Intel Core i9-9980HK vs Intel Core i5-8400H

Core i9-9980HK vs Core i5-8400H benchmarks

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i9-9980HK performs better than the Core i5-8400H. Despite this, the Core i5-8400H has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-9980HK has significantly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i5-8400H that has 4 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-8400H. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-8400H has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-9980HK. Despite this, the Core i9-9980HK has a slightly higher turbo speed. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption. The cache sizes of these CPUs are different. Indeed, the Core i9-9980HK has significantly more L2 cache than the Core i5-8400H. The Core i9-9980HK also has slightly more L3 cache.

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 i9-9980HK has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.