AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X vs Intel Core i7-12700K

Ryzen Threadripper 3970X vs Core i7-12700K specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-12700K beats the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X has significantly more cores with 32 cores compared to the Core i7-12700K that has 12 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i7-12700K. Our comparison shows that the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-12700K. Despite this, the Core i7-12700K has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-12700K outputs less heat than Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 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 Ryzen Threadripper 3970X has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.