Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.Learn more.
Intel Core i5-12600K vs Intel Core i5-11600K: Which is better?
In This Article
The latest 12th-generation of Intel Core processors are finally available to purchase, but how does the latest i5 CPU compare to its predecessor?
We’ve had the chance to get our hands on the latestAlderLakeprocessor, so we’ve got some first-hand experience testing out how theIntel Core i5-12600Kcompares to theIntel Core i5-11600K.
Keep reading to find out how these two processors compare and what changes Intel has made this time around.
Price
The Intel Core i5-11600K has been out for a few months now and can be bought from third-party sellers. Overclockers are currently selling theRocket Lakeprocessor for £218.99.
The price has dipped a little since the latest processors came out, but that’s expected. Nevertheless, it makes it a more affordable option compared to 12th Gen,
The new Intel Core i5-12600K can be bought from Overclockers for £279.99, which fits within Intel’s recommended price range. This makes it one of the cheapest range of the new Alder Lake range.
It’s also important to remember you’ll need to purchase a motherboard with the new Z690 chipset in order to get the latest Intel chips up and running, adding to the cost further.
Specs
The latest 12th-generation chips from Intel use 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 can’t fit as many transistors on the chip as their newer siblings, therefore limiting the performance ceiling.
The i5-12600K has 10 cores and 16 threads, while the i5-11600K has 6 cores and 12 threads.
The i5-12600K’s 10 cores are made up of 6 P-cores and 4 E-cores, using a new ‘performance hybrid’ architecture. This hybrid architecture allows two different types of cores to be housed on a single chip.
It’s worth noting that the P-core tops out at 4.9GHz and the E-core caps out at 3.6GHz. Meanwhile, the max frequency speed of the i5-11600K comes in at 4.9GHz.
Both processors do have about the same level of power consumption, with a 125W of Processor Base Power. This checks out in our benchmark tests, with both chips seeing extremely similar power 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 performance ceiling for RAM and SSDs in your system.
For comparison, the Intel Core i5-11600K is limited to DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 support. For this reason it alone it may be worth considering the i5-12600K instead, as such features will keep your PC futureproofed for the foreseeable future.
Performance
Looking at the performance difference between the 11th and 12th-generation chips, we can confirm that Alder Lake is more powerful than its predecessor.
Our testing showed, when paired with anRTX 3060 TiGPU, that the i5-12600K chip scored 1742 in the Geekbench 5 single-core test, while the i5-11600K scored 1647.
In a similar fashion, the i5-12600K scored higher in the Geekbench 5 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 improvement, now capable of competing with AMD with multi-threaded workloads, which is important for content creation.
We can also see that the Alder Lake processor scored higher in specific games; Dirt Rally showed a significant performance increase at Full HD and Quad HD resolutions, although improvements to 4K were minimal.
It’s a similar store with Horizon Zero Dawn, with the bigger performance gains seen at a Full HD resolution, while there was a minimal different for 4K.
So, while the improvements are not always that significant, we 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.
You can check out a more in-depth look at the differences in the table just below.
You might like…
Gemma joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer after graduating from Leeds Beckett University with a Journalism degree. She’s worked with national outlets, covering breaking news stories to reviews fo…
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
