Once again highlighting the importance of the Chinese market to American chipmakers, Intel has launched a special variant of the Core i5-12400F for its Chinese clients. The Core i5-12490F for all practical purposes uses the same die as the Core i5-12400F but comes with slightly more L3 cache and higher operating clocks. While the latter has a base and boost clock of 2.4GHz and 4.4GHz, respectively, the former pushes them to 3GHz and 4.6GHz, respectively. On the cache side, the Core i5-12490F gets 20MB of L3 cache, compared to 18MB on the 12400F.
A China-specific variant is nothing new. Over the last decade, both Intel and AMD have launched several SKUs aimed specifically at their Chinese audience. The Ryzen 5 3500/3500X is a very good example. On Intel’s side, the Core i5-11400F and 10400F were its most successful parts in the Eastern markets which explains why the chipmaker decided to double down in that segment.
We might see the Core i5-12490F ship to surrounding countries, most notably India, Taiwan, Korea, and Indonesia as well in the future as has been the norm with China-specific variants, but it’s hard to say anything for sure.
Via: HXL
