Who has the best 6 core CPU right now, Intel or AMD? Let’s find out!
Both CPUs are 6 core 12 thread parts, but the Ryzen processor has a higher maximum
boost clock and more cache. Although Intel’s 12th gen Alder Lake parts introduce the concept of P
and E cores, the 12400 doesn’t actually have any E cores, just 6 P cores with hyperthreading.
There’s a fair gap between them when it comes to pricing.
Right now Intel’s i5-12400 is $200 USD at Newegg while AMD’s 5600X costs 45% more
money at $289 USD. You can find updated prices linked below in the description.
Although Intel 12th gen has support for the newer DDR5 memory,
it also supports cheaper DDR4 too, it just depends on the motherboard. I think DDR4 makes more sense
for our more budget friendly i5 option, as right now spending more on DDR5 isn’t really worth it.
MSI sent over their B660 Tomahawk motherboard which supports DDR4 memory,
and now that B660 is here you aren’t forced into spending more for Z690 with Intel 12th gen.
Both processors were tested in the same system, only the motherboards were changed depending on
the platform. Both processors come with their own cooler, but I’ve used MSI’s Core Liquid
S360 AIO with Noctua NT-H2 thermal paste so that we can fairly compare both with the same cooler.
All testing has been done with Windows 11 fully updated and Core Isolation disabled.
The same Nvidia drivers were used, and there are no CPU power limits in place or any overclocking.
Just before we get into the CPU benchmarks,
I’ve got to thank Western Digital for sponsoring this part of the video.
The new WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD is built with content creators in mind and offers up to
3,500MB/s read speeds, up to 5 times faster than their best SATA based SSDs!
This means you can let your imagination flow and worry less about lag or load times. Whether
you’re using a laptop or desktop PC, there won’t be any interruptions to your creative
workflow with this reliable solution. As a bonus you also get one free month
trial of the Adobe Creative cloud suite with the SSD, so not only will you have plenty of
storage space, but you’ll be able to get straight into creating content.
Check out the sponsored link in the video description to find out
more about the new WD Blue SN570 NVMe SSD. Alright let’s get into some benchmarks and
find out how both of these processors compare. We’ll start out with productivity applications,
thermals and power draw followed by gaming and cost per frame value afterwards.
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. In both cases, Intel’s Core i5-12400F was ahead here,
scoring 12 and a half percent higher than the Ryzen 5 5600X in the single core test
and 9% higher in the multi core test, but this was one of the biggest wins for Intel.
Linux kernel compilation is the only test I’ve done on Linux rather than Windows 11.
This is a multi-threaded test, and although the Intel i5 processor was completing the task faster,
it’s only by a second, one of the smallest differences out of all tests.
Blender was tested with the Open Data benchmark. This is another multithreaded workload,
and again the i5 12400F was completing both tasks faster than the 5600X,
kind of a great result for Intel when you remember that the Ryzen 5 5600X cost about 45% more money.
The V-Ray benchmark is another heavy multi-threaded rendering workload,
and the i5 was ahead here too, though only by 1%, I’d say they’re essentially equivalent here.
The Corona benchmark also uses the processor to render out a scene,
but this time AMD was completing the task about 10% faster than Intel,
perhaps the higher cache count benefits this workload more than some of the others.
Handbrake was used to convert one of my 4K 60 FPS laptop review videos to 1080p.
This workload also benefits from more threads, but with both CPUs
offering 12 we’re only seeing the AMD option completing the task about 2% slower than Intel.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark tool, and this tests video editing
tasks like exporting, playback and more. These results are well within the margin of error,
so I’d consider them equivalent, but again don’t forget the Intel chip is much cheaper.
The gap is also pretty small in DaVinci Resolve, which now appears to be slightly ahead on Intel,
but again this is absolutely within the margin of error range.
Adobe Photoshop was also tested with the Puget Systems benchmark,
and the 5600X was able to score 3% higher than the i5, so again not really a major difference,
and definitely one that’s not worth paying so much more for.
Now for some office tasks. Again there aren’t any major noteworthy differences in Microsoft Excel,
Word, PowerPoint or Outlook.
I’ve used 7-Zip to test compression and decompression speeds, and this is an area
where AMD has traditionally beat Intel due to having more cache, and that’s still the case
here as this was the biggest win for the 5600X out of all applications I’ve tested.
AES encryption and decryption on the other hand was faster with the Intel i5 processor,
Ryzen was around 8% slower in this one.
Although Cinebench was doing better with Intel, Geekbench also has its own single and multi
threaded tests, however the workloads run by this benchmark seem to favor the 5600X now,
as it was ahead in both regards. Just 1% faster for single core and 7% faster in multi core.
Here’s how AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X compares against Intel’s newer Core i5-12400F
processor at stock speeds. Basically the right side shows how much faster
Ryzen was in some tests while the left shows how much slower Intel was compared to Ryzen.
The results could vary a fair bit depending on the specific workload,
but generally speaking I think the i5 was winning more than it was losing,
though AMD did have some big wins in certain tasks such as compression and decompression.
The performance increase with the i5 isn’t free though. In the Blender Classroom test the PC with
the 12400F installed was drawing about 6% more power from the wall when compared to the 5600X.
It’s not much of a difference, but the i5 was completing this task about 2% faster,
so a little more power efficient for AMD.
More power generally equals more heat, however the 5600X was reporting higher temperatures, granted
I’d consider either of these quite cold as the cooler I’ve used is honestly overkill for them.
I just wanted comparable data to the higher end stuff I’ve measured. These results aren’t directly
comparable anyway as location of the sensors and how they report to software would differ.
