Intel Core i5-12600K Review: 5600X Defeated

[dangh]

I guess the 5800X, 12600K and 12700K should all be good enough to last the next 4-5 years for gaming unless you need the highest possible framerates to drive future GPUs at lower resolutions. Gonna keep my 5800X until 2025 if possible, by then we should be on PCie 6.0 and possibly DDR6 in its early stages.

Same here, happy withnmy system and my next upgrade will be gpu anyway. Cpu can wait safely 3-4 gens for a swap.

 

[Yenega]

I think games are using just the 6 p-cores for the most part

Games are only using performance cores. Some games have bugs right now and use the wrong cores. Alder Lake is brand new. Give it a few weeks or months and performance will improve.

Ryzen 1000 series were a beta test for the most part of a year in comparison. Wonky performance in tons of games and apps.

Alder Lake will only get better and better as software is finetuned for hybrid design. This is the future.

AMD is rushing their own hybrid design because they know this. Software will be written for big.LITTLE going forward. Games will use performance cores only and games will have 100% of this power allocated, since efficiency cores will deal with everything else running in the background.

Clever.

 

[bravesgood]

@Steven Walton this is not fair comparison, in regard of price/performance sure Intel did great job no question what so ever, but comparing 6/8 core vs 10 core is not fair. i512600K name is misleading. once again Intel did great job but still little behind AMD parts from core count perspective

I think its more about the best processor you can get for around $300 right now, that's why Steve compared it against the 5600K. Both 12600k and 5600X are like $310-320 on Amazon/Newegg currently. Its perfectly fair comparison, especially now that Intel has introduced CPUs with cores that have different IPC under the same die.

 

[Sausagemeat]

Amazon and Newegg seem to be selling for $319.99 right now, unless there was some sale a few days ago.

My apologies. Today I learned that newegg.com takes me to a U.K. site and they sell in ££. It was £297. I did not know newegg operated here. Although since Brexit a lot of US retailers have started shipping out here.

It is $299 in micro Center USA though.

 

[Andir]

What makes me hesitate going for the 12600K vs 5800X when pricing is the same (what I assume will be the case pretty soon):

They both are 16 threads part, The 12600K even has the higher core count. But the 12600K is not able to beat the 12600K in games and some multi-threaded applications, even hitting the market one year after the 5800X.

Looking JUST @ the price a score of 95 is OK but comparing to the actual competitor (core-wise) it's not looking good at all, right? What do you guys think?

IMO, the Alder-Lake architecture is very much designed for laptops, it'd be better, to have a p-core only 8-core as the 12600K. These cores are not even efficient when pushed to the limits (as we see it in desktop systems), just much slower than p-cores. I think we have to live with that though.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I guess the 5800X, 12600K and 12700K should all be good enough to last the next 4-5 years for gaming unless you need the highest possible framerates to drive future GPUs at lower resolutions. Gonna keep my 5800X until 2025 if possible, by then we should be on PCie 6.0 and possibly DDR6 in its early stages.

It depends on what you want to do. If you game at 60 FPS, even a 3570k from a decade ago is sufficient to keep 60 FPS for 1% minimums. CPUs last a really long time, any 6 core CPU is goign to last until 2030, easily.

I never said its unfair for Intel to have more cores, I just meant that core vs core count or limited clock speed will be more straightforward to see the difference between the two architecture which @Steven Walton himself do such benchmark usually. and will repeat for third time that Intel did great job.

This isnt an IPC clock for clock comparison, though. Those are seperate articles.

This is a basic review comparing CPUs at certian price points, not core or clock count. Fact is Intel has delivered a chip with mroe cores and a higher frequency for almost the same price, which puts AMD in a bad spot.

 

[Lionvibez]

Intel can reliably deliver CPUs to retailers, unlike AMDs GPU division. Not sure why thats confusing.

I mean, it only came out today, and it is in stock, at MSRP, at newegg

Intel Core i5-12600K - Core i5 12th Gen Alder Lake 10-Core (6P+4E) 3.7 GHz LGA 1700 125W Intel UHD Graphics 770 Desktop Processor - BX8071512600K - Newegg.com

Buy Intel Core i5-12600K - Core i5 12th Gen Alder Lake 10-Core (6P+4E) 3.7 GHz LGA 1700 125W Intel UHD Graphics 770 Desktop Processor - BX8071512600K with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

No GPU release has managed this since the 2000 series.

That is because intel owns its own fab and doesn't have to go TSMC for their CPU's.

So its expected they would have volume on launch.

 

[Sausagemeat]

It depends on what you want to do. If you game at 60 FPS, even a 3570k from a decade ago is sufficient to keep 60 FPS for 1% minimums. CPUs last a really long time, any 6 core CPU is goign to last until 2030, easily.

My 7 year old i7 4790k overclocked to 4.7ghz paired with Corsair dominator platinum 2133 CL9 (about as good as reasonable DDR3 gets) struggles to lock 60 fps on quite a few games at this point. Cyberpunk 2077, red dead redemption 2, Far Cry 5 & 6, Assassins creed Valhalla. A 3570K was a great CPU, it would hold up a lot worse than my 4790K.

