Intel Core i7-9700K vs Intel Core i5-12500

Core i7-9700K vs Core i5-12500 benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-12500 performs better than the Core i7-9700K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-9700K in all gaming tests too.

In terms of the number of cores of each of these CPUs, the Core i7-9700K has slightly more cores than the Core i5-12500. Indeed, the Core i7-9700K has 8 cores compared to 6 cores found in the Core i5-12500. Despite this, the Core i5-12500 has more threads than the Core i7-9700K. The Core i5-12500 outputs less heat than Core i7-9700K thanks to a 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. For instance, the Core i7-9700K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.