**The Future of CPU Performance: A Look at Intel's 12th Generation Core Processors**

In recent years, the world of computer hardware has seen significant advancements in processing power and efficiency. As we move forward, it's essential to understand what to expect from future CPUs and how they'll impact gaming benchmarks. In this article, we'll delve into the details of Intel's 12th generation core processors, specifically focusing on the 12th Gen Core i3-12100 and its competing AMD Ryzen 5 5600X.

**Benchmarking and Future-Proofing**

One of the key aspects to consider when evaluating a CPU is its performance in benchmarking scenarios. As we've seen, some modern games that previously struggled with thread consistency have started to benefit from newer CPUs with more threads. However, this trend may not be as pronounced for older systems. In our testing, the 12th Gen Core i3-12100 showed significant improvements in frame time consistency compared to its predecessor, the 11th Gen Core i3-1115G4. This increased performance is a result of Intel's newer architecture and improved manufacturing process.

However, as we look forward to future gaming benchmarks, it's essential to consider whether these gains will be enough to keep up with the demands of more modern games. While the 12th Gen Core i3-12100 should provide excellent performance for most games in the next couple of years, its increased thread count may not be enough to address future challenges. In contrast, AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X offers a significant advantage in terms of thread count and processing power, making it a more attractive option for those seeking future-proofing.

**Recommendations and Value**

When it comes to recommending a CPU for gaming, there are several factors to consider. Budget is often the primary concern, as upgrading to a higher-end model can be expensive. In this regard, Intel's 12th Gen Core i3-12100 offers an excellent value proposition. With its increased performance and improved efficiency, this processor provides a compelling reason to upgrade from older systems.

However, if budget is not a significant concern, AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X becomes a more attractive option. This processor offers significantly better performance in benchmarking scenarios and is well-suited for tasks that require high processing power, such as video editing and coding. In terms of value, the i3-12100 falls short of the Ryzen 5 5600X, but it's still an excellent choice for those seeking a budget-friendly option.

**Intel's Competition and Future Plans**

As Intel continues to dominate the CPU market, AMD is working hard to close the gap. The company has been focusing on developing new architectures that offer improved performance and efficiency. While we don't have any concrete information on future CPUs, it's clear that Intel will need to maintain its competitive edge in the face of increasing competition.

In this context, AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X takes center stage as a powerful competitor to Intel's 12th Gen Core i3-12100. While the i3-12100 offers excellent value for budget-conscious buyers, the Ryzen 5 5600X provides significantly better performance and is well-suited for tasks that require high processing power.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, Intel's 12th generation core processors offer significant improvements in terms of performance and efficiency. The 12th Gen Core i3-12100 provides an excellent value proposition for budget-conscious buyers, while AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X takes center stage as a powerful competitor to Intel's offerings. As we move forward, it's essential to consider the needs of your specific use case and budget when choosing a CPU.

Whether you're a gamer or a content creator, there are several factors to consider when selecting a CPU. Budget, performance, and efficiency are just a few of the key considerations that can help guide your decision. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each processor, you'll be better equipped to make an informed choice about which CPU is right for you.

**Gaming, Productivity, and Beyond**

In addition to its performance and value proposition, the 12th Gen Core i3-12100 also offers several benefits for gaming. With its improved efficiency and increased processing power, this processor provides a compelling reason to upgrade from older systems. Whether you're a casual gamer or an avid enthusiast, the i3-12100 is an excellent choice for those seeking a powerful yet affordable CPU.

For productivity tasks, such as video editing and coding, the 12th Gen Core i3-12100 offers significantly better performance than its predecessor. This processor provides the necessary processing power to handle demanding tasks with ease, making it an excellent choice for content creators and professionals.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, Intel's 12th generation core processors offer significant improvements in terms of performance and efficiency. The 12th Gen Core i3-12100 provides an excellent value proposition for budget-conscious buyers, while AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X takes center stage as a powerful competitor to Intel's offerings. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each processor, you'll be better equipped to make an informed choice about which CPU is right for you.

As we look forward to future gaming benchmarks and productivity tasks, it's essential to consider whether these gains will be enough to keep up with the demands of more modern systems. While Intel's 12th Gen Core i3-12100 provides excellent performance and value, its increased thread count may not be enough to address future challenges.

