Intel Core i9-12900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 9900X

Compare Intel 12th Generation Core i9 16 core CPU vs AMD Ryzen 9000 Series 12 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 9900X

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 289.00

$ 80.00 slightly less expensive

$ 369.00

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

13335 points

13840 points

3% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

14237 points

1% slightly better gaming score

14073 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

13039 points

13777 points

5% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

12988 points

13778 points

6% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

11701 points

13920 points

18% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

364.47 points

462.53 points

26% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

15365 points

19790 points

28% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

2616 points

3339 points

27% 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

4.4 GHz

37% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

5.2 GHz

5.6 GHz

7% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

241 W

120 W

100% significantly lower TDP

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

1280 KiB

33% slightly more L1 cache

960 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 1,092

35th of 1,092

Family

The product line

12th Generation Core i9

Ryzen 9000 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2021 November

2024 August

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 9900X comparison

In our benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 9900X beats the Core i9-12900K in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i9-12900K has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

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 9900X that has 12 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Ryzen 9 9900X has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900K. Also, the Ryzen 9 9900X has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Ryzen 9 9900X outputs less heat than Core i9-12900K thanks to a 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. Indeed, the Core i9-12900K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.