Compare the two processors: the Intel Core i5-12600K and the AMD Ryzen 7-12700F.
Compare the two processors: the Intel Core i5-12600K and the AMD Ryzen 7-12700F.
I have a nearby shop offering a deal where the price gap between two models is under $30. I understand that the 12700f won’t include an igpu, but when it comes to gaming performance and productivity, how beneficial are the upgrade options of a 12600k compared to the 12700f? And what’s more important is the extra two cores in the 12700f versus the 12600k?
For a Z series motherboard paired with a powerful cooler, the 12600K offers benefits in many situations. But a budget B660 board with a decent CPU cooler can still provide strong performance and likely save you some costs.
You can't boost the 12700F as much as you could with the 12600K. It isn't an unlocked chip. Many games gain from a fast CPU clock. The extra cores won’t make much difference. An overclocked 12600K can even perform better than a regular 12900K in several titles.
Some percentage improvements exist in frequency-sensitive games. The 12900K isn't significantly faster than the 12700F after accounting for power limits. In real-world use cases, comparisons show differences in rendering, code compilation, and compression efficiency. I believe the 12600K will struggle to surpass the 12700F.
The claim that "8 core CPUs are the absolute minimum" is becoming common. A 6 core with 12 threads plus four e-cores covers most needs except for the toughest games over the past few years. Sure, if you're only playing Halo Infinite, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or Battlefield, an i7 would be better. But for any of the popular titles that don’t rely heavily on multi-core performance, a faster single-thread CPU is now more important. It wasn’t long ago that Intel claimed the "fastest gaming CPU in the world" with their 9th generation line, even though Ryzen 3000 had more cores. Many seem to exaggerate the importance of multi-core processing these days. I’m still using a 6 core i7 that’s overclocked, getting solid performance in modern AAA games on a 1440p 144Hz screen.
I didn't mention cores much at all. My focus was on highlighting that the original concept is outdated in today's chips.
It doesn't matter much on Ryzen, and Intel's recent models have been heavily optimized for 14nm. Still, achieving solid performance across all cores on the 12th generation chips is quite achievable, as some discussions suggest. The adaptability has noticeably increased.
You might achieve around 5.3GHz with a solid cooler, which is about 15% faster than the 12700F’s full 4.6GHz. If speed were the only factor, the 12600K would likely perform better. However, the 12700F includes 25% more cache than the 12600K, which still matters even if extra cores are turned off. I believe the main trade-off will come from gaming, where some titles prioritize cache more than frequency, while others favor speed. Do you have any real-world examples of performance improvements from these upgrades? I’m not interested in raw frequency stats unless they actually show a boost. The YouTube OC videos I’ve seen usually mention only around 15% gains for the 12600K in certain games, and most reports fall below 5%. I also can’t find any major reviews confirming overclock results above 5GHz, so it seems these upgrades are rare exceptions rather than the rule, unless recent BIOS updates significantly changed things.