Intel's new Core i5-12400: Alder Lake destroys AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

We've been enjoying some leaked Intel 12th Gen "Alder Lake" CPUs but more so the higher-end flagship Core i9-12900K and Core i7-12700K processors... but now it's time for some mid-range Core i5-12400 performance teases.

3

Intel's new Core i5-12400 processor has 6 cores and 12 threads, but just the high-performance Golden Cove cores and none of the efficiency cores from the Gracemont architecture. There's CPU clocks of up to 4.0GHz on all cores and up to 4.4GHz single-core speeds, with 18MB of L3 cache (3MB per core).

The new mid-range Alder Lake CPU was tested in QS form, on a mid-range B660 motherboard that packs DDR4 memory and not DDR5 memory. We should see more performance between Intel's new Alder Lake-powered Core i5-12400 processor when it's mixed with DDR5 RAM, which will be interesting to see in the coming weeks and months as Alder Lake drops onto the market.

• Read more: Intel Core i7-12700K: up to 45% faster than Ryzen 7 5800X
• Read more: Intel's next-gen Alder Lake architecture: everything you need to know

Intel's new Core i5-12400 is a 65W chip, and runs at around 60C when all the cores are loaded... with just 78.5W of power being used. The flagship Core i9-12900K for example, when fully loaded runs at 100C+ and uses 250W+ of power.

3

We have some juicy new Cinebench benchmarks with 681 points in single-core on the Intel Core i5-12400 processor, and 4983 points in the multi-core test. This means the mid-range Alder Lake chip is faster than AMD's mid-range Zen 3 chip, with the Ryzen 5 5600X losing to the Core i5-12400 and beating out its predecessor in the Core i5-11400.

We should expect to see Intel's new Core i5-12400 processor costing around $200, and launching later this year.