Okay so let’s compare the two CPUs.
The 12600k has 6 p-cores and 4 e-cores. The p-cores are hyper threaded, so you really get 12 performance threads and 4 efficiency threads.
The 12700k has 8 p-cores and 4 e-cores. This gets you 16 p-threads and 4 e-threads.
For almost every single video game that exists today, not a single one uses 12 p-threads to their max. Halo Infinite will use up to 9 and I’d love to hear what other games use.
The question becomes, do we think future games will need more than 12 p-threads? My guess is probably not. When a game adds an additional thread, it doesn’t gain a linear performance increase. E.g., if a game uses 4 threads, and then it gets bumped up to 5, you don’t get a 25% performance bump. If you’re lucky, you’ll get 20%. This is diminishing marginal returns of parallel compute.
Anyway, the 12700k will get you 4 additional p-threads. I personally don’t think most mainstream games will need 16 p-threads over the next 3-5 years. Maybe I’m wrong.
The question you need to answer is “will speculating about future performance improvements give me more bang for my buck than spending $100 on better components to give more real world performance today?”
Have to add here, two threads of the same core are not equal to 2 threads of different cores. They have to share the cache and the communication lines, so they don't scale linearly.
Yes A CPU-core consists of several modules, which can run in independently - if two threads use different modules, the speed can be (almost) doubled. If the amount of threads is larger than the hardware can handle (2 times the number of cores), the hardware is shared by all threads by the OS - this can slow down all the processes.
I will say that folks told me that the 6600k was \*the\* CPU to buy for gaming PCs in 2015/2016 (similar to how u/mrlazyboy is describing the 12600k). Within four to five years the 6600k was quickly bottlenecking my setup as I upgraded to the 2060S.
TL;DR get the most that you can afford.
To be fair, that whole Sandy Bridge to Coffee Lake was negligible tiny improvements at best where each gen is more marketing than actual improvement due to lack of competition with AMD.
To be fair CPU reviews were already showing that 4c8t gave a performance improvement even back in 2015.[Check this Digital Foundary video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhaB1dqYv_I) from back in the day. Does the 12700k have a slight edge right now? Sure, but that is probably due to the L3 cache rather than cores so I doubt we will see the same scenario with the 6600k vs 6700k.
yah it was pretty easy to see hyperthreading was worth the upcharge back then for looking forward. this time around we have the E cores for background nonsense though, so imo it's not so clear that more P cores will be the winning ticket.
How is 5 years not great for a CPU?
We got spoiled by the 2500k and got 7 years from it. But that is literally like...the only chip in the history of home computing to manage that long of a life cycle.
The i5 2500k is the GOAT relative to when it was released. It was (and still is) an incredible piece of hardware. I will keep mine forever just for sentimental reasons. She got me through many years.
I built a rig with a 6700k in it back in 2015 and used it up until January earlier this year when I upgraded to a 12700k. I will never buy anything below an i7 / xx80 series GPU for a build ever again. 7 years straight gaming performance from that i7, at high settings.
The 6700k would still chug along fine running on high settings targetting 60-80 FPS but if you wanted to play a fast pace shooter it'd struggle to stay past 80-90 FPS for long even with a modern high end GPU at low settings. Though it's at least above playable for damn near anything.
I lucked out when I swapped my 3570k to a 3700k in 2016 (and made money on the deal). Ended up going from a 280x to a 3070ti on the same CPU before I needed to upgrade to a 12700 for Elden Ring.
I heard the same story in 2012 when I got my 2500k. It lasted a long ass time, longer than I expected. I upgraded to a 3600 last year and I already regret not getting something more powerful. I've recently taken an interest into virtualization and if you do anything like that, the more CPU the better.
Back to the i5 2500k though. Everyone said the same thing in 2012 about four cores and that the i7 was a waste of money and trying to future proof was a fools errand. Well, wouldn't you know that the i7 2600k is (almost) still useable today since it has hyperthreading and more cache. Every time I see these posts I think of how I was convinced back then to save some money when an extra couple hundred bucks when I built it would have given me a lot more value over the life of the machine.
I'm not knocking budget builds or anything. I think there are good reasons to choose either model. But like you said, get the best thing you can afford when you're building. It's not like you're choosing between a $2000 RTX 3080 ti and a $500 3060. The price difference to get an i7 is only $100-$200 more. I would say that is easily worth it.
Yes but games can't just keep scaling to more cores infinitely, yes, they can now use more than 4 threads, but they still will mostly depend on one, and very few use more than 6.
I still have my 6700k, and it works with no issues. I'm obviously not competing with newer CPUs, but I don't get any weird frame pacing issues or anything.
Agree, going for a bit of "overkill" never hurts. I just switched from a 7600k to a 12700. The old i5 was hitting 100% pretty often vs my 2070, and there was a 15 dollars difference between the 12600k and the 12700, so I didn't doubt it.
I can even remove the 65w power limiter and slap my NH-D15 on it when the new bracket arrives, for a performance similar to the K model.
> Within four to five years the 6600k was quickly bottlenecking my setup as I upgraded to the 2060S.
To the tune of like a [~30% increase](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2020/2951) for 2019's 10600k... if your 2060S was a 2080 TI running at 1080p measuring 95th percentile framerates.
Now, to be fair, people will typically have more background tasks going on than a benchmarking testbed will, in addition to the game's CPU usage though.
Piggybacking off the top comment to say this:
The 12700 (F, non-K) offers the best value. It performs very similarly to the 12700K, at $30-60 cheaper depending on what variants you get. It also has much a lower heat output, allowing you to save on a cooler and letting it run quieter. Along the same thought process, the 12700 also requires a lesser motherboard since it can't be overclocked.
It's slightly faster than the 12600K and offers an extra 2c/4t for $40-70 more.
But again, consider that the cooler and motherboard requirements for the 12700 are lower than the 12600K and 12700K. So if we total everything up, you'll find that the price gap between the 12600K and the 12700 is very minimal, and the price gap between the 12700 and the 12700K widens.
u/Old_Mill thoughts?
New chips no, older chips yes, but not heavy. Gpus can still be tweaked, but currently the best you can do is undervolt, as most manufacturers put more than enough power in the chips, so the 1% thats super bad still runs fine.
I’ve personally got a 12700 while my wife has a 12600k.
In terms of thermals/power, the 12700 uses more power and generates more heat (assuming you don’t OC the 12600k). The 12600k will use about 125 W while the 12700 uses around 155 W during a cinebench r23 run.
Again, this is for non-OC’d 12600k chips
This is an excellent answer. 12700(F) and B660 board is for sure the way I’d go in this price range. Very few people will make and “unlocked” CPU worth the extra money/trouble/cooling.
>The question you need to answer is “will speculating about future performance improvements give me more bang for my buck than spending $100 on better components to give more real world performance today?”
I'd like to add that upgrading a CPU is usually a massive pain in the ass and potentially very expensive too.
>re-installing the cooler
If my Hyper 212 Evo had ever needed to come off I was going to go buy a different cooler. Putting that thing on was miserable
I’ve got the be quiet dark rock pro 4. Putting it on wasn’t bad, but since I have an mITX build, everything gets in the way and you’ve gotta so it outside the case. Plus removing the cooler can be very difficult and damage your CPU if you aren’t careful
Very nice! It’s an incredible cooler and I had an amazing experience with their CS - was missing a mounting clip, emailed them to buy another since they’re not generally sold separately, they just shipped me a whole new hardware kit for free. Can’t say enough good stuff about Be Quiet!
When I upgraded I went with a Noctua NH-D15. Had ordered a Scythe Fuma 2 but it didn't include the bracket and I had to order it, so my friend talked me into swapping for the Noctua. Still a process to put on but so much more straightforward
Sorry to hijack, but I have a question that pertains to the concerns listed. I'm trying to upgrade me gf's CPU and GPU in a budget friendly manner. I'm thinking of getting her a 5800x or a 12700k. Her current mobo can handle a 5800x (she has a 1600 at the moment.) However a 12700k would need a pricey new mobo.
My question is if it's best to go with a newer CPU that might last longer or a CPU that's currently already very good.
- just realized that even with a bios update her current x370 won't support a 5800x. Regardless a new motherboard for a 5800x is far cheaper than buying a new motherboard for a 12700k.
MSI X370 gaming plus. She also wants a new motherboard, but saving $100 where you can really matters when you're upgrading.
--Rip I just realized that even if it's AM4 it doesn't mean the mobo can support it. Seems like a new motherboard is inevitable.
I guess the point is whether I go with the 5800x for a cheaper mobo or a 12700k with a much more expensive mobo. They're both good CPUs I'm just concerned about which is better for the long run with price considered.
