Intel Core i9-11900K vs Intel Core i7-12700

Core i9-11900K vs Core i7-12700 benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-12700 performs better than the Core i9-11900K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-11900K in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-12700 has significantly more cores with 12 cores compared to the Core i9-11900K that has 8 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i9-11900K. Our comparison shows that the Core i9-11900K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-12700. Also, the Core i9-11900K has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-12700 outputs less heat than Core i9-11900K 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 i9-11900K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.