Intel Core i5-9400 vs Intel Core i5-12500

Compare Intel 9th 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

$ 139.00

$ 133.22 significantly less expensive

$ 272.22

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

3754 points

7166 points

90% significantly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

6091 points

9976 points

63% significantly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

3034 points

6301 points

107% significantly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

2911 points

6099 points

109% significantly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

5065 points

6075 points

19% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

78.76 points

170.78 points

116% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

4782 points

9112 points

90% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1342 points

2182 points

62% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

4811 points

9032 points

87% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1393 points

2320 points

66% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

100% significantly more threads

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

4.1 GHz

4.6 GHz

12% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

65 W

Identical

65 W

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

9 MiB

18 MiB

100% significantly more L3 cache

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

455th of 1,089

182nd of 1,089

Family

The product line

9th Generation Core i5

12th Generation Core i5

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2019 February

2022 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2666

DDR5-4800

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Yes

Core i5-9400 vs Core i5-12500 benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i5-12500 is faster than the Core i5-9400. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-9400 in all gaming tests too.

Info from our database shows that they both have the same core count but the Core i5-12500 has more threads. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). 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. For instance, the Core i5-9400 has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.