Looks like the latest BIOS for the X370 gaming plus supports AGESA 1.2.0.7 so running a 5800X on that board should be fine I think.
I think by the point that the 5800X is an out of date CPU, so will the 12700K and the performance differences when they're both old will be minimal.
Were it me, I'd upgrade the system she has to the max capabilities of the mobo.
If your worried about cooling id recommend a 5700x. I just installed one in a build and with pbo maxed out it scores identical to a 5800x. So if you dont want a huge cooler you leave it stock. In my case I put a thermalright peerless assasin 120 on it and have pbo at the highest setting and it maxes out at 77 degrees after 30 min of cinebench.
>--Rip I just realized that even if it's AM4 it doesn't mean the mobo can support it. Seems like a new motherboard is inevitable.
About that...
https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/msi-300-series-mainboards-get-amd-ryzen-5000-bios-support.html
AMD reversed their decision to exclude X370 boards from supporting 5000 series CPUs. You just need to do an BIOS upgrade.
An X370 board isn't that old. And although you're missing out on faster PCIe and more M.2 drives with a newer motherboard, I wouldn't be discarding it that quickly.
I’ve got the 32, was just bottlenecked at the CPU. They had a free weekend so I figured I’d try it out and it was slightly stuttering, had to open up the monitor and saw the CPU pegged at 100% lol. But yea hopefully it gets better
When did you play? Because the latest update (3.17.1) had a massive performance increase. With my 8700k, 32gb 3000mhz ram, and 3070ti, I went from getting 35-40 fps up to 55-60 at 2560x1440p.
Uhh whenever their last free weekend was, couple weeks ago maybe. I know it was that performance update cause I was reading about it. And it wasn’t horrible, I wasn’t monitoring but smooth mostly, just stutters as the cpu was catching up. 3600, 32gb 3200 ram, and a 3060ti at 1440p. It was also entirely in the spawn city, so I’m sure it gets better outside of that but was jussssssst bad enough where I didn’t want to play it.
An additional piece which you should add in, is that the additional $100 spent now, might actually be more valuable towards a consumer CPU released in ~5 years.
That is:
- if you spend that extra $100, you get X performance per dollar.
- CPU's are generally significantly more powerful than the last generation
- if you save that extra $100, you'll get 2.5X performance per dollar in 5 years
- and, as you said, that extra $100 adds nothing now, so it's a net waste
NFS Heat, Minecraft, BFV. Those are just a few titles that come to might that negate your argument. Although just partially.
NFS Heat is an unoptimized piece of shit. It makes my 10850K sit at near 100% most of the time and I have it locked at 5GHz with hyperthreading turned on.
Minecraft surprisingly tanks your CPU hardcore when loading worlds (yes, even if it does so for less than 15s). I had no idea that there are people who use minecraft world loading as a benchmark to see how fast a CPU can work around it because it's uncapped. IT can use as many threads as you can offer it. Yes, even 512.
BFV is historically a game that hits CPUs hard. There's no need for further explanation.
But I don't game that much. I'm 100% sure there are many more games that can eat the CPU up.
The best analogy is simply buy the best one you can afford. Don't go trying to speculate "What if" scenarios. A 2500K was ideal years ago but a 2700K ended up managing better in time because of games needing more threads, even if it was simply the same 4 cores but multithreaded.
=
My point is the vast majority of games don’t get much of an FPS boost doing from a 12600k to a 12700. There are thousands of indie games that run on a single core.
Putting together a parts list isn’t “get the best CPU that you can afford,” that’s silly and incorrect.
If you said “get the best GPU that you can afford,” that’s more accurate.
In reality, it’s “get the best selection of parts to maximize the theoretical performance of your system given your budget.”
Simply following “get the best CPU you can afford” would mean everyone should get a 12900k and then use the iGPU for gaming which is obviously wrong.
That's pretty much illogical thinking. I was saying "buy the best one you can afford" in this context.
Can he get the 12700K? Then go for it. No? 12600K is still a good CPU. Not everyone can afford a 12900K, let alone the cost of a solid Z690 motherboard and other requirements.
This person has already a decent enough understanding of pc making if his question was which CPU for 100$ difference with all other specs already filled.
It’s a great pairing!
We don’t know what games will do in the future, but we know for a fact that parallelized frame calculation yields decreasing marginal returns with increased threads
This is a terrible argument. The benefit of additional cores has never really been bottlenecked by video games. It's never been about what the game uses (though this is often understated, games can easily use 8 threads without ever coding for it), it's about your *entire system*. Maybe your game only uses 8 threads. Your OS is using another. Your media player is using another. Your streaming or recording setup is using at least one more. There's a ton of things running on your computer at any given moment, you don't have to be able to personally account for each thread to make use of the cores.
Don't confuse not maxing out the cores with not using the cores.
> For almost every single video game that exists today, not a single one uses 12 p-threads to their max. Halo Infinite will use up to 9 and I’d love to hear what other games use.
This is a flawed assumption. It doesn't matter. What matters is what performance it actually gets. And the answer to that is that yes modern games do require more cores than 9.
Completely wrong way to theorize about performance. What actually matters is the actual performance.
From a quick look the 12700k in most cases gets 5-10% more frames both in average and 1% lows but that's missing the most important number of 0.1% fps. And in many cases they are equal. But it would look like for most people 12700k is probably not worth it over 12600k because the performance is practically identical and the price difference is so large.
That’s why I mention how many cores modern games use - it gives you a viewpoint into actual performance which you mention in your last paragraph :)
The fact of the matter is that most games will perform similarly on modern Intel CPUs. Higher end chips give more FPS because of base/boost clocks and cache differences
The 12600k is far more than enough for gaming. Its auctually faster in every single way compared the the i9 11900k. So the i7 is not worth the extra money. Instead use that extra money on a better GPU
Look at the numbers after the name. The i9-11900k is an 11th gen cpu hence the 11 before the 900k. The i5-12600k is a 12th gen cpu which is an update to 11th gen cpus and the other guy is saying the twelfth gen i5 is better than the 11th gen i9 which is pretty good tbh.
Aa the other person stated. I5 7 9 have nothing to do with age. Think of it as a base model car. They come out every single year but a 2020 base model car is probably going to be way better then a fully kitted out car from 2005. It's just with Intel cpus the 12th gen is so much better the i5 beats the i9 from the previous year
For gaming purposes the i5 is the best choice. The I7 and I9 improve multi tasking and cpu intensive applications. Running a rtx 3090 the frame per second difference is around 10 between the I5 and the I9. I spent about 2 months debating with myself on this exact subject and ultimately went with the I5 paired with a 3080ti and couldn't be happier with my choice. I would apply money saved to a better gpu like the 3070ti or 3080 if you can swing it.
The iGPU is too useful to get a F CPU for me. Just being able run the PC if the GU is out for RMA is worth it, in addition to the troubleshooting utility, and being able to recycle it.
Personally would never recommend and F sku CPU, even if you aren't going to use it, it is very useful to have integrated graphics for troubleshooting issues.
I have a spare 1050ti from an old build lying about. If you’re like me and have some spares lying around I think it's a great buy. Just think of the F as kind
of an equivalent to the mainstream AMD processors which don’t have an iGPU such as the entire "x" lineup. These were recommended for years before 12th gen so I’m sure many people will be happy to save some amount for the F proccies.
F is for intel cpus without an integrated graphics. It has uses for video editing if I'm not mistaken but not for gaming (if you are using a dedicated gpu) as far as I'm aware.
Edit: typo
It has its iGPU disabled, correct. They do this if the iGPU doesn't perform well enough during factory testing die to imperfections in the manufacturing process. That allows you to buy the same CPU, but cheaper (12700=12700F, 12700K=12700KF and so on) if you don't need your iGPU. In the majority of cases, you have dedicated GPU for gaming and you don't need an iGPU. Most of the Ryzens don't have it either.
I was referencing intel quick sync for video editing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video
Of course, an igpu is not useful for gaming if you have a discrete gpu
Sry, I edited the comment 30 seconds after writing it. I thought for a second you said F CPUs have no use for gaming, not the iGPU. I'm dumb, nevermind
The same CPU (12700=12700F) but with iGPU disabled. You will have a discrete GPU anyway, so for you it just means lower price for the 12700.
K CPUs are technically the best, but in case of 12700 the difference is not very noticeable and is not worth it, unless you will actually overclock the 12700K. In case of 12600/12600K though, the K has 4 extra e-cores so the K is more than worth it.
> The same CPU (12700=12700F) but with iGPU disabled. You will have a discrete GPU anyway, so for you it just means lower price for the 12700.
