Intel Core i7-9700K vs Intel Core i9-12900K

Core i7-9700K vs Core i9-12900K specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i9-12900K 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.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900K has significantly more cores with 16 cores compared to the Core i7-9700K that has 8 cores. It also 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 i9-12900K. Despite this, the Core i9-12900K has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i7-9700K CPU outputs less heat than a Core i9-12900K 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. For instance, the Core i7-9700K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.