i3-12100 vs i5-12600K - Need For Speed: Heat R9 Nano - Game Performance Benchmarks

Multi-Thread Performance

Single-Thread Performance

i3-12100

• The i3-12100 is more power efficient and generates less heat.

i5-12600K

• The i5-12600K has higher Level 2 Cache. Data/instructions which have to be processed can be loaded from the fast L2 and the CPU does not have to wait for the very slow DDR RAM
• The i5-12600K has higher Level 3 Cache. This is useful when you have substantial multiprocessing workloads, many computationally intense simultaneous processes. More likely on a server, less on a personally used computer for interactive desktop workloads.
• The i5-12600K has more cores. The benefit of having more cores is that the system can handle more threads. Each core can handle a separate stream of data. This architecture greatly increases the performance of a system that is running concurrent applications.
• The i5-12600K has more threads. Larger programs are divided into threads (small sections) so that the processor can execute them simultaneously to get faster execution.
• For some games, a cpu with a higher clock speed, or in a technical name IPC (Instructions per clock), has better results than other CPU's with higher core count and lower core speed.