Intel Core i9-7980XE vs Intel Core i7-12800HX

Core i9-7980XE vs Core i7-12800HX comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i9-7980XE performs better than the Core i7-12800HX. Despite this, the Core i7-12800HX has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-7980XE has slightly more cores with 18 cores compared to the Core i7-12800HX that has 16 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-12800HX. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i9-7980XE has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i7-12800HX. Despite this, the Core i7-12800HX has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-12800HX 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.

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 i9-7980XE has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.