Intel Core i9-12900K vs AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Compare Intel 12th Generation Core i9 16 core CPU vs AMD Ryzen 9000 Series 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 9950X3D

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 289.00

$ 378.80 significantly less expensive

$ 667.80

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

13335 points

16293 points

22% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

14237 points

14659 points

2% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

13039 points

16917 points

29% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

12988 points

17259 points

32% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

11701 points

17230 points

47% significantly higher 3DMark Physics score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

364.47 points

643.21 points

76% significantly higher Blender score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

15365 points

22134 points

44% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

2616 points

3395 points

29% 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

4.3 GHz

34% 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

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

1280 KiB

Identical

1280 KiB

L3 Cache

General memory pool for all cores

30 MiB

128 MiB

326% significantly more L3 cache

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

39th of 1,111

14th of 1,111

Family

The product line

12th Generation Core i9

Ryzen 9000 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2021 November

2025 March

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 9950X3D benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D 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 9950X3D has more threads. Our comparison shows that the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900K. Also, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Ryzen 9 9950X3D 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.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. Indeed, the Core i9-12900K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.