i5-12400 vs i5-10400 - Need For Speed: Payback RTX 3070 Ti Max-Q - Game Performance Benchmarks

Multi-Thread Performance

Single-Thread Performance

i5-12400

• The i5-12400 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 i5-12400 is more power efficient and generates less heat.
• The i5-12400 has a smaller process size. The faster a transistor can toggle on and off, the faster it can do work. And transistors that turn on and off with less energy are more efficient, reducing the operating power, or “dynamic power consumption,” required by a processor.

i5-10400

• The i5-10400 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
• 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.
• The i5-10400 has a higher turbo clock boost. Turbo Boost is a CPU feature that will run CPU clock speed faster than its base clock, if certain conditions are present. It will enable older software that runs on fewer cores, to perform better on newer hardware. Since games are software too, it is also applicable to them.