Intel Core i5-10600K vs Intel Core i5-12500

Compare Intel 10th Generation Core i5 6 core CPU vs Intel 12th Generation Core i5 6 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Intel Core i5-12500

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 209.95

$ 62.27 slightly less expensive

$ 272.22

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

5576 points

7166 points

28% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

7752 points

9976 points

28% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

4881 points

6301 points

29% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

4723 points

6099 points

29% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

5401 points

6075 points

12% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

134.52 points

170.78 points

26% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

6883 points

9112 points

32% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1630 points

2182 points

33% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

6842 points

9032 points

32% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1687 points

2320 points

37% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

4.8 GHz

4% slightly higher turbo speed

4.6 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

125 W

65 W

92% significantly lower TDP

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

25% slightly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

128 GiB

Identical

128 GiB

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

384 KiB

480 KiB

25% slightly more L1 cache

L3 Cache

General memory pool for all cores

12 MiB

18 MiB

49% significantly more L3 cache

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

287th of 1,089

182nd of 1,089

Family

The product line

10th Generation Core i5

12th Generation Core i5

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2020 May

2022 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2666

DDR5-4800

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Yes

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Yes

Core i5-10600K vs Core i5-12500 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-12500 performs better than the Core i5-10600K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-10600K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores and the same number of threads. The Core i5-12500 outputs less heat than Core i5-10600K thanks to a 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 i5-10600K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.