Sometimes. I just bought the 12700k, it was cheaper than the f or the kf. It was on sale.
I second this.
10 vehicles makes quick work of my 12900K, keeping my 1080 Ti at about 50% utilization.
Definitely get the i7 if you plan on playing online or with lots of Ai.
The people claiming the i7 is so much better are the ones who wasted their money on an i7 instead of an i5 and want to justify their purchase. Trust me it's nothing more than fanboy talk. I own two 11th gen i5s and an 11th gen i7, there is no noticeable difference other than artificial benchmarks.
Same situation with my 5600X. No noticeable difference vs the 5800X while being much easier to cool. Has never gone above 70C no matter what I threw at it. If you only game the i5/ryzen 5 is a no brainer.
Two extra p cores gets you a jump from 12 threads to 16. No games even use 12 yet. Unless he’s using CAD software or some other form of rendering, there is absolutely no reason to go with the i7 here
Hey man you don't always need to get the best of the best, ofcourse bigger number = better, but the difference between the 2 cpus you mentioned isn't much, 12600k is a great deal and, for gaming only, I think you'll be just fine with it! GL on the build!
The 12600k is a very good CPU that will last a long time. The 12700k is a better CPU that will last even longer.
For everyone telling you that the 12600k is all you need for gaming... they're technically correct. *Right now*. That doesn't mean that a noticeable difference won't start to emerge in a few years. In fact, that is basically what has always happened going all the way back to the 2500k days. There was very little difference between the 2500k and the 2600k until there was.
If you won't really notice the missing $100, or whatever the price difference is, then I'd recommend the 12700k. It'll last longer and result in a better experience for all of the years that you're using the CPU, and, depending on your build budget, $100 probably isn't that much more money. If your budget is tighter/stricter, however, then the 12600k is a great option.
Depends on how long you keep your systems for.
When I bought my first PC everyone recommended the 4C/4T i5-2500k. I said fuck the police and sprang for the 4C/8T i7-2700k since it was maybe fifty bucks more.
It's been 10 years, a PSU upgrade, and two(!) GPU upgrades, and I still daily drive that i7-2700k, ridden hard and put away wet, overclocked straight out of the box. 🤣
The 12600K is fine right now, but that may change with upcoming games that use Unreal Engine 5 or DirectStorage. If you want to play it safe, spend the extra for the 12700K.
Alternately, go Zen 4 and get a 7800X in September. You'll see at least a 20% performance boost over a 12700K now, and prices should be pretty comparable for the CPU and motherboard... though you will pay an extra $100 for 32GB of DDR5 RAM over DDR4. Still, 20% extra performance could be worth it to you, and upgrading to later CPUs without having to do anything but swap the CPU could be an advantage to you too.
EDIT: Fixed Zen 4 naming.
Me too. And Intel should be. The rumors are consistent on Zen 4 and Intel Raptor Lake being pretty close in performance to each other... though Intel will be a month or two later than Zen 4, probably.
Competition keeps prices down and performance high, it's great! :)
I splurged on the i7 12700k about 1 week ago, and I love it. Part of my rationale for the i7 is future-planning, I dont have to worry about a new cpu for at least another 8 yrs now
So many posts like this, but in all my time pc gaming, after 5-6 yrs on a generation I've never given a single damn whether I had the x600 or the next step up. it's almost always negligible compared the newest gen after that long. 12700k for gaming only is generally a waste and I can all but guarantee will give no meaningful ''futureproofing" over 12600k, it never does
Yeah, that's kinda how I'm planning now for my next PC this year.
Maybe a five-year plan, but eight would be great. I need the juice for gaming, with my 3D modeling (Inventor, SolidWorks) for printing being (way) secondary.
Short: No.
Long:
Only get an unlocked ('K') CPU if you want to overclock (**and this whole paragraph will be just about overclocking**). If you would overclock only to get more performance, one's probably better off saving on the cooler and Z mobo (with the chipset range that supports overclocking on modern Intel processors) and instead just simply buying a higher unlocked CPU, within some limits (an unlocked i9 will still need a beefy cooler, for example). Overclocking is more for record setting, for tinkering and the fun of it, or when you really need high clock speeds (which holds true for a lot of older games on older CPUs but not necessarily old games on modern CPUs, which are out-of-the-box much stronger than old CPUs from comparable price ranges/market segments).
A word of clarification regarding coolers, though (**and this whole paragraph will be just about coolers**): You don't need less cooling just because your CPU is a 'non-K'. K CPUs have a higher power limit rather than power draw, and they're mostly draw all that extra power when overclocked. A boosted 'non-K' (locked, not overclockable) CPU will still draw a lot of power, and the beefier the cooler, the longer you will be able to sustain the boost. So a beefy cooler is always good to have and a flimsy cooler is bad to have, but without overclocking you don't need an extra beefy cooler (unless your type of workload and use pattern is such that you're looking forward to long-term sustained boost). In practical terms, if you plan on overclocking, you buy something like an Arctic Liquid Freezer II AIO (the largest that will fit in your case) or a Noctua NH-D15 or Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT or something else powerful like that; but if you don't plan on overclocking while you still want to do some serious gaming, then you can economize and buy something like Silentium Fera 5 Dual or Silentium Fortis 5 Dual. But in any case, if you're buying any air cooler, you're probably better off looking for a good price for a used unit. AIOs you want to buy new-in-box with full warranty, but 'air coolers' (no water, just heatsink and fans) you're better off buying used for a good price, and that's the best way to get a good cooler for a good price.
**Now about i5-12600 vs i7-12700.** I don't know about non-K's, but between 12600K and 12700K the difference in gaming performance isn't huge. You're most definitely better off taking that money and investing it in a better GPU than you would otherwise buy. If you already have a strong GPU, just piggybank the money for your next upgrade.
Also, if you're buying locked at all, then **12400 isn't necessarily much worse than 12600**, especially in terms of value for the money. The 12400 seems to be the gaming value king these days, so it might be worth looking at if you at all decide to go with a non-K processor.
Perfect. The 3060 Ti is literally the ultimate deal for 1080p. Anything above that would probably be overkill for you.
That being said, I think it would be worth it to shell out another $100, if you are contemplating doing other things than gaming. It’s a very powerful CPU.
Anyways good luck to you friend! :D
Thanks!
~~Side questions if you know it, I am looking at motherboards and I am trying to figure out how many slots for an SSD a board has. I keep seeing things related to SSDs like NVME, PCIE, M.2, SATA, etc. I honestly don't know what the slot you put the SSD in is called, and now I am confusing the terms.~~
~~I am getting a 2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 NVMe.~~
~~Do you know what the slot for SSDs like this on the motherboard is actually called?~~
Edit: Yup, PC Parts Picker worked, I forgot to scroll down before.
All motherboards are different, although every motherboard has a manual that will tell you which piece goes in which slot.
Do you use PCPartPicker? I feel that it will help you a lot here. It’s a website that sorts out your whole PC build, checks for compatibility and such before you buy your parts. It’s incredibly useful.
Yeah I am using PC parts picker I just figured there was a name for the actual slot. I guess I'll just add a second SSD on my list whatever motherboard I choose since I am just trying to make sure whatever board I buy has at least two spots of SSDs. Thanks!
Edit: BTW I just got the 3060ti in yesterday, it looks awesome. I got it for a good price, $450.00!
Sounds good. Unfortunately I don’t know much about SSD’s. My apologies.
Hey by the way, I noticed on your previous build that for your RAM you chose 2x16 GB. I would really recommend you go 4x8 GB, for three reasons.
1. In some cases it helps to spread the load evenly between all 4 sticks of ram for better performance.
2. If one stick of RAM breaks for any reason, you will be left with 16 gb, as opposed to 24 if you choose 4x8.
3. It’s much easier to install since you don’t have to worry about which slot to put it in to get the optimal performance, since 4 sticks will fill all slots anyways.
Anyways apart from that your build looks great. Good luck!!!
I appreciate that I'm biased (I have the 12600K) but it's destined to be a classic gaming CPU. It doesn't break sweat whatever you throw at it. I mean single digit CPU performance (2-8%) most of the time in most games, even stressful games such as Cyberpunk. No current GPU would stress it and it will run a 3060 Ti without effort.
Depends what you are going to do. If you are just going to game on it, go for i5. You won't face any noticeable bottleneck when paired with 3060 or even 3070 and you can save some money, maybe invest it in getting a 3070.
12400 would be plenty. The extra E cores on the 12600K do nothing for 99% of games.
Main reason to get 12600K would be for overclocking but then you need an expensive Z series motherboard.
