Intel Core i7-9700K vs Intel Core i5-12600

Core i7-9700K vs Core i5-12600 specs and performance

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i5-12600 is faster than the Core i7-9700K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-9700K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-9700K has slightly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i5-12600 that has 6 cores. Despite this, the Core i5-12600 has more threads than the Core i7-9700K. Our comparison shows that the Core i7-9700K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-12600. Also, the Core i7-9700K has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i5-12600 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.

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. For instance, the Core i7-9700K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.