Intel Core i5-9600K 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

$ 159.00

$ 113.22 significantly less expensive

$ 272.22

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

4450 points

7166 points

61% significantly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

7080 points

9976 points

40% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

3627 points

6301 points

73% significantly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

3488 points

6099 points

74% significantly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

4254 points

6075 points

42% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

94.07 points

170.78 points

81% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

5629 points

9112 points

61% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1529 points

2182 points

42% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

6212 points

9032 points

45% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1679 points

2320 points

38% slightly 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

4.6 GHz

Identical

4.6 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

95 W

65 W

46% significantly lower TDP

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

394th 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

2018 November

2022 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2666

DDR5-4800

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Yes

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Yes

Core i5-9600K vs Core i5-12500 specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-12500 performs better than the Core i5-9600K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-9600K 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. The Core i5-12500 outputs less heat than Core i5-9600K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. For instance, the Core i5-9600K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.