Intel Core i9-12900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 7900

Compare Intel 12th Generation Core i9 16 core CPU vs AMD Ryzen 9 12 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

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Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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AMD Ryzen 9 7900

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 289.00

$ 118.55 significantly less expensive

$ 407.55

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

13331 points

5% slightly better overall score

12696 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

14234 points

10% slightly better gaming score

12933 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

13035 points

3% slightly better multitasking score

12616 points

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

12983 points

3% slightly better heavy workload score

12600 points

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

11701 points

5% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

11128 points

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

364.47 points

394.92 points

8% slightly higher Blender score

Cinebench R23 score

Multi threaded benchmark

27005 points

8% slightly higher Cinebench R23 score

24776 points

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

15144 points

16762 points

10% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

2550 points

2797 points

9% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

15365 points

16768 points

9% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

2616 points

2868 points

9% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

33% slightly more cores

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.2 GHz

3.70 GHz

15% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

5.2 GHz

5.4 GHz

3% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

241 W

65 W

270% significantly lower TDP

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

1280 KiB

66% significantly more L1 cache

768 KiB

L3 Cache

General memory pool for all cores

30 MiB

64 MiB

113% significantly more L3 cache

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

39th of 1,089

45th of 1,089

Family

The product line

12th Generation Core i9

Ryzen 9

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2021 November

2023 January

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR5-4800

DDR5

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Yes

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Yes

Core i9-12900K vs Ryzen 9 7900 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i9-12900K beats the Ryzen 9 7900 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Ryzen 9 7900 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900K has slightly more cores with 16 cores compared to the Ryzen 9 7900 that has 12 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Ryzen 9 7900 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900K.

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 i9-12900K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.