**Final Thoughts**

In the world of computer hardware, there are few things as exciting as a new generation of processors. The 12th Gen Core i3-12100 offers significant improvements in terms of performance and efficiency, making it an excellent choice for budget-conscious buyers.

However, AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X takes center stage as a powerful competitor to Intel's offerings. With its significantly better performance and improved efficiency, this processor provides a compelling reason to upgrade from older systems.

As we move forward, it's essential to consider the needs of your specific use case and budget when choosing a CPU. Whether you're a gamer or a content creator, there are several factors to consider that can help guide your decision.

By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each processor, you'll be better equipped to make an informed choice about which CPU is right for you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: encoming off the review of the intel i3 12 100 f which is a 130 dollar actually very impressive cpu we're now looking at the i5 12 400 or 12 400 f they're about the same other than the presence of the igp the price class is around 180 to 200 retail we bought ours for 200 the non-f version and we're gonna be looking at this versus the obvious competition from amd so it'd be like the r5 5600x for example looking at some older cpus as well like the 2700x the 3700x and intel's alternatives especially those available right now to help you decide which one makes the most sense for your type of build let's get started before that this video is brought to you by evga's x570 dark motherboard the evga x570 dark is a high-end motherboard for am4 cpus built around extreme overclocking and tested heavily by evga's kin pen the x570 dark has a uniquely rotated socket and ram layout 90 degree rotated cables for ease of installation and management and tons of troubleshooting features to make building testing and overclocking easier check out evga's x570 dark high-end motherboard at the link in the description below so main things to consider here the first of all quick correction for the previous one intel had originally released a slide deck that stated that h610 was only one memory channel intel later released a corrected version of that slide deck it's two channels for h610 but it is 1d pc or one dim per channel so we went off the specs of the slide deck in our previous review but the slide deck changed in at some point after it was published so anyway that's what it is it's h610 is still two channels but it's one dpc uh and then you've still got the other limitations on there like no memory overclocking half the dmi things of that nature so still not a great platform we still recommend it for really any kind of performance build but the memory channel difference is a significant one we wanted to note that okay specs for the i5 12 400 so this thing that's six cores 12 threads it has zero e cores we'll show the intel arc page for it uh maybe put it up next to the 12 100 app or something like that it is a 4.4 gigahertz boost target it's got 2.5 gigahertz base target and runs 18 megabytes of total cash this cpu is not as simple as the 12 900k is and it's power targets that run 65 watts or 117 watts depending on if your pl1 or pl2 additionally there is a 12500 it's very similar the difference between this and the 12 500 is the frequency 12 500 has a maximum boost target of 4.6 gigahertz advertised whereas this is 200 megahertz lower so that's your difference between those it'll amount to something for the most part 200 megahertz difference in a lot of games you're talking about sort of single digit low percentage changes so depending on availability and price it's not a big change it's worth a couple bucks maybe but you could also just not have the extra two percent performance and pay less which is generally what we would recommend so as we get into this things to consider we're looking at this from a couple different perspectives one is gaming only one is gaming plus what we call production tasks those would be things like programming rendering 3d animations or perhaps unreal engine playback things like that rendering videos working in photoshop and then we'll also be looking at just doing those things when we talk to conclusions uh whether it's worth getting it for only gaming for a mix or for only production okay let's get started with the benchmarks this one's gonna be really straightforward we've burned through a lot of these intel alder like cpus at this point if you wanna know more about the architecture we have separate pieces on that we have several pieces on the chipset differences we've got several pieces on almost all the cpus that are sort of relevant to the core audience right now you can check those all in the links in the description below but to save time we're not going to go through all the same information again today and instead we'll focus on the charts for the 12 400 slash 12 400 f let's get started with the gaming section in counter strike go the i5 12 400 ran at 266 fps average and had those paced proportionately behind so that matches the distribution of the other cpus we've tested this lands the 12 400 about six percent ahead of the 12 100 f that