I’ve compared the last 5 generations of Intel i7 processor in both games and applications to
help you find out if it’s time to upgrade or if you can save some money getting an older model!
These are the differences in specs between these 5 generations of Intel i7 processors.
The main differences are of course the core and thread counts, cache sizes and clock speeds,
though the speeds aren’t everything as there are of course various IPC
improvements each generation. The newest 12th gen also changes things up by adding efficiency cores,
which is how they’ve been able to get the newest i7 to a 20 thread part.
This is the system that’s been used for all testing, so the same NZXT case,
MSI Core Liquid S360 AIO and Noctua NT-H2 thermal paste have been used for fair thermal results,
however the motherboard and RAM have been changed as required depending on
the platform. You can find all hardware that’s been tested in the description below the video.
Another difference is that Intel’s 12th gen was the first to add DDR5 support, and while DDR4
is also supported with some motherboards, I’ve only got a DDR5 board, so this is what I’ve used.
Now the main reason why I’ve “only” looked at 5 processors is because these are what’s currently
support with Windows 11. Sure, I probably could have made Windows 11 work with older platforms,
but I also don’t have a 7700K and older anyway, so I’ve limited the testing to the
last 5 i7s. Alright let’s get straight into some application benchmarks followed by power draw,
thermals, then afterwards we’ll look at gaming as well as cost per frame value.
Let’s start out with Cinebench R23, as it’s an easy way to get a general idea of both single
threaded and multi threaded performance. I’ve got the newest 12th gen at the top, followed by 11th,
10th, 9th and 8th gen underneath, so sorted by newest to oldest down
the bottom. Performance gets better with each newer generation, as you’d expect,
however the most recent 12th gen is clearly offering the biggest improvement. Not only is
the multi core score with the i7-12700K 54% higher than the 11th gen i7-11700K just below it despite
only having a 25% higher thread count, but the single threaded performance is 25% higher too,
the biggest gen-on-gen improvement out of this selection of processors in this test.
Linux kernel compilation is the only test I’ve done on Linux rather than Windows 11. This is
a multi threaded test, and as for the most part the thread count of the i7 has improved over the
years, it’s no surprise to see the newer options completing the task faster. 10th and 11th gen were
both 8 core 16 thread parts, and while the jump to 11th gen is generally considered pointless the
11700K was still completing this 12% faster than the 10700K before it, but then the 12700K was 38%
faster than the 11700K, a much better improvement in less than 12 months.
Blender was tested with the Open Data benchmark. This is another multithreaded workload, and the
longer classroom test was only 6% faster on 9th gen compared to 8th gen, while 11th gen was 12%
faster than 10th gen before it, though 10th gen was 38% faster than 9th gen because this
is when Intel added hyperthreading back to i7. Again 12th gen had the largest gen-on-gen gain,
completing the test 44% faster than 11th gen which came out earlier in the same year.
The V-Ray benchmark is another heavy multi-threaded rendering workload, and 12th gen
was scoring 41% higher than 11th gen just before it, which was clearly the biggest jump out of the
last 5 generations. Again there’s a reasonable boost going from 9th to 10th gen because 10th gen
brought back hyperthreading, but after that 11th gen was only 14% higher than 10th gen.
The Corona benchmark also uses the processor to render out a scene, but this time the 9th gen
9700K was actually slower than the 8700K, which I’m guessing is due to it having 4 fewer threads
as it lacks hyperthreading. This wasn’t an issue in any of the previous tasks, but here it seems
that 6 cores 12 threads beats 8 cores 8 threads, though only by 5 seconds. Again the difference
between 10th and 11th gen was much smaller compared to the gains on offer with 12th gen.
Handbrake was used to convert one of my 4K 60 FPS laptop review videos to 1080p.