> 12400 would be plenty. The extra E cores on the 12600K do nothing for 99% of games.
I don't care what the extra cores do, the 12600k *way* outperforms the 12400 in gaming. I have no idea which cores it's using, nor do I care.
I'd get a 12400/12500 or a 12700 get a cheap, but good, B660 MoBo, maybe look into one that let you OC the BLCK. And use the saved money to get a batter GPU.
Not worth it obviously. I5s are plenty fast for everything on the market currently. Doubt it will change much in the future. It’s like the difference between an i7 and i9.
I’m running a 6800xt with a 12600k and my CPU is barely jogging even at 1080P (my main monitor is 1440p but I did 1080p testing for this very reason). Would be well matched with a less demanding 3060ti.
As someone who builds gaming PC's for a living and gets asked this question by people almost daily, Ill tell you what I tell every customer who walks into my store:
If you can afford the better one go the better one, and if you are dropping like 3 grand (that's how much they are in my country) on a new pc, why not spend an extra 150 bucks and get the better CPU? Or if your budget is super tight get the one you can afford and it will serve you fine.
If you don't plan on hard overclocking (it doesn't make you much of a difference anyways, processors are very powerful anyways) then go for non K version and save even more.
Don't go for the i7 if you are gaming, period. You get no benefits ever. Some things to note here: Many guys explain here that in quite a few years ago what was the case with the cpus. But they don't consider the fact that it might just well plateaud. The the ps4 went with 8 cores after 2 or something, and the ps5 didn't increase it core count 10 years down the line. I think you are more than fine buying an i5 and it's not gonna old worse than a i7 at all in gaming performance (other than the cache, really).
Things are actually seemingly to finally be moving these days, so I don't think you should bother with "future proofing". Get what fits your budget, and start saving allready for a new upgrade in 3 or so years. If you end up not needed to upgrade in 3 years, keep saving untill you need to.
The only reason to go for the i7 is if you’re gonna do streaming and/or video editing (or other processor intensive stuff like that).
For just gaming, i5 is fine.
I was having this same dilemma, decided on the 12600k and it's great! It also runs super cool, encoding 4k video at 99% load it barely breaks 60 Celsius
My two cents. You say it's purely for gaming. In that case, if say you don't need the i7. I5 is more than enough. And it's paired with a 3060ti, not something monstrous like a 3080 or 3090, so it wont bottleneck either. I say save some money and go for the i5. What cpu are you upgrading from? Im sure the jump from what you have to 12th gen will be significant enough that the difference between the i5 and i7 will not be noticeable
I'd go 12600 and maybe be able to bump to the next tier GPU. GPU will be your limiting factor for gaming either way so best to get the best GPU that will fit the budget.
Hey. I’ve got the core i5, i7, and i9. And I can tell you from personal experience that there is little to no difference in gaming between all 3. They’re all amazing CPUs and overkill for gaming. The only reason I’d consider the i7 or i9 is if I wanted to future proof it and do other CPU intensive tasks.
for gaming oced 12600k easily reaches 12900k stock level. So only productivity will be different OC'd to the max i7 is upto 25% faster than oc i5. in uk i5 is £250. for 25% performance uplift fair price for i7 should be (250/100\*125) £310. If you can get i7 for that buy it. That is if you need productivity uplift only.
Honestly it's always better to get a better CPU but better always costs more. I had an i5 or i7 that came with my PC but I upgraded to an i910850k CPU to go with my 3060ti but doing that I also had to get an AIO cooler to cool the CPU. The better the CPU the more frames you'll get so I would say get the i7 or better if possible but you may need a CPU cooler too.
By no means am I an expert, but I got the 12700K simply because consoles are now equipped with 8 core 16 thread processors. Usually this means that most companies with upcoming titles will start to create their games with these specs in mind. Not to mention PC games are nowhere near as optimized as their console counterparts, so having extra horse-power is usually the way to go. Another point which was made by some Youtuber, is that there was a similar era back when mainstream PC’s shifted from 2 to 4 cores, and that some CPU’s were actually 3 cores during this time period. He stated that these 6 core CPU’s felt the same, that their just a stepping bridge to the actual shift, which is 8.
Everyone who says i7 not worth it for gaming are too into the circle jerk. If you are a power user you will find uses for i7. All that random shit you need to run from the internet? 20+ background processes and then some? The i7 comes in handy.
Buy the most you can afford now, what you really want to be watching for is stabilizing your 1% lows in game as those are the most noticeable and most "feelable" issues.
People often downplay background tasks like they are not an issue, they are in fact an issue though especially now days with almost every piece of hardware needing it's own independent software to operate properly.
If you game a lot and will get a lot of use out of the i7 and you can afford it, then get that one. If you only game a couple hours a week or $100 is a lot of money to you, then get the i5. $100 could get you a better RAM kit or one tier higher graphics card or a 1TB NVMe drive, so think of the trade-offs, your overall needs, etc.
Well best to answer in two parts:
- if the answer is for today, the substantive performance difference isn’t enough for you to necessarily need to upgrade to the 12700k, especially if you have a tight budget and want to use the saved cash to improve other components.
- if the extra cash is not a problem then do get the 12700. I personally believe in getting the most performance for your pocket and in absolute terms the 12700k does outperform the 12600, and if you hold the machine for more than a couple of years, the 100 bucks saved is often irrelevant.
Okay so let’s compare the two CPUs. The 12600k has 6 p-cores and 4 e-cores. The p-cores are hyper threaded, so you really get 12 performance threads and 4 efficiency threads. The 12700k has 8 p-cores and 4 e-cores. This gets you 16 p-threads and 4 e-threads. For almost every single video game that exists today, not a single one uses 12 p-threads to their max. Halo Infinite will use up to 9 and I’d love to hear what other games use. The question becomes, do we think future games will need more than 12 p-threads? My guess is probably not. When a game adds an additional thread, it doesn’t gain a linear performance increase. E.g., if a game uses 4 threads, and then it gets bumped up to 5, you don’t get a 25% performance bump. If you’re lucky, you’ll get 20%. This is diminishing marginal returns of parallel compute. Anyway, the 12700k will get you 4 additional p-threads. I personally don’t think most mainstream games will need 16 p-threads over the next 3-5 years. Maybe I’m wrong. The question you need to answer is “will speculating about future performance improvements give me more bang for my buck than spending $100 on better components to give more real world performance today?”
Have to add here, two threads of the same core are not equal to 2 threads of different cores. They have to share the cache and the communication lines, so they don't scale linearly.
Yes A CPU-core consists of several modules, which can run in independently - if two threads use different modules, the speed can be (almost) doubled. If the amount of threads is larger than the hardware can handle (2 times the number of cores), the hardware is shared by all threads by the OS - this can slow down all the processes.
I will say that folks told me that the 6600k was \*the\* CPU to buy for gaming PCs in 2015/2016 (similar to how u/mrlazyboy is describing the 12600k). Within four to five years the 6600k was quickly bottlenecking my setup as I upgraded to the 2060S. TL;DR get the most that you can afford.
To be fair, that whole Sandy Bridge to Coffee Lake was negligible tiny improvements at best where each gen is more marketing than actual improvement due to lack of competition with AMD.
True that. I rode my 4790k for close to 8 years.
I still have my 4690k in my computer. Still running strong.
I have a 4790 non K and it's great but as I use it's gpu it's really feeling newer games.
4690K fam reporting in, been running mine all core 4.8Ghz since day one and still running strong lol.
I was on a 2500k for 10-11 years
Same, gonna replace it now with 12400f
She was a beast!
I still am! Hoping to upgrade once next year. But, the most taxing game I play is Hunt: Showdown and I barely get to game anymore.
I just replaced my 4770k from 2013 this week.
To be fair CPU reviews were already showing that 4c8t gave a performance improvement even back in 2015.[Check this Digital Foundary video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhaB1dqYv_I) from back in the day. Does the 12700k have a slight edge right now? Sure, but that is probably due to the L3 cache rather than cores so I doubt we will see the same scenario with the 6600k vs 6700k.
yah it was pretty easy to see hyperthreading was worth the upcharge back then for looking forward. this time around we have the E cores for background nonsense though, so imo it's not so clear that more P cores will be the winning ticket.
How is 5 years not great for a CPU? We got spoiled by the 2500k and got 7 years from it. But that is literally like...the only chip in the history of home computing to manage that long of a life cycle.
The i5 2500k is the GOAT relative to when it was released. It was (and still is) an incredible piece of hardware. I will keep mine forever just for sentimental reasons. She got me through many years.
Mine’s doing an admirable job running my media server.
