Intel Core i5-10400 vs Intel Core i9-12900HK

Core i5-10400 vs Core i9-12900HK comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core i9-12900HK beats the Core i5-10400 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-10400 in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i9-12900HK has significantly more cores with 14 cores whereas the Core i5-10400 has 6 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-10400. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-10400 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i9-12900HK. Despite this, the Core i9-12900HK has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-12900HK outputs less heat than Core i5-10400 thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption. The info from our database shows that the Core i9-12900HK has more L2 cache than the Core i5-10400. The Core i9-12900HK also has significantly more L3 cache.

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 i5-10400 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.