AMD Ryzen 9 3900X vs Intel Core i9-12900K

Compare AMD Ryzen 9 Desktop 12 core CPU vs Intel 12th Generation Core i9 16 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

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Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 229.99
$ 59.01 slightly less expensive
$ 289.00

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

8422 points
13331 points
58% significantly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

8440 points
14234 points
68% significantly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

8406 points
13035 points
55% significantly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

8392 points
12983 points
54% significantly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

Want to compare your processor against the Ryzen 9 3900X and the Core i9-12900K? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Physics score

3DMark Physics score

Physics simulation benchmark

8594 points
11701 points
36% slightly higher 3DMark Physics score
Blender score

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

276.80 points
364.47 points
31% slightly higher Blender score
Cinebench R23 score

Cinebench R23 score

Multi threaded benchmark

19000 points
27005 points
42% slightly higher Cinebench R23 score
Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

9929 points
15144 points
52% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score
Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1667 points
2550 points
52% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score
Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

9907 points
15365 points
55% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score
Geekbench 6 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

1704 points
2616 points
53% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

12
16
33% slightly more cores

Threads

Number of logical processing units

24
Identical
24

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.80 GHz
18% slightly higher clock speed
3.2 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

4.6 GHz
5.2 GHz
13% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

105 W
129% significantly lower TDP
241 W

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

2
Identical
2

L1 Cache

Smallest embedded memory, but the fastest

768 KiB
1280 KiB
66% significantly more L1 cache

L3 Cache

General memory pool for all cores

64 MiB
113% significantly more L3 cache
30 MiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

130th of 1,089
39th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Ryzen 9 Desktop
12th Generation Core i9

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2019 July
2021 November

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4
DDR5-4800

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Yes
Yes

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

-
Yes

Ryzen 9 3900X vs Core i9-12900K specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i9-12900K performs better than the Ryzen 9 3900X. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Ryzen 9 3900X in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i9-12900K has slightly more cores with 16 cores compared to the Ryzen 9 3900X that has 12 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Ryzen 9 3900X has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900K. Despite this, the Core i9-12900K has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Ryzen 9 3900X CPU outputs less heat than a Core i9-12900K CPU because of its significantly 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 Ryzen 9 3900X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.

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