Intel Core i9-9900K vs Intel Core i3-12100

Core i9-9900K vs Core i3-12100 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i9-9900K beats the Core i3-12100 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i3-12100 in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i9-9900K has significantly more cores with 8 cores whereas the Core i3-12100 has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i3-12100. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i9-9900K has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i3-12100. Also, the Core i9-9900K has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i3-12100 outputs less heat than Core i9-9900K 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 i9-9900K has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.