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Check specs, price, and value across parts.
Bottleneck Calculator
Measure CPU and GPU balance before you buy.
Power Calculator
Estimate wattage and PSU headroom.
Will It Run?
Test your hardware against popular games.
Smart Wizard
Get a complete build plan based on budget and goals.
Build Comparison
Compare complete builds side by side.
Part Comparison
Check specs, price, and value across parts.
Bottleneck Calculator
Measure CPU and GPU balance before you buy.
Power Calculator
Estimate wattage and PSU headroom.
Will It Run?
Test your hardware against popular games.
Smart Wizard
Get a complete build plan based on budget and goals.
Build Comparison
Compare complete builds side by side.
Part Comparison
Check specs, price, and value across parts.
Bottleneck Calculator
Measure CPU and GPU balance before you buy.
Power Calculator
Estimate wattage and PSU headroom.
Will It Run?
Test your hardware against popular games.
Intel
Detailed architecture, platform, memory, and feature data for this CPU.
Instruction Sets
About This Product
The Intel Core i5-12500 is a 6-core, 12-thread desktop CPU from Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake-S series, offering a base clock of 3.0 GHz and a boost clock of 4.6 GHz. With a 65W TDP, it provides solid multi-threaded performance for productivity tasks and moderate gaming. Compared to AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X in a similar price bracket, the i5-12500 generally offers competitive single-core performance and slightly better multi-core performance in some applications, though it requires a newer motherboard.
Performance Benchmarks
Scores are grouped by benchmark family so it is easy to compare raw speed, threaded output, and real-world value without mixing scales.
Render Workloads
Next-Gen Scale
Cross-Platform
Large Sample Pool
Value & Efficiency
These derived metrics use Cinebench R23 multi-core performance to keep the value calculation consistent across the catalog.
Performance per Watt
199.6 pts/W
Performance per Dollar
95.4 pts/$
Gaming Performance
These results come from real submitted gameplay sessions, so the reference GPU matters as much as the CPU itself.
Reference GPU
Contraband Police
Mixed player settings
42 FPS
Playable
Popular Comparisons
These pairings are pre-ranked from the comparison engine so readers can jump straight into the most relevant alternatives.

Multi-core 13,145
"20% better single-core, tied multi-core, similar price"
Mushkin Blackline 16 GB
N/A
GeIL TUF SUPER LUCE 8 GB
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Apacer AU 4 GB
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KFA2 Hall Of Fame Extreme 16 GB
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GPU Bottleneck & Pairing
These pairings are pre-calculated around 1440p balance so you can move quickly from CPU research to a realistic gaming build.
High-confidence pairings that stay balanced at 1440p.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
Recommended GPU
Radeon RX 9070 XT
Balanced
This pairing stays very close to ideal balance for 1440p gaming.
Usage-share data is not available yet for this pairing.
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Rating
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Verdict
βA balanced CPU for users needing reliable performance in productivity and 1080p gaming.β

Multi-core 11,166
"182% better single-core, 16% better multi-core, $100 more expensive"

Multi-core 12,345
"4% better single-core, 5% better multi-core, $18 cheaper"