Intel Core i7-12700K vs Intel Core i9-12900

Core i7-12700K vs Core i9-12900 benchmarks

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i7-12700K is faster than the Core i9-12900. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-12900 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900 has slightly more cores with 16 cores compared to the Core i7-12700K that has 12 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-12700K. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i7-12700K has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900. Despite this, the Core i9-12900 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-12900 outputs less heat than Core i7-12700K 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 i7-12700K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.