AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X vs Intel Core i9-12900KF

Ryzen Threadripper 3960X vs Core i9-12900KF specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X beats the Core i9-12900KF in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i9-12900KF has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X has significantly more cores with 24 cores compared to the Core i9-12900KF that has 16 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i9-12900KF. Our comparison shows that the Ryzen Threadripper 3960X has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i9-12900KF. Despite this, the Core i9-12900KF has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i9-12900KF outputs less heat than Ryzen Threadripper 3960X thanks to a slightly 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 Ryzen Threadripper 3960X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.