Intel unveiled its 12th-gen processors today, shedding light on what promises to be the company’s biggest step forward in on the desktop for years. These are finally 10nm parts – after seven brutal years and multiple 14nm iterations – and they also adopt a radically different hybrid design, with a combination of low-power ‘Efficient’ cores and high-power multi-threaded ‘Performance’ cores.
The top chip, the Core i9 12900K, includes eight of each type, for 16 cores and 24 threads in total, and promises to offer boosts of up to 30 percent depending on workload. For gaming, Intel is projecting gains of up to 20 percent, again depending on the game – and with the potential for more to come as games are optimised for the unique arrangement. These chips should also multi-task better, with the more efficient E cores taking on background tasks like streaming or virus scans while the P cores handle gaming or content creation. The new CPUs will arrive on November 4th, so we don’t have long to wait!
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