Intel Core i9-12900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

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

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Specifications
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AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 289.00

$ 158.36 significantly less expensive

$ 447.36

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

13331 points

16669 points

25% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

14234 points

1% slightly better gaming score

14068 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

13035 points

17588 points

34% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

12983 points

17965 points

38% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

11701 points

15917 points

36% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

364.47 points

568.01 points

55% significantly higher Blender score

Cinebench R23 score

Multi threaded benchmark

27005 points

38248 points

41% slightly higher Cinebench R23 score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

15144 points

18904 points

24% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

2550 points

2875 points

12% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

15365 points

19297 points

25% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

2616 points

2976 points

13% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

33% slightly more threads

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.2 GHz

4.5 GHz

40% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

5.2 GHz

5.7 GHz

9% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

241 W

170 W

41% slightly lower TDP

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

20% slightly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

128 GiB

Identical

128 GiB

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

1280 KiB

25% slightly more L1 cache

1024 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

11th of 1,089

Family

The product line

12th Generation Core i9

Ryzen 9 Desktop

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2021 November

2022 September

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 7950X specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 7950X beats the Core i9-12900K in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-12900K in all gaming tests too.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores but the Ryzen 9 7950X has more threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Ryzen 9 7950X has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i9-12900K. Also, the Ryzen 9 7950X has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Ryzen 9 7950X outputs less heat than Core i9-12900K thanks to a slightly 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 i9-12900K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.