we just reviewed or versus something older it'd be about 43 ahead of the tried and true r7 2700 x that's a big jump from something that was positioned as a higher end part back in its glory days as for amd's modern competition the r55600x place is 25 ahead in average fps yet the lows aren't much different and the price is much higher still at about 290 to 300 the 12600k holds only about nine percent lead over the 12 400 marking the 12400 as one of intel's better offerings right now from a value perspective the 12100f maintains the best overall budget build position in here especially for people on a stricter budget with less room to scale while the 12 400 is positioning itself as a value champion with a bit more for thread capability especially as we move into production tasks 1440p doesn't change much for the 12 400 but that's because the gpu bind doesn't come into play too hard in this game if you were to run the game with a step down gpu from the 3080 we're using here like a 3070 you'd still see good scaling between the cpus we'll look at another 1440p result later to represent the lower end gpu pairing as well cyberpunk 2077 gives us a more gpu constrained test to evaluate the i5 12 400 ran at 170 fps average here positioning it right alongside the i5 11 600k and embarrassingly for intel the i9 11 900k that wasted space on shelves better reserved for toilet paper at this point but then you might confuse the two so that'd be kind of painful the 12 400 out performs the new 12 100 f by 20 so if you care to do the math this way that'd be 54 more money for 20 more performance however with the 12 400 f version now in stock at 180 dollars it cut closer to 38 more money for the same 20 game as for everything else the r55600x and the 12 400 were about tied the 5800x wasn't far ahead and the 12600k didn't offer any meaningful jump compared to some older stuff the 400 out did the 2700x by 43 and average fps alone or the 9900k by 10 in far cry 6 the 12 400 ran at 133 fps average with lows proportionally placed the lows do well here as opposed to on the 12 700k and 12600k for one simple reason although windows 11 testing is fine for lowe's on alder lake with far cry 6 specifically windows 10 demonstrates scheduling confusion with e-cores on intel in this game the 400 has no e course similar to the 12 100 app and so it has no issues the 12 400 roughly ties the 11 900k and it isn't distant from the 5800x the r55600x allows a few points of a lead to the 12 400 while the 12 100 f is led by 13 not enough to really be exciting between the two but still competitive with more expensive options on the charts in total war three kingdoms the 12 400 ended up at about the top of the chart we're partly bound here but we're still seeing scaling versus the 5600x 900k 11400 and the 12100f the lead over the 12100 f is about 12 percent and it's about 37 against the older r7 2700x and rainbow six seeds the 1200 ran at 466 fps average about tied with the 11 600k previously and ahead of the 3900x the 900k and the 3700x of higher echelon but older categories the 12 400 leads the 12 100 f by about 11 once again and itself is beaten by the 5600x by 3 that's not error in our testing it's outside of error but it is close enough to hardly be noticeable or anything you need to care about the 1 lows are about the same with a little more variance in the 0.1 percent result we noticed abnormally low 0.1 lows on the 12 400 on re-tests these were reproducible in our benchmarking as for the 12 600k benefit that's about the same three percent as the 5600x the 400 is a good balance of value here although the 12 100 f achieves most of the same performance for a lower price in 1440p testing the 12400 ended up about tied with the 12600k but that's expected because we're now gpu bound the 12 400 the 12 600 k the 12 900 k and everything else around the 355 fps average range is bouncing off of the gpu limitations we can't distinguish a difference here and that gpu bind also benefits the 0.1 low variance a little bit rf1 2021 results are brand new so we don't have as many cpus tested here as the other tests that's because it recently got a game update that changed the results the 12 400 ends up just below the middle leading the 3900x and the 1200f both by about 12 percent the lead over the r5 3600 is about 24 and that's noteworthy mostly because the 3600 was available for around the same price originally as the new 12400 is that's finally some progress it's certainly better than the gpu industries one dollar more for one percent more stagnation that we've had over the past few years now time to move on to production benchmarks we'd expect to see some additional value in the 12 400 when compared to the 12 100 f specifically when we look at this set of tests blender cycles rendering is up first the 12 400 required 22 minutes to complete this render which is about the same time as the i5 11 600k and the amd r5 5600 x it's also not meaningfully behind the 2700x or the 9900k that's a pretty good position for a 180 to 200 cpu and unlike in most gaming benchmarks it does offer a meaningful uplift over the 100 f at 27 reduced to time to render the benefit is almost entirely from the additional four threads here since each one will spawn one tile for the render in chromium code compile as a broad