This workload also relies on more cores and threads, though we’re back to seeing
each gen offer an improvement here. The 12700K was able to complete the task 41%
faster, quite a big difference if this is a production workload you’re waiting on,
and again the biggest generational improvement out of the last 5 that we’re testing.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark tool,
and this tests video editing tasks like exporting, playback and more. Once more,
highest score with the 12700K at the top, which was 20% ahead of the 11700K before it.
The gap was a little smaller in DaVinci Resolve, another video editing suite,
where the 12700K was scoring 16% higher than the 11700K, but hey it’s still nearly a 250
point increase, while 11th gen was only 100 points ahead of 10th gen below it.
I also usually test Adobe Photoshop, however Windows 11 plus Intel 12th gen has known
issues that prevented the test from running, so rather than just not include Photoshop data I
figured the other 4 generations were still useful and thought this helps illustrate
that 12th gen is still a new platform with some teething issues that need to be fixed.
Now for some office tasks, this is basically the new PCMark and covers Microsoft Excel,
Word, PowerPoint and Outlook, and the general trend as before
is that 12th gen offers the biggest boost compared to previous generational jumps.
I’ve used 7-Zip to test compression and decompression speeds, and like
many of the other workloads tested this saw big gains with 12th gen, though not the largest,
the biggest jump was from 9th to 10th gen. Prior to Alder lake, AMD’s Ryzen
was typically far ahead of Intel here, but now with these improvements they’re closer together.
AES encryption and decryption had the biggest improvements with 12th gen. 8th,
9th and 10th gen were all essentially the same, until 11th gen offered a 22%
boost, but then 12th gen destroys 11th gen with a 53% boost.
I don’t personally rely on Geekbench scores at all, but you guys ask for
it and the results are fairly similar to what we saw earlier with Cinebench.
Here’s how much better the 9th gen i7-9700K was compared to the 8th gen i7-8700K just before it,
so only Corona was doing better on 8th gen as discussed earlier. On average the 9th
gen chip was 7% faster than 8th gen, at least out of these specific workloads. These tests
include a number of random single and multi threaded tests, so this average only applies
to this selection of tests. It’s not fair to apply it to the processor in general.
If we instead compare the 10th gen i7-10700K against the 9th gen i7-9700K, well now we’re
looking at at larger 21% gain with 10th gen, and this is because it enabled hyperthreading
which was missing from 9th gen for some reason, I guess they needed an excuse to sell 10th gen.
Then after that the jump with 11th gen was about 13% ahead of 10th gen,
again only when comparing these specific applications. While generally not much of a
difference, the single threaded tests towards the top did see fairly reasonable gains with 11th gen.
12th gen is where the magic happens though. We’re seeing the i7-12700K nearly 33%
ahead of the i7-11700K in these same tests,
the biggest difference when comparing each generation to the one that came out after it.
Now although 12th gen did have the biggest generational improvement,
what I’ve done so far is compare each generation to the next, and it’s unlikely that most people
are going to be upgrading from one i7 to the next one every time one comes out. So let’s find out
how the older i7s compare against the newer 12700K and find out if it’s time to upgrade.
If we compare 8th gen to 12th gen in the same applications, well the 12700K has a massive 95%
lead. While we only saw smaller differences comparing between each generation,
things really start to add up by the time you look back between 5 different generations.
12th gen still has a good lead over 9th gen too,
with the 12700K performing around 82% better in these tests.
The 12700K was then around 51%
ahead of the 10th gen i7, as 10th gen added hyperthreading this closed the gap a bit,
and as we saw just before, 12th gen is then 33% ahead of 11th gen just before it.
So we’ve established that the newest 12th gen i7 performs the best, but despite this
in Blender it actually wasn’t drawing as much power from the wall when compared to 11th gen.
Now it is important to note that I’m measuring total system power draw from the wall here,
and there are component changes between 11th and 12th gen including motherboard
and RAM. Still though, the fact that 12th gen isn’t using more power than 11th gen
while also completing this particular Blender task 44% faster really drives
home how much of an improvement Alder Lake is, or how crap Rocket Lake was, take your pick.
