

At its $409 price, however, the Core i7-12700K’s biggest competitor may actually turn out to be its more affordable Core i5 "K"-series sibling rather than any specific AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 CPU, or Rocket Lake. Core counts are once again shooting up, and the Core i7-12700K benefits from this and some key architectural improvements to run laps around its "Rocket Lake" predecessor. Powered by two new microarchitectures, one designed for maximum performance and one for peak efficiency, Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs have been making some sizable waves in the desktop processor market.

