Intel releases Core 5 120 - a new processor that turned out to be not so new after all

Two new processors for the LGA 1700 platform havegone on sale - Intel Core 5 120 and Intel Core 5 120F. However, in practice, it turned out that these are not new processors with Arrow Lake architecture, but overclocked by 100 MHz Core i5 12400 architecture Alder Lake - 6 productive cores, 12 threads (Hyper Trading) and 18 MB of L3 cache. Interestingly, the next generation of Raptor Lake had an additional 4 energy-efficient cores.

The release of processors for the old socket is not a problem in itself. AMD still releases new processors for the legendary AM4. The problem lies in the name.

The fact is that Intel is constantly changing sockets. For the LGA 1700 socket, two generations of processors were relevant - the 12th and 13th generations (Alder Lake and Raptor Lake). They had names like Core i5 12400 and Core i5 13400. Seeing a processor called Core 5 120, a user might think that it is a modern processor of the Arrow Lake generation.

By switching to the Core 100 and Core 200 branding, Intel has also significantly changed the architecture, abandoning Hyper Trading technology and improving energy efficiency. As a result, older 12th and 13th generation processors have higher peak performance than newer ones, but consume more power. So for desktop processors, this can even be an advantage.

The downside is the price. The new processors have price tags of $246 for the regular version and $216.66 for the "F" version without a built-in GPU. This is too much for the processors of the generation before last. Moreover, according to Wikipedia, the Core i5 12400 was priced at $192 for the regular version and $167 for the F-version at the time of its release. That is, by re-releasing the same processor with a different name 3 years later, Intel also raised the price by more than $50! We urge GaGadget readers to be vigilant when buying processors to avoid buying such novelties.