Intel Core i9-7980XE vs Intel Core i7-12700

Core i9-7980XE vs Core i7-12700 benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-12700 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 i7-12700. Indeed, the Core i9-7980XE has 18 cores compared to 12 cores found in the Core i7-12700. It also has more threads than the Core i7-12700. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i7-12700 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i9-7980XE. Also, the Core i7-12700 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-12700 outputs less heat than Core i9-7980XE 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 i9-7980XE has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.