Intel Core i3-12100 vs Intel Core i7-10870H

Core i3-12100 vs Core i7-10870H benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-10870H beats the Core i3-12100 in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i3-12100 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-10870H has significantly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i3-12100 that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i3-12100. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i3-12100 has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-10870H. Despite this, the Core i7-10870H has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-10870H outputs less heat than Core i3-12100 thanks to a slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i3-12100 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.