Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Core i9 12900K and Core i5 12600K: performance analysis

CS:GO, Metro Exodus EE, Black Ops Cold War.

We've run our benchmarks at the standard three resolutions: 1080p, 1440p and 4K, but we're focusing the bulk of our attention on those 1080p results, as this is where differences between different CPUs are most visible. (There's an argument for testing at 720p to make these deltas even more visible, but even mainstream PC gaming has long since moved onto 1080p.) We're using an RTX 3090 for these results.

This page is all about FPS fps - the frames per second you'll see in some of the best first person shooters on the market. We start with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a competitive 5v5 shooter that I've spent a silly amount of time playing, before moving onto two more recent titles: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition and Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. Both of these newcomers are RT-enabled benchmarks, as we examine performance in the games' campaigns.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Counter-Strike. The game's been updated continually since its release in 2012, and though its DX9 internals remain much the same it's blossomed into an esports giant and a genuinely excellent competitive shooter. Here, we're tapping into that pro scene with an in-game replay from perhaps the most memorable major tournament in the game's history: the Eleague Boston Major. The round we're looking at isn't that moment, but it's another highlight, as eventual tournament MVP Tarik shows up in a big way. For our purposes, the round includes a realistic amount of smokes, Molotovs and other particle effects that can tank frame-rates plus some downtime, giving us a good chance to see how different CPUs fare under these different scenarios.

AMD's Ryzen 5000 CPUs have been the CS:GO champions since their debut last November, but that changes with the release of Alder Lake. The 12900K doesn't absolutely crush Team Red's latest, but it does retake the title for Team Blue. The 12900K holds a five percent advantage over the 5950X and a seven percent lead over the 5600X. Still, all three are pretty great choices for this title; at 1080p or 1440p you can max out a 360Hz monitor (with an RTX 3090, at least). The 12900K is around 18 percent faster than the 12600K, thanks to its higher clocks, a rare significant difference. Notably, all four CPUs have one percent lows above 144Hz up to 1440p, so you ought to get consistent performance on a 144Hz refresh rate monitor.

CS:GO: DX9, Very High, AF off

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

We return to the opening scenes of the Volga level from the campaign of Metro Exodus, but this time in the Enhanced Edition of the game. Even with RTX effects mandatory, the game remains CPU-limited at 1080p and 1440p. In the latter, the Ryzen 9 5950X outperforms the 12900K (by nine percent), 12600K (by 10 percent) and 5600X (by four percent). Back down at 1080p, the 5950X beats the 12900K by 13 percent - a good coup for AMD.

Metro Exodus EE: DX12, Ultra, RTX, DLSS

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Our final FPS on this page is the Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. Here, the focus is less on competitive performance and more on the single-player side of things, as we enable ray tracing and hop into one of the first campaign missions, Fracture Jaw. Interestingly, this mission has RT disabled on consoles, even when the option is enabled elsewhere in the game, suggesting that the BVH building process here is particularly tough. The opening scene, as Bell joins Adler on the fields of Vietnam, is heavy on the CPU at the relatively low graphical settings we've chosen.

The 12900K is the overall champ here, with a 142fps average at 1080p, with the 12600K and 5950X at 134fps. There's not much in it - just six percent - but it's clear that this game has a slight liking for Intel processors.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War: DX12, Low, TAA

We conclude our new standard gaming tests on the next page, where we take on Cyberpunk 2077 and two new editions of Digital Foundry favourites: Far Cry 6 and Crysis 3 Remastered.

Intel Core i9 12900K and Core i5 12600K analysis