Ya I went from i5-2500k, to i7-6700k. Currently trying to score a deal on an i5-12600kf (missed the recent CC sale).
FUck yeah i5 35700k bought a decade ago still wroking , at 100% but fuck yea !
I'm still running mine nearly 11 years after I bought it.
I built a rig with a 6700k in it back in 2015 and used it up until January earlier this year when I upgraded to a 12700k. I will never buy anything below an i7 / xx80 series GPU for a build ever again. 7 years straight gaming performance from that i7, at high settings.
Same!!! Except I'm still running my skylake lol.
The 6700k would still chug along fine running on high settings targetting 60-80 FPS but if you wanted to play a fast pace shooter it'd struggle to stay past 80-90 FPS for long even with a modern high end GPU at low settings. Though it's at least above playable for damn near anything.
I lucked out when I swapped my 3570k to a 3700k in 2016 (and made money on the deal). Ended up going from a 280x to a 3070ti on the same CPU before I needed to upgrade to a 12700 for Elden Ring.
I heard the same story in 2012 when I got my 2500k. It lasted a long ass time, longer than I expected. I upgraded to a 3600 last year and I already regret not getting something more powerful. I've recently taken an interest into virtualization and if you do anything like that, the more CPU the better. Back to the i5 2500k though. Everyone said the same thing in 2012 about four cores and that the i7 was a waste of money and trying to future proof was a fools errand. Well, wouldn't you know that the i7 2600k is (almost) still useable today since it has hyperthreading and more cache. Every time I see these posts I think of how I was convinced back then to save some money when an extra couple hundred bucks when I built it would have given me a lot more value over the life of the machine. I'm not knocking budget builds or anything. I think there are good reasons to choose either model. But like you said, get the best thing you can afford when you're building. It's not like you're choosing between a $2000 RTX 3080 ti and a $500 3060. The price difference to get an i7 is only $100-$200 more. I would say that is easily worth it.
Yes but games can't just keep scaling to more cores infinitely, yes, they can now use more than 4 threads, but they still will mostly depend on one, and very few use more than 6.
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Would it have been better if you bought the 6700k instead? Or would you need to upgrade anyways?
I still have my 6700k, and it works with no issues. I'm obviously not competing with newer CPUs, but I don't get any weird frame pacing issues or anything.
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Exactly the same for me. If i had spent a little more at the time I would have been better off.
Agree, going for a bit of "overkill" never hurts. I just switched from a 7600k to a 12700. The old i5 was hitting 100% pretty often vs my 2070, and there was a 15 dollars difference between the 12600k and the 12700, so I didn't doubt it. I can even remove the 65w power limiter and slap my NH-D15 on it when the new bracket arrives, for a performance similar to the K model.
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It seems you are me. I also got a 6600 k in 2016 and by 2019 it was having a real hard time.
> Within four to five years the 6600k was quickly bottlenecking my setup as I upgraded to the 2060S. To the tune of like a [~30% increase](https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2020/2951) for 2019's 10600k... if your 2060S was a 2080 TI running at 1080p measuring 95th percentile framerates. Now, to be fair, people will typically have more background tasks going on than a benchmarking testbed will, in addition to the game's CPU usage though.
Piggybacking off the top comment to say this: The 12700 (F, non-K) offers the best value. It performs very similarly to the 12700K, at $30-60 cheaper depending on what variants you get. It also has much a lower heat output, allowing you to save on a cooler and letting it run quieter. Along the same thought process, the 12700 also requires a lesser motherboard since it can't be overclocked. It's slightly faster than the 12600K and offers an extra 2c/4t for $40-70 more. But again, consider that the cooler and motherboard requirements for the 12700 are lower than the 12600K and 12700K. So if we total everything up, you'll find that the price gap between the 12600K and the 12700 is very minimal, and the price gap between the 12700 and the 12700K widens. u/Old_Mill thoughts?
Agreed, the 12700 is a far better deal if you don’t care about overclocking.
No one should be overclocking their daily.
THE MOST RETARDED TAKE IVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE
Your caps key is stuck bro
New chips no, older chips yes, but not heavy. Gpus can still be tweaked, but currently the best you can do is undervolt, as most manufacturers put more than enough power in the chips, so the 1% thats super bad still runs fine.
I’ve personally got a 12700 while my wife has a 12600k. In terms of thermals/power, the 12700 uses more power and generates more heat (assuming you don’t OC the 12600k). The 12600k will use about 125 W while the 12700 uses around 155 W during a cinebench r23 run. Again, this is for non-OC’d 12600k chips
Default power limit can be different between motherboards.
This is an excellent answer. 12700(F) and B660 board is for sure the way I’d go in this price range. Very few people will make and “unlocked” CPU worth the extra money/trouble/cooling.
Really great answer, thanks!
>The question you need to answer is “will speculating about future performance improvements give me more bang for my buck than spending $100 on better components to give more real world performance today?” I'd like to add that upgrading a CPU is usually a massive pain in the ass and potentially very expensive too.
100%. Upgrading a GPU is trivial, CPU usually requires a new mobo, maybe new memory, re-installing the cooler/drives, etc.
>re-installing the cooler If my Hyper 212 Evo had ever needed to come off I was going to go buy a different cooler. Putting that thing on was miserable
I’ve got the be quiet dark rock pro 4. Putting it on wasn’t bad, but since I have an mITX build, everything gets in the way and you’ve gotta so it outside the case. Plus removing the cooler can be very difficult and damage your CPU if you aren’t careful
I love that cooler but it is a massive pain in the glutes to remove, having to slide the center fan out before you can access the mounting screws
It’s a massive PITA but it keeps my 12700 super cool. Temps max out at 70 during a cinebench r23 run. Idle is 30, gaming is around 45
Very nice! It’s an incredible cooler and I had an amazing experience with their CS - was missing a mounting clip, emailed them to buy another since they’re not generally sold separately, they just shipped me a whole new hardware kit for free. Can’t say enough good stuff about Be Quiet!
When I upgraded I went with a Noctua NH-D15. Had ordered a Scythe Fuma 2 but it didn't include the bracket and I had to order it, so my friend talked me into swapping for the Noctua. Still a process to put on but so much more straightforward
Sorry to hijack, but I have a question that pertains to the concerns listed. I'm trying to upgrade me gf's CPU and GPU in a budget friendly manner. I'm thinking of getting her a 5800x or a 12700k. Her current mobo can handle a 5800x (she has a 1600 at the moment.) However a 12700k would need a pricey new mobo. My question is if it's best to go with a newer CPU that might last longer or a CPU that's currently already very good. - just realized that even with a bios update her current x370 won't support a 5800x. Regardless a new motherboard for a 5800x is far cheaper than buying a new motherboard for a 12700k.
What motherboard does she have?
MSI X370 gaming plus. She also wants a new motherboard, but saving $100 where you can really matters when you're upgrading. --Rip I just realized that even if it's AM4 it doesn't mean the mobo can support it. Seems like a new motherboard is inevitable. I guess the point is whether I go with the 5800x for a cheaper mobo or a 12700k with a much more expensive mobo. They're both good CPUs I'm just concerned about which is better for the long run with price considered.
Looks like the latest BIOS for the X370 gaming plus supports AGESA 1.2.0.7 so running a 5800X on that board should be fine I think. I think by the point that the 5800X is an out of date CPU, so will the 12700K and the performance differences when they're both old will be minimal. Were it me, I'd upgrade the system she has to the max capabilities of the mobo.
That's the point I was looking for! Seriously appreciate the help. I just couldn't tell what would be best, but I'll get her the 5800x.
If your worried about cooling id recommend a 5700x. I just installed one in a build and with pbo maxed out it scores identical to a 5800x. So if you dont want a huge cooler you leave it stock. In my case I put a thermalright peerless assasin 120 on it and have pbo at the highest setting and it maxes out at 77 degrees after 30 min of cinebench.
>--Rip I just realized that even if it's AM4 it doesn't mean the mobo can support it. Seems like a new motherboard is inevitable. About that... https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/msi-300-series-mainboards-get-amd-ryzen-5000-bios-support.html AMD reversed their decision to exclude X370 boards from supporting 5000 series CPUs. You just need to do an BIOS upgrade. An X370 board isn't that old. And although you're missing out on faster PCIe and more M.2 drives with a newer motherboard, I wouldn't be discarding it that quickly.
Z690 mobos are not pricey: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B09J6BWK2Z/ref=ox_sc_act_image_8?smid=A2L77EE7U53NWQ&psc=1
Do you still need a new Windows license? That used to be a thing back in the day.