reference point for programming workloads the 12400 required 97 minutes to compile the code base that's the same as the 9900k a bit slower than the 3700x and better than the 5600x the 2700x and of course the 12100f the improvement over the 12100f is about 30 time reduced for perspective that'd be about 40 minutes saved off this one task if doing any kind of regular production workload this starts to become noticeable the r7 5800x remains competitive in performance only at 18 percent reduced time but unfortunately it's around 80 percent more expensive than the 12 400 non-f or exactly two times the price of the 12 400 f adobe premier scoring is done in aggregate points combining filters effects live playback and scrubbing and rendering the 12400 scores 689 points outperforming the 3600 slightly and falling behind the 2700x and the 11 600k slightly the 12400 leads the 12 100 f by 17 percent here and the 5600 x leads the 12 400 by 6 percent the next step up alder like cpu the 12600k at least that we've benchmarked offers 30 more performance at about 100 more adobe photoshop is scored the same way as premiere the 12 400 scored 10 72 points putting it about equal with the r55600x and ahead of the i9 10900k and r9 3900x both of which run more cores and threats although both architectures are completely different from alderley the 12600k would offer five percent more performance for a hundred dollars more while the 12 400 offers 11 percent more performance than the 12 100 f here's where it gets pretty interesting in 7-zip compression the 12-400 did significantly better than the 1200 f a 42 improvement and it roughly tied the 2700x the 5600x however still leads by 14 and the 3700x helps demonstrate andy's natural architectural advantage in compression and decompression tasks but the 12 400 is at least viable we'd favor amd if you're doing a lot of this type of task however the 12 400 is acceptable if this is a less frequent workload then the interesting bit decompression the 12 400 falls down the chart it maintains a lead over the 12 100 f obviously but the amd parts pulled disproportionately ahead this is where amd is comparatively the strongest right now power testing is up last related to the production test we just did the i5 12 400 pulled about 74 watts at the eps 12 volt cables in blender all core rendering that has it more power hungry than the 12 100 unsurprisingly and then the 5600x but it's still okay it's far more efficient for example than the previous intel architectures like the 7700k and the 9900k especially in single core loading the 12400 pulled about 24 watts making it similar to the 5600x single core workload this is about what we'd expect given the 22 watt pull of the 12 100 f so that's it then our opinion is this the 12100f is still easily the budget cane right now the fact that 130 cpu is actually playing games well uh is great news it's good for the budget market which has needed a revival hopefully gps sort of follow suit at some point that combined with maybe a 30 50 or 6500 xt if they can be gotten around msrp which some people will definitely get them there then that might be a pretty good build or a good combo for a lower entry point in terms of price to actually a very capable gaming pc spending the extra 50 or so dollars to go up to the i5 will very heavily benefit you in something like 7-zip or blender that's where we saw the biggest improvements in gaming there's not as big of a swing there's potentially an argument to some extent for what people like to call future proofing future proofing is kind of a thing it can also be a fool's errand though it depends on how the future works out and we don't know so in the past for example the 4790k versus the 4690k is a fantastic example of a scenario where the 4790k aged a lot better but it really wasn't until the later years and age of these cpus that the thread count difference between the two being double the threads on the i7 really started to show up in gaming benchmarks where some of the more modern games that had finally shifted fully over to at least loading eight threads were benefited in frame time consistency whereas early on sometimes that was visible for the most part no and for the first several years no it wasn't a big difference so this is one of those scenarios where uh the 12 100 f we're fully confident and comfortable with recommending right now today we think it'll be fine for the vast majority of games for the next couple of years at least if not a few more than that but you're going to start feeling the effects of age on that cpu perhaps a little sooner than you would on a 12 400 where you get the extra couple of threads to deal with whatever games do in the future but future proofing as we stated uh is sort of a random number generator at times sometimes it works out the way we think and sometimes you have bulldozer or intel where it thought it was going to have 10 gigahertz single core cpus at some point so it doesn't always work out the way people plan our recommendation then is pretty simple instead of stressing about the future the question is really what's in your budget if you are already sort of stretching to do an i3 at 130 you shouldn't stress yourself out further over uh putting yourself in the whole 50 maybe 70 bucks 80 bucks to go up to