Intel Core i9-7980XE vs Intel Core i5-12600KF

Core i9-7980XE vs Core i5-12600KF benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-12600KF performs better than the Core i9-7980XE. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i9-7980XE in all gaming tests too.

In terms of the number of cores of each of these CPUs, the Core i9-7980XE has significantly more cores than the Core i5-12600KF. Indeed, the Core i9-7980XE has 18 cores compared to 10 cores found in the Core i5-12600KF. It also has more threads than the Core i5-12600KF. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-12600KF has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i9-7980XE. Also, the Core i5-12600KF has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i5-12600KF outputs less heat than Core i9-7980XE 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 i9-7980XE has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.