i9-12900K vs i5-12400 - Need For Speed: Payback RTX 4080 Max-Q - Game Performance Benchmarks

Multi-Thread Performance

Single-Thread Performance

i9-12900K

• The i9-12900K 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 i9-12900K 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 i9-12900K 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 i9-12900K 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.

i5-12400

• The i5-12400 is more power efficient and generates less heat.