Now although 12th gen was using less power than 11th gen, the 12700K was
still running 11 degrees Celsius warmer compared to any other i7 that came before
it. Personally I have absolutely zero issue running at these temps long term,
but I have a fairly beefy new 360mm AIO, so if you’re using an older cooler with say 9th
gen and you get LGA1700 mounting hardware you might want to monitor temperatures.
12th gen processors are a different size and more rectangular than those that came before it,
so ideally you’re going to want a cooler that better covers more of the IHS.
Alright now let’s look at some games! I’m going to compare all 5 processors
in 10 different games at 2 different resolutions.
Far Cry 6 was tested with the game’s benchmark. I’ve got the 1080p results on the bottom half of
the graph and the 1440p results above, again with older CPUs down the bottom moving up to
newer processors above. In this game we can see that there are performance improvements
with newer processors, even at the higher 1440p resolution, something which isn’t the case in
a number of games as we’ll see. At 1080p, 9th gen was reaching 17% higher average FPS than 8th gen,
10th gen was 12% ahead of 9th gen, 11th gen was just 4% ahead of 10th gen, while 12th gen was 9%
ahead of 11th gen before it. Even the 1% lows from 12th gen are ahead of the average FPS from 8th gen
5 generations prior, so again things add up much more if you’re upgrading on longer cycles.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in the same part of the game on all 5 processors. In this one the
performance difference is basically nothing when it comes to the higher 1440p resolution,
at least in terms of average FPS, though there is a little more change noted in the 1%
lows from 10th gen and newer. These 1% low differences are also noted at the
lower 1080p resolution, going from 9th to 10th gen boosts 1% low performance by 26%,
so a much more stable experience on 10th gen or newer. In terms of average FPS though,
12th gen was only 15% faster than 8th gen, not a whole lot for a 5 generation jump.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the game’s benchmark. At both
resolutions 10th gen was actually performing better than 11th gen,
granted the difference is within margin of error at the higher 1440p resolution,
but still goes to show that in some games 11th gen was kind of a step back. This results in 12th
gen reaching 9% higher average FPS than 11th gen before it, 7% ahead of 10th gen, 20% of 9th gen,
and 27% ahead of 8th gen. The differences were smaller at 1440p as we’re more GPU bound,
but the 12700K was still able to get us a 17% higher average frame rate compared to the 8700K.
Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in the Sydney landing challenge,
and also saw the 10th gen i7-10700K outperforming the newer i7-11700K,
at least in terms of average FPS, as the 1% lows were ahead with the newer 11th gen
chip. That weirdness aside, 12th gen was offering the best result, and at 1080p was
30% ahead of 8th gen, 18% ahead of 9th gen, 9% ahead of 10th gen and 11% ahead of 11th gen.
Watch Dogs Legion was tested with the game’s benchmark. Similar to what we saw
in Cyberpunk earlier, the 1% lows get some nice improvements once we go from 9th to 10th gen,
so presumably this game and others may benefit from more than 8 threads.
At least 11th gen was actually doing better than 10th gen before it this time,
and again the newest 12700K was doing the best as you’d expect.
Control is a GPU heavy game, which is likely why we’re seeing some of the smallest differences in
this game out of all 10 titles tested. Best case, the 12th gen processor was only able to
offer a 5% higher average frame rate compared to 8th gen at the lower 1080p resolution,
so just goes to show that in some games like this a CPU upgrade isn’t really going to help,
you could definitely save money with a cheaper older generation.
Now let’s get into the weirder results. Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the game’s benchmark,
and while everything looks about how you’d expect at 1080p, at 1440p results were a
bit less consistent. 10th gen was actually giving me the highest average frame rate,
and sure it’s only a small difference, but still it helps illustrate that at higher resolutions you
definitely don’t need the latest and greatest. The differences were quite large at 1080p,
the 12700K was reaching a 50% higher average frame rate compared to the 8700K here,
or a much higher 122% improvement in the 1% lows, so for competitive games
like this at lower resolutions a CPU upgrade might actually make more sense.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was also tested with the game’s benchmark, and the results were
just all over the place here. The 8th and 9th gen chips were actually performing the best at
both resolutions, at least in terms of average frame rates, and then generally things declined
at higher thread counts, so perhaps this is just one that benefits from fewer threads or something.
