Intel Core i5-6600K vs Intel Core i7-12700

Core i5-6600K vs Core i7-12700 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-12700 beats the Core i5-6600K in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-6600K in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i7-12700 has significantly more cores with 12 cores whereas the Core i5-6600K has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-6600K. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-6600K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-12700. Despite this, the Core i7-12700 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-12700 outputs less heat than Core i5-6600K thanks to a slightly 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. For instance, the Core i5-6600K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.