an i5 it's just if it's a stretch already it's not worth feeling financially uncomfortable to upgrade to the i5 for gaming tasks if you're making money with the cpu and you can't stretch beyond the i5 12 400 it makes a lot more sense than the 12 100 app where making money here would mean doing something like blender video editing photoshop things like that the i5 starts to be a lot more appealing and these cpus are also appealing here though but the i5 is still cheaper than the direct competition from amd so the i3 is all you can afford it's a very good option for gaming it can do these production tasks as in it is literally capable of them it's just not very good at them so if it's not something you're doing every single day that's fine if you're doing video editing coding every day we would recommend the i5 if you can stretch to it but um it's it's really that simple it's just sort of is it in the budget or not do you feel comfortable with the extra 50 bucks if you do it's really only hugely worth it you'll only mainly notice it in your daily life if you're doing those tasks we had in the second half the benchmarks so it's a good value cpu and that's how we would rank these we'd put the i3 cpu as uh fairly easy to recommend confidently recommend in budget class we would put the i 512 400 or 12 400 f you don't need the igp which is probable for most of you we would put that in the value class meaning it is not as good sort of hard value as an i3 if you're doing some metric like whatever fps per dollar minutes per dollar spent something like that the i3 is going to be better technical overall absolute value the i5 maintains a very strong value while increasing the performance just a little bit more to get you into more mid-range territory rather than closer to bordering low-end territory uh once you go beyond that value is sort of out the window and you're just in spending money because you can afford it and you're maybe doing some type of work on the machine uh you are a frame rate snob not in a bad way something like that so that's how we'd line it up intel's in a very strong position right now it's up to andy to respond with something in this price glass and these cpus are still good they desperately need a cheaper cpu in the market to compete with intel at some point um but any of these stuff is still good just sort of look at what you're doing doing a lot of compression decompression amd is very strong there right now that seems to be its primary stronghold at this point versus intel's newer architecture so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always you can subscribe for more if you'd like to support us and our ability to buy these types of cpus and produce the multi-day long review process that we go through you can go to store.gamersaxis.net and grab one of our limited disappointment pc build 2021 t-shirts we have the list of the most disappointing things on the back of them we're in round three we are almost out of all the shirts we're gonna make for this uh rounds one and two are already done and sold through so this will be the last chance thanks for watching we'll see you all next timecoming off the review of the intel i3 12 100 f which is a 130 dollar actually very impressive cpu we're now looking at the i5 12 400 or 12 400 f they're about the same other than the presence of the igp the price class is around 180 to 200 retail we bought ours for 200 the non-f version and we're gonna be looking at this versus the obvious competition from amd so it'd be like the r5 5600x for example looking at some older cpus as well like the 2700x the 3700x and intel's alternatives especially those available right now to help you decide which one makes the most sense for your type of build let's get started before that this video is brought to you by evga's x570 dark motherboard the evga x570 dark is a high-end motherboard for am4 cpus built around extreme overclocking and tested heavily by evga's kin pen the x570 dark has a uniquely rotated socket and ram layout 90 degree rotated cables for ease of installation and management and tons of troubleshooting features to make building testing and overclocking easier check out evga's x570 dark high-end motherboard at the link in the description below so main things to consider here the first of all quick correction for the previous one intel had originally released a slide deck that stated that h610 was only one memory channel intel later released a corrected version of that slide deck it's two channels for h610 but it is 1d pc or one dim per channel so we went off the specs of the slide deck in our previous review but the slide deck changed in at some point after it was published so anyway that's what it is it's h610 is still two channels but it's one dpc uh and then you've still got the other limitations on there like no memory overclocking half the dmi things of that nature so still not a great platform we still recommend it for really any kind of performance build but the memory channel difference is a significant one we wanted to note that okay specs for the i5 12 400 so this thing that's six cores 12 threads it has zero e cores we'll show the intel arc page for it uh maybe put it up next to the 12 100 app or something like that it is a 4.4 gigahertz boost target it's got 2.5 