Core i7-12700K: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

Core i7-12700K
2021
12 cores / 20 threads, 125 Watt
21.78

Core i7-12700K provides good benchmark performance at 21.78% of a leader's which is a 96-core EPYC 9655P.

Summary

Intel started Core i7-12700K sales 4 November 2021 at a recommended price of $409. This is an Alder Lake, Golden Cove, Gracemont architecture desktop processor primarily aimed at office systems. It has 12 cores and 20 threads, and is based on 10 nm manufacturing technology, with a max turbo frequency of 5000 MHz and an unlocked multiplier.

Compatibility-wise, this is FCLGA1700 processor with a TDP of 125 Watt and a maximum temperature of 72 °C. It supports DDR4, DDR5 memory.

Primary details

Core i7-12700K processor market type (desktop or notebook), architecture, sales start time and pricing.

Place in the ranking245
Place by popularity73
Cost-effectiveness evaluation41.85
Market segmentDesktop processor
SeriesIntel Core i7
Power efficiency16.49of 100.00 (Ryzen Z1 Extreme)
Architecture codenameAlder Lake, Golden Cove, Gracemont (2021)
Release date4 November 2021 (3 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$409of 17,906 (Xeon Platinum 8280L)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance per price, higher is better.

Detailed specifications

Basic microprocessor parameters such as number of cores, number of threads, base frequency and turbo boost clock, lithography, cache size and multiplier lock state. These parameters can generally indicate CPU performance, but to be more precise you have to review its test results.

Physical cores12 (Dodeca-Core)
Performance-cores8of 60 (Xeon w9-3595X)
Efficient-cores4of 16 (Core i9-13900K)
Threads20
Base clock speed3.6 GHzof 4.7 GHz (FX-9590)
Boost clock speed5 GHzof 6.2 GHz (Core i9-14900KS)
Bus typeDMI 4.0
Bus rate8 × 16 GT/s
Multiplier36of 42 (Core i7-7700K)
L1 cache80K (per core)of 80 KB (EPYC 9965)
L2 cache1.25 MB (per core)of 2 MB (Xeon 6980P)
L3 cache25 MB (shared)of 1152 MB (EPYC 9684X)
Chip lithography10 nmof 3 nm (Apple M3 Max 16-Core)
Die size215.25 mm2
Maximum core temperature100 °Cof 110 °C (Atom x7-E3950)
Maximum case temperature (TCase)72 °Cof 105 °C (Core i7-5950HQ)
64 bit support+
Windows 11 compatibility+
Unlocked multiplier+

Compatibility

Information on Core i7-12700K compatibility with other computer components and devices: motherboard (look for socket type), power supply unit (look for power consumption) etc. Useful when planning a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. Note that power consumption of some processors can well exceed their nominal TDP, even without overclocking. Some can even double their declared thermals given that the motherboard allows to tune the CPU power parameters.

Number of CPUs in a configuration1of 8 (Opteron 842)
SocketFCLGA1700
Power consumption (TDP)125 Wattof 500 Watt (Xeon 6960P)

Technologies and extensions

Technological capabilities and additional instructions supported by Core i7-12700K. You'll probably need this information if you require some particular technology.

Instruction set extensionsIntel® SSE4.1, Intel® SSE4.2, Intel® AVX2
AES-NI+
FMA+
AVX+
vPro+
Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST)+
Speed Shift+
Turbo Boost Technology2.0
Hyper-Threading Technology+
Idle States+
Thermal Monitoring+
SIPP+
Turbo Boost Max 3.0+
Deep Learning Boost+

Security technologies

Processor technologies aimed at improving security, for example, by protecting against hacks.

TXT+
EDB+
Secure Key+
OS Guard+

Virtualization technologies

Supported virtual machine optimization technologies. Some are specific to Intel only, some to AMD.

VT-d+
VT-x+
EPT+

Memory specs

Types, maximum amount and channel number of RAM supported by Core i7-12700K's memory controller. Depending on the motherboard, higher memory frequency may be supported.

Supported memory typesDDR4, DDR5
Maximum memory size128 GBof 6 TiB (EPYC 9124)
Max memory channels2of 12 (Xeon Platinum 9221)
Maximum memory bandwidth76.805 GB/sof 460.8 GB/s (EPYC 9124)
ECC memory support+

Graphics specifications

General parameters of a GPU integrated into Core i7-12700K.

Integrated graphics cardIntel UHD Graphics 770
Quick Sync Video+
Clear Video HD+
Graphics max frequency1.5 GHz
Execution Units32

Graphics interfaces

Available interfaces and connections of Core i7-12700K's integrated GPU.

Number of displays supported4

Graphics image quality

Maximum display resolutions supported by Core i7-12700K's integrated GPU, including resolutions over different interfaces.

Max resolution over HDMI 1.44096 x 2160 @ 60Hz
Max resolution over eDP5120 x 3200 @ 120Hz
Max resolution over DisplayPort7680 x 4320 @ 60Hz

Graphics API support

APIs supported by Core i7-12700K's integrated GPU, sometimes API versions are included.

DirectX12
OpenGL4.5

Peripherals

Specifications and connection types of supported peripherals.

PCIe version5.0 and 4.0
PCI Express lanes20of 128 (EPYC 7551P)

Benchmark performance

Single-core and multi-core benchmark results of Core i7-12700K. Overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range, higher is better.