And I like the optimism but I can’t see a 2020 6 core lasting until 2030. AMD released competitive 6 cores in 2010. They didn’t last until 2020! I’ve never seen a CPU remain relevant for 10 years.

Bur don’t get me wrong, any Ryzen 3000/5000 or Intel 10,11,12 gen will give you a great gaming experience for a good few years yet.

 

[Nobina]

This is the CPU to buy right now. That is, unless you have AM4 motherboard which supports Ryzen 5000 series which is likely at this point and that's seriously gonna impact Intel sales here.

 

[HardReset]

That is because intel owns its own fab and doesn't have to go TSMC for their CPU's.

So its expected they would have

That is because intel owns its own fab and doesn't have to go TSMC for their CPU's.

So its expected they would have volume on launch.

Like expected too, because Intel used own fabs, this CPU comes at least 4 years late (process) or 2 years (architecture).

Also AMD also had good amount of CPU's available when Zen2 and Zen3 launched. Nothing special here.

 

[Yenega]

It depends on what you want to do. If you game at 60 FPS, even a 3570k from a decade ago is sufficient to keep 60 FPS for 1% minimums. CPUs last a really long time, any 6 core CPU is goign to last until 2030, easily.


This isnt an IPC clock for clock comparison, though. Those are seperate articles.

This is a basic review comparing CPUs at certian price points, not core or clock count. Fact is Intel has delivered a chip with mroe cores and a higher frequency for almost the same price, which puts AMD in a bad spot.

Several Battlefield games suffer alot on 4/4 CPUs, especially when paired with a higher end GPU.

BF1, a 5+ year old game by now, had insane dips on quad cores without hyperthreading.

Crysis 3 ran like crap on 4/4 too, it's almost 10 years old.

 

[bluetooth fairy]

Basically it is an 8c/16t CPU which performs similarly and consumes about the same power as other 8-core parts. But Intel's marketing machine couldn't just flood the market with 8 P-cores parts and sell it for the price of their 6-core parts. Their engineers spent 1000s hrs for what they call "thread director", and used their good old friendship with MS to embed it (the AlderLake) into Win11.

Who's won there? We have (except Win11 beta testing, for sure). Intel now offers moar cores almost for the same money. That's how it all began in 2017th by AMD.

 

[Lionvibez]

My 7 year old i7 4790k overclocked to 4.7ghz paired with Corsair dominator platinum 2133 CL9 (about as good as reasonable DDR3 gets) struggles to lock 60 fps on quite a few games at this point. Cyberpunk 2077, red dead redemption 2, Far Cry 5 & 6, Assassins creed Valhalla. A 3570K was a great CPU, it would hold up a lot worse than my 4790K.

And I like the optimism but I can’t see a 2020 6 core lasting until 2030. AMD released competitive 6 cores in 2010. They didn’t last until 2020! I’ve never seen a CPU remain relevant for 10 years.

Bur don’t get me wrong, any Ryzen 3000/5000 or Intel 10,11,12 gen will give you a great gaming experience for a good few years yet.

I was on a i7-970 for about 10 years it lasted for everything including gaming at 1200p on a rx580. But I consider that more the exception than the rule. I think right now 8 cores may last you longer, however if AMD and intel keep doing releases with such huge IPC releases it may not be wise to sit on one so long unless you run into budget issues.

 

[Sausagemeat]

I was on a i7-970 for about 10 years it lasted for everything including gaming at 1200p on a rx580. But I consider that more the exception than the rule. I think right now 8 cores may last you longer, however if AMD and intel keep doing releases with such huge IPC releases it may not be wise to sit on one so long unless you run into budget issues.

You may have used a 970 for 10 years but it didn’t stay above 60fps, that’s what I was referring to. You could still use an i7 920 today but you will just be looking at 30fps in a lot of games.

Also I don’t think core count means much. This years Ryzen 5600X performs about the same as the 8 core 3700x at multi threading. A CPU having a certainly amount of cores is no guarantee it will last. I don’t think these parts will hold up very well in 10 years, they will work but it’s likely that in 10 years an i3 will have more cores and multithreaded performance than even a 5950X!

 

[Lionvibez]

You may have used a 970 for 10 years but it didn’t stay above 60fps, that’s what I was referring to. You could still use an i7 920 today but you will just be looking at 30fps in a lot of games.

For the games that I was playing at the time I was doing 60fps at 1920x1200 no problem and that included BFV also. The 920 is only a quad core cpu the 6 cores of the 970 held up much better from my own testing since I have both cpu's.

 

[vvtunes]

AMD was clever with their recent price strategy, but once again the tide has changed and now they will have to readapt in order to battle Intel. It's nice to see some competition. I am curious to see AMD's answer from a technical standpoint (big.LITTLE? smart cache? improved chiplets?). Their current production bottleneck is indeed a problem, as the spice must flow...

When evaluating prices, never forget the TCA regarding motherboard + CPU. I have the impression that Intel chipsets have been historically more expensive, especially those supporting full overclocking features. Keep also in mind the electricity bills when choosing a solution in the long run.