gigahertz base target and runs 18 megabytes of total cash this cpu is not as simple as the 12 900k is and it's power targets that run 65 watts or 117 watts depending on if your pl1 or pl2 additionally there is a 12500 it's very similar the difference between this and the 12 500 is the frequency 12 500 has a maximum boost target of 4.6 gigahertz advertised whereas this is 200 megahertz lower so that's your difference between those it'll amount to something for the most part 200 megahertz difference in a lot of games you're talking about sort of single digit low percentage changes so depending on availability and price it's not a big change it's worth a couple bucks maybe but you could also just not have the extra two percent performance and pay less which is generally what we would recommend so as we get into this things to consider we're looking at this from a couple different perspectives one is gaming only one is gaming plus what we call production tasks those would be things like programming rendering 3d animations or perhaps unreal engine playback things like that rendering videos working in photoshop and then we'll also be looking at just doing those things when we talk to conclusions uh whether it's worth getting it for only gaming for a mix or for only production okay let's get started with the benchmarks this one's gonna be really straightforward we've burned through a lot of these intel alder like cpus at this point if you wanna know more about the architecture we have separate pieces on that we have several pieces on the chipset differences we've got several pieces on almost all the cpus that are sort of relevant to the core audience right now you can check those all in the links in the description below but to save time we're not going to go through all the same information again today and instead we'll focus on the charts for the 12 400 slash 12 400 f let's get started with the gaming section in counter strike go the i5 12 400 ran at 266 fps average and had those paced proportionately behind so that matches the distribution of the other cpus we've tested this lands the 12 400 about six percent ahead of the 12 100 f that we just reviewed or versus something older it'd be about 43 ahead of the tried and true r7 2700 x that's a big jump from something that was positioned as a higher end part back in its glory days as for amd's modern competition the r55600x place is 25 ahead in average fps yet the lows aren't much different and the price is much higher still at about 290 to 300 the 12600k holds only about nine percent lead over the 12 400 marking the 12400 as one of intel's better offerings right now from a value perspective the 12100f maintains the best overall budget build position in here especially for people on a stricter budget with less room to scale while the 12 400 is positioning itself as a value champion with a bit more for thread capability especially as we move into production tasks 1440p doesn't change much for the 12 400 but that's because the gpu bind doesn't come into play too hard in this game if you were to run the game with a step down gpu from the 3080 we're using here like a 3070 you'd still see good scaling between the cpus we'll look at another 1440p result later to represent the lower end gpu pairing as well cyberpunk 2077 gives us a more gpu constrained test to evaluate the i5 12 400 ran at 170 fps average here positioning it right alongside the i5 11 600k and embarrassingly for intel the i9 11 900k that wasted space on shelves better reserved for toilet paper at this point but then you might confuse the two so that'd be kind of painful the 12 400 out performs the new 12 100 f by 20 so if you care to do the math this way that'd be 54 more money for 20 more performance however with the 12 400 f version now in stock at 180 dollars it cut closer to 38 more money for the same 20 game as for everything else the r55600x and the 12 400 were about tied the 5800x wasn't far ahead and the 12600k didn't offer any meaningful jump compared to some older stuff the 400 out did the 2700x by 43 and average fps alone or the 9900k by 10 in far cry 6 the 12 400 ran at 133 fps average with lows proportionally placed the lows do well here as opposed to on the 12 700k and 12600k for one simple reason although windows 11 testing is fine for lowe's on alder lake with far cry 6 specifically windows 10 demonstrates scheduling confusion with e-cores on intel in this game the 400 has no e course similar to the 12 100 app and so it has no issues the 12 400 roughly ties the 11 900k and it isn't distant from the 5800x the r55600x allows a few points of a lead to the 12 400 while the 12 100 f is led by 13 not enough to really be exciting between the two but still competitive with more expensive options on the charts in total war three kingdoms the 12 400 ended up at about the top of the chart we're partly bound here but we're still seeing scaling versus the 5600x 900k 11400 and the 12100f the lead over the 12100 f is about 12 percent and it's about 37 against the older r7 2700x and rainbow six seeds the 1200 ran at 466 fps average about tied with the 11 600k previously and ahead of the 3900x the 900k and the 3700x of higher echelon but older categories the 12 400 leads the 12 100 f by about 11 once again and itself is beaten by the 5600x