForce RTX 5080
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
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Rating
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Verdict
βA solid choice for users needing high multi-threaded power without overclocking, especially for content creation.β

Multi-core 100,295 Β· $9,999
"3% better single-core, 74% slower multi-core, $164 more expensive"

Multi-core 22,812 Β· $310
"3% better single-core, 16% better multi-core, $144 more expensive"