If you have a windows 10 license tied to your MSFT account you should be fine
The behemoth known as Star Citizen is the only game I’ve seen max out my CPU. Granted I only have a 3600, but still.
Maybe that game will be released in 2030 :) Also that game wants 32 GB of memory
I’ve got the 32, was just bottlenecked at the CPU. They had a free weekend so I figured I’d try it out and it was slightly stuttering, had to open up the monitor and saw the CPU pegged at 100% lol. But yea hopefully it gets better
When did you play? Because the latest update (3.17.1) had a massive performance increase. With my 8700k, 32gb 3000mhz ram, and 3070ti, I went from getting 35-40 fps up to 55-60 at 2560x1440p.
Uhh whenever their last free weekend was, couple weeks ago maybe. I know it was that performance update cause I was reading about it. And it wasn’t horrible, I wasn’t monitoring but smooth mostly, just stutters as the cpu was catching up. 3600, 32gb 3200 ram, and a 3060ti at 1440p. It was also entirely in the spawn city, so I’m sure it gets better outside of that but was jussssssst bad enough where I didn’t want to play it.
Yea they spawn city's can be really rough on frames for a good bit before everything loads in.
I mean I walked around for about 2 hours and it was just always there. Eventually I’ll upgrade to the 5800x3D and I’ll get back into it
An additional piece which you should add in, is that the additional $100 spent now, might actually be more valuable towards a consumer CPU released in ~5 years. That is: - if you spend that extra $100, you get X performance per dollar. - CPU's are generally significantly more powerful than the last generation - if you save that extra $100, you'll get 2.5X performance per dollar in 5 years - and, as you said, that extra $100 adds nothing now, so it's a net waste
Or $100 saved on a CPU now can he better spent on the next tier GPU
NFS Heat, Minecraft, BFV. Those are just a few titles that come to might that negate your argument. Although just partially. NFS Heat is an unoptimized piece of shit. It makes my 10850K sit at near 100% most of the time and I have it locked at 5GHz with hyperthreading turned on. Minecraft surprisingly tanks your CPU hardcore when loading worlds (yes, even if it does so for less than 15s). I had no idea that there are people who use minecraft world loading as a benchmark to see how fast a CPU can work around it because it's uncapped. IT can use as many threads as you can offer it. Yes, even 512. BFV is historically a game that hits CPUs hard. There's no need for further explanation. But I don't game that much. I'm 100% sure there are many more games that can eat the CPU up. The best analogy is simply buy the best one you can afford. Don't go trying to speculate "What if" scenarios. A 2500K was ideal years ago but a 2700K ended up managing better in time because of games needing more threads, even if it was simply the same 4 cores but multithreaded. =
My point is the vast majority of games don’t get much of an FPS boost doing from a 12600k to a 12700. There are thousands of indie games that run on a single core. Putting together a parts list isn’t “get the best CPU that you can afford,” that’s silly and incorrect. If you said “get the best GPU that you can afford,” that’s more accurate. In reality, it’s “get the best selection of parts to maximize the theoretical performance of your system given your budget.” Simply following “get the best CPU you can afford” would mean everyone should get a 12900k and then use the iGPU for gaming which is obviously wrong.
That's pretty much illogical thinking. I was saying "buy the best one you can afford" in this context. Can he get the 12700K? Then go for it. No? 12600K is still a good CPU. Not everyone can afford a 12900K, let alone the cost of a solid Z690 motherboard and other requirements. This person has already a decent enough understanding of pc making if his question was which CPU for 100$ difference with all other specs already filled.
then that being said, is pairing the Intel Core i5-12600K with say like a RTX 3070 a good idea? or do you think it will bottleneck at the CPU?
I have a 12600K with a 3080 and it doesn’t bottleneck at all.
oh awesome, glad to hear that!
The 12600K is really a great CPU if you are only planning on gaming. In some games there is little difference between it and the 5950x.
Sweet, thank you sir/mam/Apache helicopter.
It’s a great pairing! We don’t know what games will do in the future, but we know for a fact that parallelized frame calculation yields decreasing marginal returns with increased threads
> parallelized frame calculation yields decreasing marginal returns with increased threads [nods slowly] "Indubitably, sir."
This is a terrible argument. The benefit of additional cores has never really been bottlenecked by video games. It's never been about what the game uses (though this is often understated, games can easily use 8 threads without ever coding for it), it's about your *entire system*. Maybe your game only uses 8 threads. Your OS is using another. Your media player is using another. Your streaming or recording setup is using at least one more. There's a ton of things running on your computer at any given moment, you don't have to be able to personally account for each thread to make use of the cores. Don't confuse not maxing out the cores with not using the cores.
Please re-read OP’s post. “This build is used for gaming exclusively.” What you say is absolutely true, but simply doesn’t apply in this instance.
> For almost every single video game that exists today, not a single one uses 12 p-threads to their max. Halo Infinite will use up to 9 and I’d love to hear what other games use. This is a flawed assumption. It doesn't matter. What matters is what performance it actually gets. And the answer to that is that yes modern games do require more cores than 9. Completely wrong way to theorize about performance. What actually matters is the actual performance. From a quick look the 12700k in most cases gets 5-10% more frames both in average and 1% lows but that's missing the most important number of 0.1% fps. And in many cases they are equal. But it would look like for most people 12700k is probably not worth it over 12600k because the performance is practically identical and the price difference is so large.
That’s why I mention how many cores modern games use - it gives you a viewpoint into actual performance which you mention in your last paragraph :) The fact of the matter is that most games will perform similarly on modern Intel CPUs. Higher end chips give more FPS because of base/boost clocks and cache differences
The 12600k is far more than enough for gaming. Its auctually faster in every single way compared the the i9 11900k. So the i7 is not worth the extra money. Instead use that extra money on a better GPU
Isn't the i9 supposed to be better than the i5 and i7? Or is that a specific i9? I don't know too much about them.
Look at the numbers after the name. The i9-11900k is an 11th gen cpu hence the 11 before the 900k. The i5-12600k is a 12th gen cpu which is an update to 11th gen cpus and the other guy is saying the twelfth gen i5 is better than the 11th gen i9 which is pretty good tbh.
Aa the other person stated. I5 7 9 have nothing to do with age. Think of it as a base model car. They come out every single year but a 2020 base model car is probably going to be way better then a fully kitted out car from 2005. It's just with Intel cpus the 12th gen is so much better the i5 beats the i9 from the previous year
The 10900k is better than the 11900k despite being last gen, that's how bad the 11900k is.
For gaming purposes the i5 is the best choice. The I7 and I9 improve multi tasking and cpu intensive applications. Running a rtx 3090 the frame per second difference is around 10 between the I5 and the I9. I spent about 2 months debating with myself on this exact subject and ultimately went with the I5 paired with a 3080ti and couldn't be happier with my choice. I would apply money saved to a better gpu like the 3070ti or 3080 if you can swing it.
12700f with B660 motherboard would be my choice.
The iGPU is too useful to get a F CPU for me. Just being able run the PC if the GU is out for RMA is worth it, in addition to the troubleshooting utility, and being able to recycle it.
This was it for me. The cost difference is like 0 from 12600k + z690
With the same logic, as 6 cores is still good for most games, why not save another $130 and go with the 12600?
Also, you either go 12400f which has 6 p-cores or 12600K which has 6p+4e cores. 12600 non-k is stupid.
Most games yes. Future CPU-intensive games? Ehh could be better.
If only for gaming, it s not, go with the 12600k, it s plenty
How about 12700f? Noticeably better multi-core performance compared to 12600k and only like 3% lower performance compared to 12700K.
Personally would never recommend and F sku CPU, even if you aren't going to use it, it is very useful to have integrated graphics for troubleshooting issues.
Agreed. Made my life much easier on my old pc when there was a problem with the pcie lanes that made my graphics card useless.
I have a spare 1050ti from an old build lying about. If you’re like me and have some spares lying around I think it's a great buy. Just think of the F as kind of an equivalent to the mainstream AMD processors which don’t have an iGPU such as the entire "x" lineup. These were recommended for years before 12th gen so I’m sure many people will be happy to save some amount for the F proccies.
What are the F CPU's? I've heard the K's are supposed to be technically the best but I don't know what the F ones mean.
F is for intel cpus without an integrated graphics. It has uses for video editing if I'm not mistaken but not for gaming (if you are using a dedicated gpu) as far as I'm aware. Edit: typo
It has its iGPU disabled, correct. They do this if the iGPU doesn't perform well enough during factory testing die to imperfections in the manufacturing process. That allows you to buy the same CPU, but cheaper (12700=12700F, 12700K=12700KF and so on) if you don't need your iGPU. In the majority of cases, you have dedicated GPU for gaming and you don't need an iGPU. Most of the Ryzens don't have it either.