by 3 that's not error in our testing it's outside of error but it is close enough to hardly be noticeable or anything you need to care about the 1 lows are about the same with a little more variance in the 0.1 percent result we noticed abnormally low 0.1 lows on the 12 400 on re-tests these were reproducible in our benchmarking as for the 12 600k benefit that's about the same three percent as the 5600x the 400 is a good balance of value here although the 12 100 f achieves most of the same performance for a lower price in 1440p testing the 12400 ended up about tied with the 12600k but that's expected because we're now gpu bound the 12 400 the 12 600 k the 12 900 k and everything else around the 355 fps average range is bouncing off of the gpu limitations we can't distinguish a difference here and that gpu bind also benefits the 0.1 low variance a little bit rf1 2021 results are brand new so we don't have as many cpus tested here as the other tests that's because it recently got a game update that changed the results the 12 400 ends up just below the middle leading the 3900x and the 1200f both by about 12 percent the lead over the r5 3600 is about 24 and that's noteworthy mostly because the 3600 was available for around the same price originally as the new 12400 is that's finally some progress it's certainly better than the gpu industries one dollar more for one percent more stagnation that we've had over the past few years now time to move on to production benchmarks we'd expect to see some additional value in the 12 400 when compared to the 12 100 f specifically when we look at this set of tests blender cycles rendering is up first the 12 400 required 22 minutes to complete this render which is about the same time as the i5 11 600k and the amd r5 5600 x it's also not meaningfully behind the 2700x or the 9900k that's a pretty good position for a 180 to 200 cpu and unlike in most gaming benchmarks it does offer a meaningful uplift over the 100 f at 27 reduced to time to render the benefit is almost entirely from the additional four threads here since each one will spawn one tile for the render in chromium code compile as a broad reference point for programming workloads the 12400 required 97 minutes to compile the code base that's the same as the 9900k a bit slower than the 3700x and better than the 5600x the 2700x and of course the 12100f the improvement over the 12100f is about 30 time reduced for perspective that'd be about 40 minutes saved off this one task if doing any kind of regular production workload this starts to become noticeable the r7 5800x remains competitive in performance only at 18 percent reduced time but unfortunately it's around 80 percent more expensive than the 12 400 non-f or exactly two times the price of the 12 400 f adobe premier scoring is done in aggregate points combining filters effects live playback and scrubbing and rendering the 12400 scores 689 points outperforming the 3600 slightly and falling behind the 2700x and the 11 600k slightly the 12400 leads the 12 100 f by 17 percent here and the 5600 x leads the 12 400 by 6 percent the next step up alder like cpu the 12600k at least that we've benchmarked offers 30 more performance at about 100 more adobe photoshop is scored the same way as premiere the 12 400 scored 10 72 points putting it about equal with the r55600x and ahead of the i9 10900k and r9 3900x both of which run more cores and threats although both architectures are completely different from alderley the 12600k would offer five percent more performance for a hundred dollars more while the 12 400 offers 11 percent more performance than the 12 100 f here's where it gets pretty interesting in 7-zip compression the 12-400 did significantly better than the 1200 f a 42 improvement and it roughly tied the 2700x the 5600x however still leads by 14 and the 3700x helps demonstrate andy's natural architectural advantage in compression and decompression tasks but the 12 400 is at least viable we'd favor amd if you're doing a lot of this type of task however the 12 400 is acceptable if this is a less frequent workload then the interesting bit decompression the 12 400 falls down the chart it maintains a lead over the 12 100 f obviously but the amd parts pulled disproportionately ahead this is where amd is comparatively the strongest right now power testing is up last related to the production test we just did the i5 12 400 pulled about 74 watts at the eps 12 volt cables in blender all core rendering that has it more power hungry than the 12 100 unsurprisingly and then the 5600x but it's still okay it's far more efficient for example than the previous intel architectures like the 7700k and the 9900k especially in single core loading the 12400 pulled about 24 watts making it similar to the 5600x single core workload this is about what we'd expect given the 22 watt pull of the 12 100 f so that's it then our opinion is this the 12100f is still easily the budget cane right now the fact that 130 cpu is actually playing games well uh is great news it's good for the budget market which has needed a revival hopefully gps sort of follow suit at some point that combined with maybe a 30 50 or 6500 xt if they can be gotten around msrp which some people will definitely get them there then that might be a pretty good build