Last November, we took a look at Intel’s first 12th Gen desktop processors, and today we’re back to get the job done. In the original article, we reviewed the Core i9 12900K and Core i5 12600K and were impressed. It turns out that the modern 10nm process, larger L3 cache and new hybrid architecture with “performance” and “efficient” cores together make for a very powerful CPU lineup. However, the $589 12900K and $289 12600K both have cheaper equivalents and fewer E cores and should offer very similar gaming performance – so this time we’re going to look at those chips, the $409 Core i7 12700K and the 167 $ Core i5 12400F .
Looking at the specs of each CPU in the table below, you can see the logic behind the pairing of the 12900K/12700K and 12600K/12400F. In each case, we have the same number of Hyper-Threaded Performance cores – 8 for the high-end (i9/i7) parts, 6 for the mid-range (i5) product – with four instances less Efficient cores for the low-end . That means going from 8 E cores in the 12900K to 4 in the 12700K, and 4 E cores in the 12600K becomes 0 E cores on the 12400F.
In addition to having fewer E cores for running background tasks, the L3 cache size and maximum turbo clock also decrease as the stack goes down. It will be interesting to see how these changes affect game and content creation performance. We’d also like to see an impact on thermal output, as cheaper chips may run cooler and therefore require less intense cooling to operate optimally.
| processor | Color(P/E) | thread | P max turbo | E max turbo | Smart Cache | cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| i9-12900K | 16 (8E/8P) | twenty four | 5.2GHz* | 3.9GHz | 30MB | $589 |
| i7-12700K | 12 (8P/4E) | 20 | 5.0GHz* | 3.8GHz | 25MB | $409 |
| i5-12600K | 10 (6P/4E) | 16 | 4.9GHz | 3.6GHz | 20MB | $289 |
| i5-12400F | 6 (6P/0E) | 12 | 4.4GHz | not applicable | 18MB | $167 |
To recap, the 12700K and 12400F require a 600 series Intel motherboard. These support Alder Lake’s new higher CPUs with LGA 1700 sockets, PCIe 5.0 and DDR4 or DDR5 RAM. We think DDR4 will prove to be the more valuable option here and now, with DDR5 motherboards coming in a few months or years. The new chips rely on Intel’s thread controller and the Windows 11 operating system to put performance-critical gaming or content creation tasks on the P cores, while background tasks like updating or streaming media run on the E cores. The new CPUs do work on Windows 10, but you’ll see performance degradation because running programs can’t be intelligently assigned to the correct cores.
Test bench specifications
Before we get into content creation and gaming benchmarks, let’s take a quick look at the testbed we’ll be using.
We’re using the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero, a premium Z690 motherboard that supports DDR5. We tested two dual-channel RAM kits: the 32GB Corsair DDR5-5200 CL38 Dominator Platinum kit with fancy RGB lighting, and the more basic-looking but lower-cost 32GB Crucial DDR5-4800 CL40 kit. Our other motherboards use the fastest DDR4 we have on hand: the 3600MHz CL16 G.Skill Trident Z Royal kit. This memory is clocked at a much lower frequency, but it does offer significantly better timings and it costs less, so it will be interesting to see how it performs on the Z690 DDR4 board once we test it internally.
The Asus motherboard is one of the most expensive Z690 options out there, retailing for around £520/$600, but includes one of the thickest VRM coolers I’ve seen, an impressive 20+1 power stage and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. There are also some unique features including a quick release button for the main PCIe slot for faster removal (great for GPU testing!), screwless M.2 SSD mounting and “ROG Hyper M.2” PCIe 5.0 card – neat .
Elsewhere, we tested 11th-gen processors with the Asus ROG Maximus Z590 Hero and AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs with the Asus ROG Crosshair 8 Hero. These CPUs were cooled with an Eisbaer Aurora 240mm AiO, while the 12th-gen tests were conducted with the included Asus ROG Ryujin 2 360mm AiO. (And to answer an obvious question: Based on our testing, 240mm and 360mm all-in-ones tend to offer the same performance – especially on open-air test rigs in cool (21C) ambient conditions. The only difference is often the fan speed, at 240mm vs 360mm.) Our rig was done using a 1000W Corsair RM1000x power supply from Infinite Computing.
To get the new Intel chip on track, we’re using the Asus ROG Strix 3090 OC Edition. It’s a massive three-slot, three-fan design that keeps the graphics card cool and quiet, especially compared to the more modestly sized 2080 Ti Founders Edition. This should help reduce the variance between runs and ensure we are as CPU bound as possible. The RX 6900 XT would have been a usable replacement, but we have three RT-based games in our lineup, and Nvidia’s better performance in those games makes it an obvious choice.