Similar deal for clock speeds, not directly comparable, but the i5 had
no issue reaching its 4GHz all core turbo boost speed during these tests.
This may have been lower if I ran it capped at 65 watts,
but as mentioned I tested with no power limits, so the i5 ran closer to a 70 watt TDP.
Alright now let’s compare both processors in 10 different games at 3 different resolutions!
Microsoft Flight Simulator was tested in the Sydney landing challenge. I’ve
got the 1080p results down the bottom, 1440p in the middle and 4K up the top,
with the 12400F results below the 5600X results. At 1080p the 5600X was reaching
a 23% higher average frame rate, 12% higher at the higher 1440p resolution,
then the i5 was slightly ahead at 4K, granted its 1% low was still behind compared to Ryzen.
It’s not all big gains for AMD though. In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Intel was ahead
in terms of average FPS at all three resolutions,
though like the last game, Ryzen still maintained a higher 1% low at 1080p and 1440p resolutions,
but it’s not a major difference in any case, at least when compared to Rainbow Six Siege.
I’m really not sure what the deal was here, I double checked the Intel results and confirmed
it was repeatable. Although the average FPS was about the same at 4K and 1440p,
the 1% lows from Intel were far behind AMD.
Even the 1% low from the 5600X was beating the average FPS from the i5-12400F at 1080p.
That was the biggest outlier though. Red Dead Redemption 2 was also tested with the
game’s benchmark and the 5600X was reaching 22% higher average FPS at 1080p and 11%
higher at 1440p, very similar to what we saw in Flight Simulator earlier. By
the time we get to 4K they’re basically equivalent, as this resolution is so GPU
bound that processor selection hardly matters. People always say this, but I spent the time
testing it to demonstrate it so you can see for yourself.
Control is a fairly GPU heavy game, even at the lower 1080p resolution, which I believe
is why the difference to average FPS was so small. Ryzen had a bigger boost to the 1% lows,
but honestly it’s not that big of a difference. You could argue
it makes more sense to compare games that are CPU bound only,
but the fact is there are games that behave this way which is what I wanted to demonstrate here.
Cyberpunk 2077 was again reaching about the same average frame rates at 1440p
and 4K resolutions, but again generally speaking the differences in 1% lows were higher from AMD.
Not much of a difference, but hey winning’s winning.
Watch Dogs Legion was tested with the game’s benchmark. The 5600X
was 9% ahead of the 12400F at 1080p in average FPS, 4% ahead at 1440p,
then they’re much closer at 4K, I’d call the 1 FPS lead by the i5 within margin of error,
though like many of the other games tested the gap in 1% low was larger in favor of Ryzen.
Far Cry 6 was one to two FPS ahead on Intel here, at least for average FPS,
as again AMD was ahead in the 1% lows at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. Probably not a big deal
though given how much more expensive Ryzen is compared to the i5 though.
F1 2021 was tested with the max setting preset which actually enables some RT effects by default.
This time the i5 was ahead in terms of 1% lows at 1080p and 1440p, and while both
were about the same in terms of average FPS at 1080p, the i5 also had a little lead at 1440p.
I’ve used Shadow of the Tomb Raider to get an older title in the mix.
No difference at 4K, otherwise Ryzen was 5% faster at 1440p and 9% faster at 1080p.
When comparing all 10 games tested at 1080p, AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600X was about 9% faster than
Intel’s Core i5-12400F on average. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was the biggest win for Intel,
while others like Rainbow Six Siege seemed to have some issues with it. I’m not exactly sure
what the deal was there, but even if you choose to ignore it other titles like Red Dead Redemption 2
and Microsoft Flight Simulator were still able to get relatively big 20% boosts.
Stepping up to the higher 1440p resolution and the difference gets even smaller now,
with the Ryzen 5 5600X now just 2% faster than the Intel i5-12400F on average. Some games were
still able to get reasonable improvements with Ryzen despite the higher resolution,
but by the time we get to 4K there’s basically no practical difference at
all. In general more games now skewed over towards the i5, but we’re talking margin of
error differences which make the 5600X just 0.6% slower than Intel on average.
If we factor in current processor pricing at Newegg then Intel’s i5-12400F is clearly
a much better deal. The i5 is $89 USD cheaper right now while not performing too much worse
in most games, it actually pulled off a few wins compared to the more expensive Ryzen CPU.
Of course this only factors in CPU selection, but with the introduction of B660 motherboards
there’s less of a price difference between current gen Intel and AMD motherboards now,
especially if you go for a DDR4 Intel option like I did rather than DDR5.
Purely in terms of raw CPU performance, it could go either way depending on the specific workload,
though in general out of the applications I tested, typically the i5 was ahead. But then
generally speaking when it came to gaming, the Ryzen 5 5600X had the lead. Probably due to the
extra cache. Despite that, honestly the price difference alone is enough to make me recommend
the Intel i5 over the Ryzen 5 5600X right now. The Intel chip just offers better value while
not being too far behind in most games. Not to mention that we can probably expect
current gen Intel motherboards to be updated to support 13th gen in future. Meanwhile this is the
end for AMD’s AM4 platform. After Ryzen 5000 they won’t be supporting any future CPUs like Zen 4,
so although it is possible to upgrade your 5600X in future to say a 16 core 5950X
if your motherboard is good enough, you won’t be able to get the next generation of CPUs like you
probably would with Intel. Of course this will probably all change once Zen 4 comes
around with its new socket, and to be fair the 5600X is over a year old now. So make
sure you’re subscribed to the channel for when I get the upcoming 6 core Zen 4 processor to
see how that compares against Intel. For now you can check out how some other current gen
Intel and AMD processors compare in one of these videos next, I’ll see you in one of those.