Intel Core i7-7700K vs Intel Core i5-12500

Core i7-7700K vs Core i5-12500 comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-12500 performs better than the Core i7-7700K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-7700K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i5-12500 has significantly more cores with 6 cores compared to the Core i7-7700K that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-7700K. The Core i5-12500 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.

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 i7-7700K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.