Intel Core i7-11700 vs Intel Core i3-12100

Core i7-11700 vs Core i3-12100 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-11700 beats the Core i3-12100 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i3-12100 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-11700 has significantly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i3-12100 that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i3-12100. Our comparison shows that the Core i3-12100 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-11700. Despite this, the Core i7-11700 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i3-12100 outputs less heat than Core i7-11700 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. Indeed, the Core i7-11700 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.