Intel Core i7-8700K vs Intel Core i7-12700KF

Core i7-8700K vs Core i7-12700KF specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-12700KF performs better than the Core i7-8700K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-8700K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-12700KF has significantly more cores with 12 cores compared to the Core i7-8700K that has 6 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-8700K. Our comparison shows that the Core i7-8700K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-12700KF. Despite this, the Core i7-12700KF has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i7-8700K CPU outputs less heat than a Core i7-12700KF CPU because of its 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. Indeed, the Core i7-8700K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.