In the meantime, AMD has bulked up its Ryzen 50009 lineup with the Ryzen 5000G 'Cezanne' APUs, with the Ryzen 7 5700G and Ryzen 5 5600G leading the charge. In fact, this chip delivers the same gaming performance as the flagship 12900K, making it the high-performance value chip to beat. Meanwhile, the Core i7-12700K slots in between those two bookends, providing stellar performance for its price point. The Intel Core i9-12900K and Core i5-12600K are quite the combo, with the 12900K taking the absolute performance crown while the 12600K slots in as the new mainstream gaming champion. Intel also introduced its lower-tier 600-series motherboards that provide a less-expensive on-ramp to Alder Lake, further helping address pricing concerns. In fact, AMD doesn’t even have a direct competitor. At $192, this chip is just as fast at gaming as Intel’s previous-gen $549 Core i9-11900K flagship, not to mention the much more expensive AMD chips. Our Core i5-12400 review highlights Alder Lake’s exceptional blend of price and performance. They also expose the most overclocking headroom that we've seen in recent history, giving Intel yet another advantage for enthusiasts. If you're looking for the fastest gaming chip on the market, Intel's Alder Lake chips have taken the crown from AMD in convincing fashion. If you're looking for a broader view of the current state of the market, head to our AMD vs Intel feature. We also have an article covering CPU performance in Cyberpunk 2077. We've listed the best CPUs for gaming and best processors for workstations in other articles, but if you want to know how each chip stacks up against all the others and how we come to our decisions, this CPU benchmarks hierarchy is for you. CPU benchmarks help us sort out the differences, but when it comes time to buy a CPU for your desktop, you'll find a dizzying collection of model numbers and specs from both Intel and AMD. Your CPU has a huge effect on overall performance and, to many, is a computer's most important component. Our CPU benchmarks performance hierarchy ranks all the current and previous generation Intel and AMD processors, including all of the Best CPUs for Gaming, based on performance.