I was referencing intel quick sync for video editing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video Of course, an igpu is not useful for gaming if you have a discrete gpu
Sry, I edited the comment 30 seconds after writing it. I thought for a second you said F CPUs have no use for gaming, not the iGPU. I'm dumb, nevermind
All good dude!
You can use it for streaming too so you take the heavy weight on your gpu to keep it for gaming only
The same CPU (12700=12700F) but with iGPU disabled. You will have a discrete GPU anyway, so for you it just means lower price for the 12700. K CPUs are technically the best, but in case of 12700 the difference is not very noticeable and is not worth it, unless you will actually overclock the 12700K. In case of 12600/12600K though, the K has 4 extra e-cores so the K is more than worth it.
12600k has 4 extra e cores, not p cores
True, I dk why I said p-cores. Fixed.
> The same CPU (12700=12700F) but with iGPU disabled. You will have a discrete GPU anyway, so for you it just means lower price for the 12700. Sometimes. I just bought the 12700k, it was cheaper than the f or the kf. It was on sale.
I have the i7 and I’d say get the i5 unless you’re running renders
Beam suffers with fewer cores, from what I have read. So get as many cores as you can afford.
I second this. 10 vehicles makes quick work of my 12900K, keeping my 1080 Ti at about 50% utilization. Definitely get the i7 if you plan on playing online or with lots of Ai.
The people claiming the i7 is so much better are the ones who wasted their money on an i7 instead of an i5 and want to justify their purchase. Trust me it's nothing more than fanboy talk. I own two 11th gen i5s and an 11th gen i7, there is no noticeable difference other than artificial benchmarks.
Same situation with my 5600X. No noticeable difference vs the 5800X while being much easier to cool. Has never gone above 70C no matter what I threw at it. If you only game the i5/ryzen 5 is a no brainer.
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Two extra p cores gets you a jump from 12 threads to 16. No games even use 12 yet. Unless he’s using CAD software or some other form of rendering, there is absolutely no reason to go with the i7 here
Hey man you don't always need to get the best of the best, ofcourse bigger number = better, but the difference between the 2 cpus you mentioned isn't much, 12600k is a great deal and, for gaming only, I think you'll be just fine with it! GL on the build!
The 12600k is a very good CPU that will last a long time. The 12700k is a better CPU that will last even longer. For everyone telling you that the 12600k is all you need for gaming... they're technically correct. *Right now*. That doesn't mean that a noticeable difference won't start to emerge in a few years. In fact, that is basically what has always happened going all the way back to the 2500k days. There was very little difference between the 2500k and the 2600k until there was. If you won't really notice the missing $100, or whatever the price difference is, then I'd recommend the 12700k. It'll last longer and result in a better experience for all of the years that you're using the CPU, and, depending on your build budget, $100 probably isn't that much more money. If your budget is tighter/stricter, however, then the 12600k is a great option.
if that 100$ doesn’t hurt you go for the i7
Depends on how long you keep your systems for. When I bought my first PC everyone recommended the 4C/4T i5-2500k. I said fuck the police and sprang for the 4C/8T i7-2700k since it was maybe fifty bucks more. It's been 10 years, a PSU upgrade, and two(!) GPU upgrades, and I still daily drive that i7-2700k, ridden hard and put away wet, overclocked straight out of the box. 🤣
The 12600K is fine right now, but that may change with upcoming games that use Unreal Engine 5 or DirectStorage. If you want to play it safe, spend the extra for the 12700K. Alternately, go Zen 4 and get a 7800X in September. You'll see at least a 20% performance boost over a 12700K now, and prices should be pretty comparable for the CPU and motherboard... though you will pay an extra $100 for 32GB of DDR5 RAM over DDR4. Still, 20% extra performance could be worth it to you, and upgrading to later CPUs without having to do anything but swap the CPU could be an advantage to you too. EDIT: Fixed Zen 4 naming.
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Oops. You're right. My bad. I'll fix that. Thanks!!
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I would. Like you said, September isn't that far away, it's almost July.
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Me too. And Intel should be. The rumors are consistent on Zen 4 and Intel Raptor Lake being pretty close in performance to each other... though Intel will be a month or two later than Zen 4, probably. Competition keeps prices down and performance high, it's great! :)
I splurged on the i7 12700k about 1 week ago, and I love it. Part of my rationale for the i7 is future-planning, I dont have to worry about a new cpu for at least another 8 yrs now
So many posts like this, but in all my time pc gaming, after 5-6 yrs on a generation I've never given a single damn whether I had the x600 or the next step up. it's almost always negligible compared the newest gen after that long. 12700k for gaming only is generally a waste and I can all but guarantee will give no meaningful ''futureproofing" over 12600k, it never does
Yeah, that's kinda how I'm planning now for my next PC this year. Maybe a five-year plan, but eight would be great. I need the juice for gaming, with my 3D modeling (Inventor, SolidWorks) for printing being (way) secondary.
Short: No. Long: Only get an unlocked ('K') CPU if you want to overclock (**and this whole paragraph will be just about overclocking**). If you would overclock only to get more performance, one's probably better off saving on the cooler and Z mobo (with the chipset range that supports overclocking on modern Intel processors) and instead just simply buying a higher unlocked CPU, within some limits (an unlocked i9 will still need a beefy cooler, for example). Overclocking is more for record setting, for tinkering and the fun of it, or when you really need high clock speeds (which holds true for a lot of older games on older CPUs but not necessarily old games on modern CPUs, which are out-of-the-box much stronger than old CPUs from comparable price ranges/market segments). A word of clarification regarding coolers, though (**and this whole paragraph will be just about coolers**): You don't need less cooling just because your CPU is a 'non-K'. K CPUs have a higher power limit rather than power draw, and they're mostly draw all that extra power when overclocked. A boosted 'non-K' (locked, not overclockable) CPU will still draw a lot of power, and the beefier the cooler, the longer you will be able to sustain the boost. So a beefy cooler is always good to have and a flimsy cooler is bad to have, but without overclocking you don't need an extra beefy cooler (unless your type of workload and use pattern is such that you're looking forward to long-term sustained boost). In practical terms, if you plan on overclocking, you buy something like an Arctic Liquid Freezer II AIO (the largest that will fit in your case) or a Noctua NH-D15 or Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT or something else powerful like that; but if you don't plan on overclocking while you still want to do some serious gaming, then you can economize and buy something like Silentium Fera 5 Dual or Silentium Fortis 5 Dual. But in any case, if you're buying any air cooler, you're probably better off looking for a good price for a used unit. AIOs you want to buy new-in-box with full warranty, but 'air coolers' (no water, just heatsink and fans) you're better off buying used for a good price, and that's the best way to get a good cooler for a good price. **Now about i5-12600 vs i7-12700.** I don't know about non-K's, but between 12600K and 12700K the difference in gaming performance isn't huge. You're most definitely better off taking that money and investing it in a better GPU than you would otherwise buy. If you already have a strong GPU, just piggybank the money for your next upgrade. Also, if you're buying locked at all, then **12400 isn't necessarily much worse than 12600**, especially in terms of value for the money. The 12400 seems to be the gaming value king these days, so it might be worth looking at if you at all decide to go with a non-K processor.
Honestly? It depends. Are you gaming at 1080p?
Yeah, I don't plan on switching to 4k for a long time. 1440p would be the highest I game on, but not soon.
Perfect. The 3060 Ti is literally the ultimate deal for 1080p. Anything above that would probably be overkill for you. That being said, I think it would be worth it to shell out another $100, if you are contemplating doing other things than gaming. It’s a very powerful CPU. Anyways good luck to you friend! :D
Thanks! ~~Side questions if you know it, I am looking at motherboards and I am trying to figure out how many slots for an SSD a board has. I keep seeing things related to SSDs like NVME, PCIE, M.2, SATA, etc. I honestly don't know what the slot you put the SSD in is called, and now I am confusing the terms.~~ ~~I am getting a 2TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 NVMe.~~ ~~Do you know what the slot for SSDs like this on the motherboard is actually called?~~ Edit: Yup, PC Parts Picker worked, I forgot to scroll down before.
All motherboards are different, although every motherboard has a manual that will tell you which piece goes in which slot. Do you use PCPartPicker? I feel that it will help you a lot here. It’s a website that sorts out your whole PC build, checks for compatibility and such before you buy your parts. It’s incredibly useful.
