Intel Core i5-12600K vs Intel Core i5-11600K: Which is better?

The latest 12th-generation of Intel Cadre processors are finally bachelor to purchase, simply how does the latest i5 CPU compare to its predecessor?

We’ve had the chance to become our hands on the latest Alder Lake processor, so we’ve got some get-go-paw experience testing out how the Intel Cadre i5-12600K compares to the Intel Core i5-11600K.

Go along reading to find out how these ii processors compare and what changes Intel has fabricated this time around.

Price

The Intel Cadre i5-11600K has been out for a few months now and can be bought from 3rd-party sellers. Overclockers are currently selling the Rocket Lake processor for £218.99.

The price has dipped a little since the latest processors came out, but that’due south expected. Even so, it makes information technology a more affordable selection compared to 12th Gen,

The new Intel Core i5-12600K can be bought from Overclockers for £279.99, which fits inside Intel’s recommended toll range. This makes it i of the cheapest range of the new Alder Lake range.

Information technology’s also important to remember you’ll need to purchase a motherboard with the new Z690 chipset in society to get the latest Intel fries upwards and running, adding to the cost further.

Specs

The latest 12th-generation fries from Intel employ a 10nm Enhanced SuperFin process, with the company referring to the new node as the ‘Intel 7’. The 11th-generation processors use a 14nm node, meaning they tin’t fit equally many transistors on the chip as their newer siblings, therefore limiting the functioning ceiling.

The i5-12600K has 10 cores and 16 threads, while the i5-11600K has half dozen cores and 12 threads.

The i5-12600K’south x cores are made up of 6 P-cores and four Eastward-cores, using a new ‘operation hybrid’ compages. This hybrid architecture allows two unlike types of cores to be housed on a unmarried chip.

	Intel Cadre i5-12600K	Intel Core i5-11600K
Architecture	Alder Lake	Rocket Lake
Node	10nm	14nm
Cores / Threads	10 / xvi	6 / 12
Max frequency	4.9 GHz	4.9 GHz
Processor base ability	125 W	125 Westward

It’southward worth noting that the P-cadre tops out at four.9GHz and the Due east-core caps out at 3.6GHz. Meanwhile, the max frequency speed of the i5-11600K comes in at 4.9GHz.

Both processors exercise have about the aforementioned level of power consumption, with a 125W of Processor Base Power. This checks out in our benchmark tests, with both chips seeing extremely like ability consumption.

One of the major talking points of the new 12th Gen chips are its support for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0, which raise the functioning ceiling for RAM and SSDs in your organization.

For comparison, the Intel Cadre i5-11600K is limited to DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 back up. For this reason it alone it may be worth considering the i5-12600K instead, every bit such features will proceed your PC futureproofed for the foreseeable future.

Performance

Looking at the performance difference betwixt the 11th and 12th-generation chips, nosotros can confirm that Alder Lake is more powerful than its predecessor.

Our testing showed, when paired with an RTX 3060 Ti GPU, that the i5-12600K chip scored 1742 in the Geekbench 5 unmarried-core exam, while the i5-11600K scored 1647.

In a similar fashion, the i5-12600K scored higher in the Geekbench five multi-core test, at 12,049, while the i5-11600K capped out at 7602. It’s arguably this area where the new i5 has seen the greatest comeback, now capable of competing with AMD with multi-threaded workloads, which is important for content cosmos.

We tin also meet that the Alder Lake processor scored higher in specific games; Dirt Rally showed a significant operation increase at Full Hard disk drive and Quad HD resolutions, although improvements to 4K were minimal.

It’due south a like store with Horizon Nix Dawn, with the bigger performance gains seen at a Full Hard disk resolution, while at that place was a minimal dissimilar for 4K.

And then, while the improvements are not always that significant, we tin can safely say that the latest Intel Core i5 outperforms the earlier models. If you want more substantial performance gains, you’re better off upgrading your GPU instead.

Y’all can check out a more in-depth look at the differences in the table just below.