or a good combo for a lower entry point in terms of price to actually a very capable gaming pc spending the extra 50 or so dollars to go up to the i5 will very heavily benefit you in something like 7-zip or blender that's where we saw the biggest improvements in gaming there's not as big of a swing there's potentially an argument to some extent for what people like to call future proofing future proofing is kind of a thing it can also be a fool's errand though it depends on how the future works out and we don't know so in the past for example the 4790k versus the 4690k is a fantastic example of a scenario where the 4790k aged a lot better but it really wasn't until the later years and age of these cpus that the thread count difference between the two being double the threads on the i7 really started to show up in gaming benchmarks where some of the more modern games that had finally shifted fully over to at least loading eight threads were benefited in frame time consistency whereas early on sometimes that was visible for the most part no and for the first several years no it wasn't a big difference so this is one of those scenarios where uh the 12 100 f we're fully confident and comfortable with recommending right now today we think it'll be fine for the vast majority of games for the next couple of years at least if not a few more than that but you're going to start feeling the effects of age on that cpu perhaps a little sooner than you would on a 12 400 where you get the extra couple of threads to deal with whatever games do in the future but future proofing as we stated uh is sort of a random number generator at times sometimes it works out the way we think and sometimes you have bulldozer or intel where it thought it was going to have 10 gigahertz single core cpus at some point so it doesn't always work out the way people plan our recommendation then is pretty simple instead of stressing about the future the question is really what's in your budget if you are already sort of stretching to do an i3 at 130 you shouldn't stress yourself out further over uh putting yourself in the whole 50 maybe 70 bucks 80 bucks to go up to an i5 it's just if it's a stretch already it's not worth feeling financially uncomfortable to upgrade to the i5 for gaming tasks if you're making money with the cpu and you can't stretch beyond the i5 12 400 it makes a lot more sense than the 12 100 app where making money here would mean doing something like blender video editing photoshop things like that the i5 starts to be a lot more appealing and these cpus are also appealing here though but the i5 is still cheaper than the direct competition from amd so the i3 is all you can afford it's a very good option for gaming it can do these production tasks as in it is literally capable of them it's just not very good at them so if it's not something you're doing every single day that's fine if you're doing video editing coding every day we would recommend the i5 if you can stretch to it but um it's it's really that simple it's just sort of is it in the budget or not do you feel comfortable with the extra 50 bucks if you do it's really only hugely worth it you'll only mainly notice it in your daily life if you're doing those tasks we had in the second half the benchmarks so it's a good value cpu and that's how we would rank these we'd put the i3 cpu as uh fairly easy to recommend confidently recommend in budget class we would put the i 512 400 or 12 400 f you don't need the igp which is probable for most of you we would put that in the value class meaning it is not as good sort of hard value as an i3 if you're doing some metric like whatever fps per dollar minutes per dollar spent something like that the i3 is going to be better technical overall absolute value the i5 maintains a very strong value while increasing the performance just a little bit more to get you into more mid-range territory rather than closer to bordering low-end territory uh once you go beyond that value is sort of out the window and you're just in spending money because you can afford it and you're maybe doing some type of work on the machine uh you are a frame rate snob not in a bad way something like that so that's how we'd line it up intel's in a very strong position right now it's up to andy to respond with something in this price glass and these cpus are still good they desperately need a cheaper cpu in the market to compete with intel at some point um but any of these stuff is still good just sort of look at what you're doing doing a lot of compression decompression amd is very strong there right now that seems to be its primary stronghold at this point versus intel's newer architecture so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always you can subscribe for more if you'd like to support us and our ability to buy these types of cpus and produce the multi-day long review process that we go through you can go to store.gamersaxis.net and grab one of our limited disappointment pc build 2021 t-shirts we have the list of the most disappointing things on the back of them we're in round three we are almost out of all the shirts we're gonna make for this uh rounds one and two are already done and sold through so this will be the last chance thanks for watching we'll see you all next time\n"