Intel Core i3-12100 vs Intel Core i5-12600

Core i3-12100 vs Core i5-12600 comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-12600 beats the Core i3-12100 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i3-12100 in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i5-12600 has significantly more cores with 6 cores whereas the Core i3-12100 has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i3-12100. Both the Core i3-12100 and Core i5-12600 have the same clock speed. Despite this, the Core i5-12600 has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i3-12100 CPU outputs less heat than a Core i5-12600 CPU because of its slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. Indeed, the Core i3-12100 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.