Intel Core i7-7700K vs Intel Core i3-12100

Compare Intel 7th Generation Core i7 4 core CPU vs Intel 12th Generation Core i3 4 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

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Specifications
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Intel Core i3-12100

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 185.00

$ 128.59

$ 56.41 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

3620 points

5115 points

41% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

5762 points

8339 points

44% significantly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

2983 points

4166 points

39% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

2864 points

4001 points

39% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

3473 points

4034 points

16% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

85.21 points

111.80 points

31% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

5070 points

6822 points

34% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1524 points

2105 points

38% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

5174 points

6766 points

30% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1596 points

2147 points

34% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

4.2 GHz

27% slightly higher clock speed

3.3 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

4.5 GHz

4% slightly higher turbo speed

4.3 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

95 W

60 W

58% 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

64 GiB

128 GiB

100% significantly more supported memory

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

256 KiB

320 KiB

25% slightly more L1 cache

L3 Cache

General memory pool for all cores

8 MiB

12 MiB

49% significantly more L3 cache

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

471st of 1,089

337th of 1,089

Family

The product line

7th Generation Core i7

12th Generation Core i3

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2017 February

2022 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2133

DDR5-4800

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Yes

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i7-7700K vs Core i3-12100 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i3-12100 beats the Core i7-7700K in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-7700K in all gaming tests too.

Info from our database shows that they both have the same core count and the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Core i7-7700K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i3-12100. Also, the Core i7-7700K has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i3-12100 outputs less heat than Core i7-7700K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. 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. Indeed, the Core i7-7700K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.