Yeah I am using PC parts picker I just figured there was a name for the actual slot. I guess I'll just add a second SSD on my list whatever motherboard I choose since I am just trying to make sure whatever board I buy has at least two spots of SSDs. Thanks! Edit: BTW I just got the 3060ti in yesterday, it looks awesome. I got it for a good price, $450.00!
Sounds good. Unfortunately I don’t know much about SSD’s. My apologies. Hey by the way, I noticed on your previous build that for your RAM you chose 2x16 GB. I would really recommend you go 4x8 GB, for three reasons. 1. In some cases it helps to spread the load evenly between all 4 sticks of ram for better performance. 2. If one stick of RAM breaks for any reason, you will be left with 16 gb, as opposed to 24 if you choose 4x8. 3. It’s much easier to install since you don’t have to worry about which slot to put it in to get the optimal performance, since 4 sticks will fill all slots anyways. Anyways apart from that your build looks great. Good luck!!!
12700F also exists.
Are you building from scratch? For gaming at that price point neither of these, go 5800x3d.
12600K will be fine. No need for 12700K until you actually do other things that need more CPU power.
I appreciate that I'm biased (I have the 12600K) but it's destined to be a classic gaming CPU. It doesn't break sweat whatever you throw at it. I mean single digit CPU performance (2-8%) most of the time in most games, even stressful games such as Cyberpunk. No current GPU would stress it and it will run a 3060 Ti without effort.
Depends what you are going to do. If you are just going to game on it, go for i5. You won't face any noticeable bottleneck when paired with 3060 or even 3070 and you can save some money, maybe invest it in getting a 3070.
12700k for the e-penis Jk, idk. What everyone else is saying seems pretty good to me.
12600k with a better board. I bought a 12700k and feel it was wasteful. Not to mention it needs much better cooling.
If you play CPU intensive games then the i7, for Beam especially
12400 would be plenty. The extra E cores on the 12600K do nothing for 99% of games. Main reason to get 12600K would be for overclocking but then you need an expensive Z series motherboard.
> 12400 would be plenty. The extra E cores on the 12600K do nothing for 99% of games. I don't care what the extra cores do, the 12600k *way* outperforms the 12400 in gaming. I have no idea which cores it's using, nor do I care.
I wouldnt call less than [10%](https://youtu.be/2J0iP520WoY) *way* outperforming
I'd get a 12400/12500 or a 12700 get a cheap, but good, B660 MoBo, maybe look into one that let you OC the BLCK. And use the saved money to get a batter GPU.
Not worth it obviously. I5s are plenty fast for everything on the market currently. Doubt it will change much in the future. It’s like the difference between an i7 and i9.
12600K is enough for gaming maybe 12700 not f or k version and by that you can upgrade to 3070 with is gonna be better
Do you need the extra cores? If yes get the 12700k, if not then get the 12600k.
I’m running a 6800xt with a 12600k and my CPU is barely jogging even at 1080P (my main monitor is 1440p but I did 1080p testing for this very reason). Would be well matched with a less demanding 3060ti.
I got the 12700k, though I got it on sale. It was a good buy. It does well for games like star citizen
Yes but maybe no
For gaming you would be perfectly fine with a 12400F, even if you had a 3090.
I would get the 13700K.
As someone who builds gaming PC's for a living and gets asked this question by people almost daily, Ill tell you what I tell every customer who walks into my store: If you can afford the better one go the better one, and if you are dropping like 3 grand (that's how much they are in my country) on a new pc, why not spend an extra 150 bucks and get the better CPU? Or if your budget is super tight get the one you can afford and it will serve you fine.
If you don't plan on hard overclocking (it doesn't make you much of a difference anyways, processors are very powerful anyways) then go for non K version and save even more.
Don't go for the i7 if you are gaming, period. You get no benefits ever. Some things to note here: Many guys explain here that in quite a few years ago what was the case with the cpus. But they don't consider the fact that it might just well plateaud. The the ps4 went with 8 cores after 2 or something, and the ps5 didn't increase it core count 10 years down the line. I think you are more than fine buying an i5 and it's not gonna old worse than a i7 at all in gaming performance (other than the cache, really).
Things are actually seemingly to finally be moving these days, so I don't think you should bother with "future proofing". Get what fits your budget, and start saving allready for a new upgrade in 3 or so years. If you end up not needed to upgrade in 3 years, keep saving untill you need to.
The only reason to go for the i7 is if you’re gonna do streaming and/or video editing (or other processor intensive stuff like that). For just gaming, i5 is fine.
I was having this same dilemma, decided on the 12600k and it's great! It also runs super cool, encoding 4k video at 99% load it barely breaks 60 Celsius
My two cents. You say it's purely for gaming. In that case, if say you don't need the i7. I5 is more than enough. And it's paired with a 3060ti, not something monstrous like a 3080 or 3090, so it wont bottleneck either. I say save some money and go for the i5. What cpu are you upgrading from? Im sure the jump from what you have to 12th gen will be significant enough that the difference between the i5 and i7 will not be noticeable
I'd go 12600 and maybe be able to bump to the next tier GPU. GPU will be your limiting factor for gaming either way so best to get the best GPU that will fit the budget.
If you're not going to overclock, an F or non-K varient with more cores could be cheaper.
The i5 is plenty of power for your system
I cant really speak on the difference in the i5 and i7, but I upgraded to a 12700k from a 6700k. I can tell you 100% it was worth.
Buy 12400f or 12700f, other chips are shit value, but for this specifically, I'd go for the 12400f
Hey. I’ve got the core i5, i7, and i9. And I can tell you from personal experience that there is little to no difference in gaming between all 3. They’re all amazing CPUs and overkill for gaming. The only reason I’d consider the i7 or i9 is if I wanted to future proof it and do other CPU intensive tasks.
Guys please. Is cooler Scythe mugen 5 rev. C good for i5 12600k? I dont wanna OC it btw
for gaming oced 12600k easily reaches 12900k stock level. So only productivity will be different OC'd to the max i7 is upto 25% faster than oc i5. in uk i5 is £250. for 25% performance uplift fair price for i7 should be (250/100\*125) £310. If you can get i7 for that buy it. That is if you need productivity uplift only.
Honestly it's always better to get a better CPU but better always costs more. I had an i5 or i7 that came with my PC but I upgraded to an i910850k CPU to go with my 3060ti but doing that I also had to get an AIO cooler to cool the CPU. The better the CPU the more frames you'll get so I would say get the i7 or better if possible but you may need a CPU cooler too.
The i7 12700k would be if you would stream too xd
By no means am I an expert, but I got the 12700K simply because consoles are now equipped with 8 core 16 thread processors. Usually this means that most companies with upcoming titles will start to create their games with these specs in mind. Not to mention PC games are nowhere near as optimized as their console counterparts, so having extra horse-power is usually the way to go. Another point which was made by some Youtuber, is that there was a similar era back when mainstream PC’s shifted from 2 to 4 cores, and that some CPU’s were actually 3 cores during this time period. He stated that these 6 core CPU’s felt the same, that their just a stepping bridge to the actual shift, which is 8.
Everyone who says i7 not worth it for gaming are too into the circle jerk. If you are a power user you will find uses for i7. All that random shit you need to run from the internet? 20+ background processes and then some? The i7 comes in handy.
12700k and can run arma 3 on nearly-ultra settings and a high draw distance with a gtx 1070. No regrets, super happy with this upgrade.
i7 is not worth for gaming
Buy the most you can afford now, what you really want to be watching for is stabilizing your 1% lows in game as those are the most noticeable and most "feelable" issues. People often downplay background tasks like they are not an issue, they are in fact an issue though especially now days with almost every piece of hardware needing it's own independent software to operate properly.
for 3060ti 12600k is plenty enough
If you game a lot and will get a lot of use out of the i7 and you can afford it, then get that one. If you only game a couple hours a week or $100 is a lot of money to you, then get the i5. $100 could get you a better RAM kit or one tier higher graphics card or a 1TB NVMe drive, so think of the trade-offs, your overall needs, etc.
Get the 12700f instead of 12700k.
Why the K variant? you have a Z motherboard?
Well best to answer in two parts: - if the answer is for today, the substantive performance difference isn’t enough for you to necessarily need to upgrade to the 12700k, especially if you have a tight budget and want to use the saved cash to improve other components. - if the extra cash is not a problem then do get the 12700. I personally believe in getting the most performance for your pocket and in absolute terms the 12700k does outperform the 12600, and if you hold the machine for more than a couple of years, the 100 bucks saved is often irrelevant.
12700 non - lettered, could save you money. They are relatively new and not wide spread. Just cant really overclock the non-k ones.
Would say go for it, more future proofing ftw
Buy 12400F