F1 2021 was also a bit weird. The 1080p results look relatively normal,
but then 1440p is a mixed bag, with again 8th gen and 9th gen coming out ahead of the
newer processors when it came to average frame rate. It’s not a big difference,
but it was consistently measurable as I took the averages of 5 test runs for each of these results.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was again tested with the game’s benchmark,
and again 1080p was looking fine, progressively improving with newer CPUs as you’d expect,
but once more the 1440p results were a bit of a mess with 9th gen actually doing the best.
Again not exactly sure why, perhaps some games just work better with fewer available threads,
I know we’ve seen this in the past and some people actually disable hyperthreading for
some games to get a speed boost, but that’s not something I’ve personally experimented with.
Here are the average frame rates for all 5 processors at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions.
At 1080p we can see that on average, there’s an improvement stepping up to each generation,
though the changes between 10th and 11th gen were much smaller compared to the rest. The differences
are then smaller at the higher 1440p resolution, which is to be expected as we’re more GPU bound
here, but the newer i7’s are still able to offer a boost, although the differences between 9th,
10th and 11th gen are like 1 frame on average, so for 1440p gaming if you’ve
already got a 9th gen 9700K system there’s not much point upgrading as the 12700K
is only 3% faster, but for 1080p there would be a larger 17% performance improvement.
Here’s how things look in terms of value once we factor in current prices at Newegg. Right
now the oldest 8th gen i7-8700K is actually the worst value, because it’s the second most
expensive at $400 USD. This is generally the case with older CPUs if you’re buying them new,
when they’re not made anymore stock becomes more limited, so price goes up,
though there is also the second hand market. Anyway 8th gen aside, 12th gen seems to be
quite a bit worse value compared to 9th, 10th and 11th gen options as it’s about $80 more expensive,
and this is only taking into account CPU prices. If we were to also consider the new
Z690 motherboards and DDR5 RAM I tested with, then 12th gen would end up as even worse value,
so yeah it does perform best, but you’ve got to pay more to get it.
The value is a bit different if we instead use one of the applications tested earlier. This
graph shows that the 12th gen i7 was offering the best value in terms of Cinebench R23 performance
both in single core and multi core, so basically for more productivity style
workloads compared to gaming there is more value to be had with the newer generation,
but again this is only factoring CPU cost rather than entire platform cost.
So there’s definitely less of a difference when it comes to gaming when comparing Intel’s
last 5 i7 processors, at least compared to the productivity workloads that we looked at earlier.
In games CPU choice matters far less at higher resolutions like 1440p
and if you’re going up to 4K then it would matter even less. But at 1080p depending on the game we
could see some pretty big improvements going up to a newer version. From the gaming data that I’ve
collected if you’re already on 10th or 11th gen then it’s probably not really worth upgrading to
12th gen just for the gaming improvement. But if you’re also after some productivity boosts
then 12th gen could be worthwhile. If you are just gaming with either 8th or 9th gen, well it could
be worth upgrading to 12th gen as in some cases there were some pretty big gains even in gaming.
At the end of the day though, even if you do have one of these older i7s it
depends on how your systems actually running. If you’re satisfied with the
performance coming out of it then there’s no need to upgrade. You only really need to
upgrade if your system is starting to slow down and not perform how you want it to,
so if that’s the case for you, well now you’ve got the data to see which i7 you should upgrade to.
Now of course Intel is by no means the only CPU maker in town, check out this video next
if you want to see how the i7-12700K compares against AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X,
and make sure you’re subscribed for when AMD refresh their processors with their new V-Cache.
I’ll be comparing those against Intel in early 2022 once they’re available!