Intel Core i5-12600K vs Intel Core i9-12900HX

Core i5-12600K vs Core i9-12900HX comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i9-12900HX performs better than the Core i5-12600K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-12600K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900HX has significantly more cores with 16 cores compared to the Core i5-12600K that has 10 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-12600K. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-12600K has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900HX. Despite this, the Core i9-12900HX has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-12900HX 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.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. Indeed, the Core i5-12600K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.