Earlier in July, reports that early samples of Intel’s 12th Generation Alder Lake-S CPU were being sold in China and more specifically, it was reportedly an early sample of a Core i9-12900K. Now, news about a new engineering sample have been making their way online, along with some details.

The details were first discovered by prominent leakster, APISAK (@TUM_APISAK), who noticed that a UserBenchmark listing of an “Intel 0000” CPU. As per the listing, the processor had 16-cores, 24-threads, thus further reaffirming Intel’s decision to using the uneven Golden Cove and Gracemont core pairing. Further, the listing also states that the CPU has a base and turbo clock of 1.8GHz and 3.05GHz, respectively.

Those speeds are low when compared to the blistering 5.3GHz speeds Intel’s current Core i9-11900K can achieve, but again, these are just engineering samples and it is quite likely that the finished product will be able to achieve speeds more in line with its soon-to-be predecessors when made available.

Intel AlderLake-S ADP-S DDR5 UDIMM CRB

Intel 0000
U3E1, 1 CPU, 16 cores, 24 threads
Base clock 1.8 GHz, turbo 3.05 GHz (avg)https://t.co/RAHdKhzCLh pic.twitter.com/DfNPmT5H2N

— APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) July 31, 2021

Alder Lake-S is expected to be based on the chipmaker’s self-titled Intel 7 process, which was previously renamed from the 10nm Enhanced SuperFin process, and is expected to deliver up to 15% PPW over the current 10nm SuperFin process.

There isn’t a lot of details beyond the listing, sadly, but that said, Intel is expected to make an official announcement for Alder Lake-S come 27 October, so we’ll just have to wait until then.

(Source: UserBenchmark, Hot Hardware)