Combined synthetic benchmark score

This is our combined benchmark performance rating. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.

i7-12700K 21.78

Passmark

Passmark CPU Mark is a widespread benchmark, consisting of 8 different types of workload, including integer and floating point math, extended instructions, compression, encryption and physics calculation. There is also one separate single-threaded scenario measuring single-core performance.

i7-12700K 34592

GeekBench 5 Single-Core

GeekBench 5 Single-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses only a single CPU core.

i7-12700K 2555

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core

GeekBench 5 Multi-Core is a cross-platform application developed in the form of CPU tests that independently recreate certain real-world tasks with which to accurately measure performance. This version uses all available CPU cores.

i7-12700K 13786

Cinebench 10 32-bit single-core

Cinebench R10 is an ancient ray tracing benchmark for processors by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. Its single core version uses just one CPU thread to render a futuristic looking motorcycle.

i7-12700K 9305

Cinebench 10 32-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 10 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R10 using all the processor threads. Possible number of threads is limited by 16 in this version.

i7-12700K 63484

3DMark06 CPU

3DMark06 is a discontinued DirectX 9 benchmark suite from Futuremark. Its CPU part contains two scenarios, one dedicated to artificial intelligence pathfinding, another to game physics using PhysX package.

i7-12700K 16827

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 11.5 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R11.5 which uses all the processor threads. A maximum of 64 threads is supported in this version.

i7-12700K 38

Cinebench 15 64-bit multi-core

Cinebench Release 15 Multi Core is a variant of Cinebench R15 which uses all the processor threads.

i7-12700K 3325

Cinebench 15 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R15 (standing for Release 15) is a benchmark made by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version (sometimes called Single-Thread) only uses a single processor thread to render a room full of reflective spheres and light sources.

i7-12700K 272

Cinebench 11.5 64-bit single-core

Cinebench R11.5 is an old benchmark by Maxon, authors of Cinema 4D. It was superseded by later versions of Cinebench, which use more modern variants of Cinema 4D engine. The Single Core version loads a single thread with ray tracing to render a glossy room full of crystal spheres and light sources.

i7-12700K 3.29

TrueCrypt AES

TrueCrypt is a discontinued piece of software that was widely used for on-the-fly-encryption of disk partitions, now superseded by VeraCrypt. It contains several embedded performance tests, one of them being TrueCrypt AES, which measures data encryption speed using AES algorithm. Result is encryption speed in gigabytes per second.

i7-12700K 15.7

WinRAR 4.0

WinRAR 4.0 is an outdated version of a popular file archiver. It contains an internal speed test, using 'Best' setting of RAR compression on large chunks of randomly generated data. Its results are measured in kilobytes per second.

i7-12700K 10389

x264 encoding pass 2

x264 Pass 2 is a slower variant of x264 video compression that produces a variable bit rate output file, which results in better quality since the higher bit rate is used when it is needed more. Benchmark result is still measured in frames per second.  

i7-12700K 179

x264 encoding pass 1

x264 version 4.0 is a video encoding benchmark uses MPEG 4 x264 compression method to compress a sample HD (720p) video. Pass 1 is a faster variant that produces a constant bit rate output file. Its result is measured in frames per second, which means how many frames of the source video file were encoded per second.  

i7-12700K 350

Geekbench 5.5 Multi-Core

i7-12700K 14016

Blender(-)

i7-12700K 173

Geekbench 5.5 Single-Core

i7-12700K 1912

7-Zip Single

i7-12700K 6270

7-Zip

i7-12700K 73439

WebXPRT 3

i7-12700K 304

CrossMark Overall

i7-12700K 1999

Gaming performance

Closest competitors

Core i7-12700K's performance relative to its closest rivals among desktop CPUs.


Ryzen 7 7700 100.14
Core i7-12700K 100
Ryzen 9 5900 99.31

AMD equivalent

According to our data, the closest AMD alternative to Core i7-12700K is Ryzen 7 7700, which is nearly equal in speed and higher by 1 position in our ranking.

Here are some closest AMD rivals to Core i7-12700K:

Ryzen 7 7700 100.14
Core i7-12700K 100
Ryzen 9 5900 99.31

Similar processors

Here is our recommendation of several processors that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.

Recommended GPUs

People consider these graphics cards to be good for Core i7-12700K, according to our PC configuration statistics.

These are the fastest graphics cards for Core i7-12700K in our user configuration statistics. There is a total of 22026 configurations using Core i7-12700K in our database.

RTX 4090 GeForce RTX 4090
4.5% (990/22026)
RTX 4090 D GeForce RTX 4090 D
0.02% (4/22026)
RTX 4080 GeForce RTX 4080
1.2% (271/22026)
RTX 5880 Ada Generation RTX 5880 Ada Generation
0.005% (1/22026)
RTX 4080 SUPER GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER
0.4% (89/22026)
RTX 4070 Ti GeForce RTX 4070 Ti
3.4% (742/22026)
RX 7900 XTX Radeon RX 7900 XTX
0.3% (63/22026)
RTX 4070 SUPER GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER
1.5% (332/22026)
RTX 3090 Ti GeForce RTX 3090 Ti
1% (219/22026)

All comparisons with Core i7-12700K

Community ratings

Here is the rating given to the reviewed processor by our users. Let others know your opinion by rating it yourself.


4.2 2034 votes

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Questions & comments

Here you can ask a question about Core i7-12700K, agree or disagree with our judgements, or report an error or mismatch.