Intel Core i3-8100 vs Intel Core i5-12500

Core i3-8100 vs Core i5-12500 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-12500 beats the Core i3-8100 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i3-8100 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i5-12500 has significantly more cores with 6 cores compared to the Core i3-8100 that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i3-8100. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. For instance, the Core i3-8100 has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.