Intel Core i5-8600K vs Intel Core i3-12100

Core i5-8600K vs Core i3-12100 benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i3-12100 is faster than the Core i5-8600K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-8600K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i5-8600K has significantly more cores with 6 cores compared to the Core i3-12100 that has 4 cores. Despite this, the Core i3-12100 has more threads than the Core i5-8600K. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-8600K has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i3-12100. Furthermore, both these CPUs have identical turbo speeds. The Core i3-12100 outputs less heat than Core i5-8600K 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. For instance, the Core i5-8600K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.