Intel Core i5 12400 "Alder Lake": A Great ~$200 CPU For Linux Users

So for $200~210, the Core i5 12400 is a great processor with AMD not having any exceptional offering at that price point... The Ryzen 7 5700G goes for $320 and the Ryzen 5 5600G for $260 while in the single and lightly threaded workloads the i5-12400 had no problems dancing with the 5700G under Linux. Where AMD does have the upperhand though was on the Linux graphics performance with the Ryzen 5000 series APUs over the Alder Lake processors. Here are some Ubuntu 21.10 benchmarks with upgrades to Linux 5.16 + Mesa 21.2 throughout for various Intel and AMD systems with integrated graphics.

The Core i5 12400 with Gen12 graphics is much better off than the Gen9/Skylake era graphics, but the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G / Ryzen 7 5700G were offering much greater graphics performance at least under Linux.

For both OpenGL and Vulkan, the AMD Vega graphics with the Ryzen 5000 series APUs were delivering better performance albeit both processors more expensive than the i5-12400.