Intel Core i3-12100F vs Intel Core i9-12900K

Core i3-12100F vs Core i9-12900K comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i9-12900K is faster than the Core i3-12100F. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i3-12100F in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900K has significantly more cores with 16 cores compared to the Core i3-12100F that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i3-12100F. Our comparison shows that the Core i3-12100F has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900K. Despite this, the Core i9-12900K has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i3-12100F CPU outputs less heat than a Core i9-12900K CPU because of its significantly 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 i3-12100F has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.