Intel Core i5-12600K vs Intel Core i5-2500K

Core i5-12600K vs Core i5-2500K comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i5-12600K is faster than the Core i5-2500K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-2500K in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i5-12600K has significantly more cores with 10 cores whereas the Core i5-2500K has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-2500K. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-12600K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-2500K. Also, the Core i5-12600K has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i5-2500K outputs less heat than Core i5-12600K 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 i5-12600K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.