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We tested on a (£196/$160) 1TB PNY CS3140 PCIe 4.0 SSD with a fresh install of Windows 11. All the latest BIOS updates and Windows updates installed, as well as AMD’s latest chipset drivers for testing Ryzen 5000 processors; again, all games used are up to date. (Note that this new platform means our results here aren’t comparable to our past Ryzen 5000 or Intel 11th Gen reviews.)
It is important to note that we tested with Multi-Core Enhancement (MCE) enabled on all Intel motherboards. With the removal of turbo restrictions in Intel’s 12th Gen guidelines, it’s clear that the chipmaker is aware that its motherboard partners — and its users — tend to use their processors that way anyway. However, this does mean that these CPUs are likely to generate more heat and consume more power than the listed power figures, so you’ll need to factor in the cost of a reasonable motherboard, a good power supply, and a robust cooling solution Obtain similar results.
Content Creation Benchmarks
So, out of the way – content creation. We’ve picked two relatively quick tests here to give you an idea of how Gen 11 performs common tasks like 3D rendering and transcoding video from one format to another. For the former, we used Cinebench R20, a benchmark application that simulates rendering 3D scenes in the professional graphics package Cinema 4D, and for the latter, we used high-quality Patreon video encoding to h.264 and h.264. 265 (HEVC) format free Handbrake app – a task we perform on a regular basis.
Cinebench tests single- and multi-threaded performance, which can make it a useful predictor of future gaming performance – for example, a CPU with a high single-core score here is likely to perform well in games that rely on single-threading for most of their computations, such as Far Cry 6. Intel is promising a big boost in single-core performance with the 12th generation, and both new CPUs deliver. The 12700K is within 4% of the 12900K, and even about 15% higher than the high-end Ryzen 9 5950X. The 12400F may be the slowest 12th Gen part we’ve tested, but it also outperforms all Ryzen and 11th Gen Intel parts in single-core speed. It’s 20 percent faster than last year’s Core i5 11600K, which represents pretty solid generational progress.
Multithreading scores also benefit from the 12th Gen’s single-core speed advantage, with the 12700K’s 20-core score of 8683, easily ahead of the 5902 managed by the 16-core 11900K (a 47% advantage). The 12400F also performed well, with the 4736 outperforming the Ryzen 5 5600X by about 200 points or 5%. If this translates to gaming performance, we should be looking at CPUs that outperform AMD’s best CPUs (and their Intel predecessors) while costing less. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though, as our second content creation test results are also worth discussing.
| CB R20 1T | CB R20 metric tons | HB h.264 | HB HEVC | HEVC power usage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core i9 12900K | 760 | 10416 | 70.82fps | 29.26fps | 373W |
| Core i7 12700K | 729 | 8683 | 57.64fps | 25.67 frames per second | 318W |
| Core i5 12600K | 716 | 6598 | 44.27fps | 19.99 frames per second | 223W |
| Core i5 12400F | 652 | 4736 | 31.77fps | 14.70fps | 190W |
| Core i9 11900K | 588 | 5902 | 41.01fps | 18.46fps | 321W |
| Core i5 11600K | 541 | 4086 | 29.00 frames/sec | 13.12fps | 250W |
| Ryzen 9 5950X | 637 | 10165 | 70.28fps | 30.14fps | 237W |
| Ryzen 9 5600X | 601 | 4502 | 31.75fps | 14.43fps | 160W |
The second test was our Handbrake transcoding benchmark, where the 12700K slot was well between 12900K and 12600K – 58fps for h.264 export and 26fps for HEVC export. For nearly the same context as the Ryzen 9 5900X results we recorded on a Windows 10 system, of course that’s on a different OS and DDR4 RAM. Still, it shows that the 12700K will be a capable production system, if not really competing with the workstation-class Ryzen 9 5950X or the full-fat Core i9 12900K’s 70fps h.264 results. Peak power usage during HEVC output is also reasonable at 318W, while the 12900K’s peak power is closer to 375W. AMD’s Ryzen CPUs are still more efficient, though, with the Ryzen 9 5950X system recording just 237W on the wall during its HEVC encoding.
At the same time, the handbrake output speed of 6P+0E 12400F is about 70% of that of 6P+4E 12600K, while consuming 85% of the power. However, that’s still slightly higher than the Ryzen 5 5600X, which is a more expensive CPU (but tends to go with cheaper B550 or X570 motherboards). In tasks like these that are easily parallelizable, processors with higher core counts tend to perform well, but the 12400F is surprisingly solid, in fact the fastest true six-core processor we’ve tested in this benchmark – neat.
That’s sure impressive stuff, but now let’s get to the real meat and potatoes – game results. We tested the new chip in eight games here, including several that debuted in our early 12900K and 12600K reviews. We also took a quick look at memory performance here, before our full DDR5 vs. DDR4 test. Choose your adventure from the options below, or just click the “Next” button to move on.
Intel Core i7 12700K and Core i5 12400F Analysis