The DDR5 vs DDR4 benefit seems to be somewhat underwhelming at the moment, it reminds me of Core 2 processors and their support of DDR3 vs DDR2. Let's see how things will develop in the future, maybe the next Ryzen architecture will take better advantage of newer memory.

i5 12400 against Ryzen 5600x, now that's a battle worth watching...

 

[Lionvibez]

AMD was clever with their recent price strategy, but once again the tide has changed and now they will have to readapt in order to battle Intel. It's nice to see some competition. I am curious to see AMD's answer from a technical standpoint (big.LITTLE? smart cache? improved chiplets?). Their current production bottleneck is indeed a problem, as the spice must flow...

We already know what AMD is releasing to compete with ADL-S that will be 3d v cache models coming out in Q1 2022. And they won't be going big.little until Zen 5, Zen 4 won't have it.

The future design considerations section in this article below will give you a good idea.

AnandTech Interviews Mike Clark, AMD’s Chief Architect of Zen

www.anandtech.com

This video also covers some of it.

 

[Avro Arrow]

As impressive as it is, it beat a CPU that was released exactly a year ago. That's to be expected.

 

[maroon1]

Also I don’t think core count means much. This years Ryzen 5600X performs about the same as the 8 core 3700x at multi threading.

It does not.... IPC and clock speed is not big enough on 5600X to offset 1.33x extra cores on 3700X

3700X is winning any benchmarks that scales well with cores/threads (for example, 3700X is 18% faster in cinebench than 5600X)...

 

[Sausagemeat]

It does not.... IPC and clock speed is not big enough on 5600X to offset 1.33x extra cores on 3700X

3700X is winning any benchmarks that scales with cores/threads (for example, 3700X is 18% faster in cinebench than 5600X)...

It’s remarkably close to a 3700X, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference. It’s also faster than Intel 8 core parts. It’s a good example of why core count doesn’t actually matter that much. I would much rather have a 5600X than a 3700X because of the massive uplift to single core performance the 5000 series has. But if you did that you’d lose barely any multithreading performance.

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Review: 6-Core Gaming Beast

It's time we finally check out the Ryzen 5 5600X, the most affordable Ryzen 5000 series processor announced to date. Positioned as a mainstream part, it's coming...

www.techspot.com

 

[nnguy2]

Hey Steve,

I'm using your 10 game average fps and I get different average?

12600 5600x
F1 373 392
TC R6SS 511 560
BL3 192 194
WD: L 130 126
MGotG 110 110
SoftTR 166 159
HM3 192 185
AoEIV 147 124
HZD 173 181
CP2077 131 130

Average 212. 216.1

So using your mean overall fps for the ten games I the 5600X at 216.1 fps vs 212.5 for the Intel 12600K.

How did you get the 12600 being faster than the 5600K, maybe possible miscalculation?

 

[Shadowboxer]

Also AMD also had good amount of CPU's available when Zen2 and Zen3 launched. Nothing special here.

Are you kidding? The 5600X and 5900X were selling out everywhere for the first couple of months. Its why I bought a 5800X!

Look, I know you want to defend AMD but selling out does not reflect badly on AMD, especially considering they massively bumped prices. If anything its the opposite, it looks good, people want the product! A company should be more embarassed if its parts dont sell than if it sells out really quickly.

Of course if I were buying today id get the 12600K and not the 5800X or 5600X, these Alderlake CPUs are clearly better buys than the Ryzen 5000 parts.

 

[HardReset]

Are you kidding? The 5600X and 5900X were selling out everywhere for the first couple of months. Its why I bought a 5800X!

Look, I know you want to defend AMD but selling out does not reflect badly on AMD, especially considering they massively bumped prices. If anything its the opposite, it looks good, people want the product! A company should be more embarassed if its parts dont sell than if it sells out really quickly.

Of course if I were buying today id get the 12600K and not the 5800X or 5600X, these Alderlake CPUs are clearly better buys than the Ryzen 5000 parts.

Yeah? Every popular product sells out on launch. AMD provided hefty amount of CPU's but when product is too popular, stocks won't last.

Like AMD said, Zen3 release stock was bigger than ever for AMD. So yes, there was excellent amount available at release.

 

[MarcusNumb]

It's clear that Intel did a great job this time with this 12600k, both on performance and pricing.

I'm on AM4 so this competition is going to benefit me by AMD lowering their prices for the Zen3+ V-3D cache. Let's see if they do, and if it's real then I will upgrade my 3600x to a 5600XT (or whatever they name it) or 5800XT then stay with them for the next 5 years at least.

Again, Intel did a great job but remember that it was AMD who's pushing them to do it, so the competition is great for us, as customers. I chose AMD for their balls, and they did not make me regret it.

 

[Lionvibez]

It's clear that Intel did a great job this time with this 12600k, both on performance and pricing.

I'm on AM4 so this competition is going to benefit me by AMD lowering their prices for the Zen3+ V-3D cache.

I think you mean lowering prices for Zen 3. There is no Zen 3+ v-cache out on the market and no performance data so abit to soon to be talking about pricing on an unreleased part.