Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake CPU Review

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Synthetic System Benchmarks

We are going to start with synthetic system application benchmarks on this page. Gaming performance will be shown later on. DDR4 RAM is common to each platform, and Windows 11 Pro is being used.

PCMark 10

Standard PCMark Benchmark

Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake PCMark 10 Standard PCMark Benchmark

In the first graph, we are looking at PCMark 10 standard benchmark test, which is an overall system test. PCMark 10 runs a gauntlet of different office, content creation, and desktop workloads.  Typical, non-gaming stuff. We find right off the bat that the Intel Core i5-12600K is at the top in performance, delivering a much higher score than the Ryzen 5 5600X and last generation’s Intel Core i5-11600K CPUs. The Intel Core i5-12600K is 10% faster in this benchmark compared to the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and Intel Core i5-11600K. Not bad for a collection of office, content creation, and desktop workloads. Now let’s look more specifically at Microsoft Office performance below.

PCMark Application Benchmark

Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake PCMark 10 Applications Benchmark

In this graph, we are looking at PCMark 10’s Applications Benchmark.  This test is very specific, it tests the performance of Microsoft Office, using Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and even Edge. We are using Microsoft Office 2021 for these tests. Once again we find the new Intel Core i5-12600K providing a significant advantage in performance even in just something as simple as office applications. Firstly, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is slightly faster than the Intel Core i5-11600K. However, the new Intel Core i5-12600K is 7% faster than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X in Microsoft Office. It seems the CPU to have for office work is the 12600K if you want the best performance.

3DMark

CPU Profile

Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake 3DMark CPU Profile Max Threads

We are introducing a new test into our suite, we are using 3DMark Professional’s CPU Profile test. This test specifically tests CPUs and reports an overall score, it tests various thread counts. We are going to report on the “Max Threads” and “1-Thread” results only. In Max Threads above, the CPU is using all threads available to it. The Intel Core i5-12600K with 16 threads has a huge advantage when all threads are being used. The overall score is 8028 which is 43% higher than the Ryzen 5 5600X with 12 threads. Even the Intel Core i5-11600K 12-thread CPU is higher than the Ryzen 5 5600X by 14%, indicating clock speed may be a big factor in this test as well. The Intel Core i5-12600K is 26% faster than the Intel Core i5-11600K, so that shows a great generational improvement.

Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake 3DMark CPU Profile 1-thread

In this test above we are testing just a single thread of performance, this really shows how good single-thread performance differs. The Intel Core i5-11600K is still faster than the Ryzen 5 5600X, by 7%. But the Intel Core i5-12600K steals the show, it’s 14% faster than the Ryzen 5 5600X and 7% faster than the Core i5-11600K.

Geekbench 5

Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake Geekbench 5 multi-core

Next up we have the latest version of Geekbench 5.  This benchmark tests overall CPU performance and can show us a result in both multi-core and single-core performance. The new Intel Core i5-12600K slaps the snot out of both CPUs in multi-core performance. It is 43% faster than the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, a performance advantage that was replicated in the 3DMark CPU Profile Max Threads test. The Intel Core i5-12600K is 39% faster than the last generation Intel Core i5-11600K, these are massive gains in multi-core performance.

Intel Core i5-12600K DDR4 Alder Lake Geekbench 5 single-core

In Single-Core testing we also find the Intel Core i5-12600K comes out on top. It is 14% faster than the Ryzen 5 5600X, again replicated in the 3DMark 1-thread testing. It is 8% faster than the Core i5-11600K. It seems there are IPC improvements in single-core performance and advantages due to clock speed.

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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