Core i5-12400, i3-12300 Leak Shows Surprising Performance

Leaked benchmarks for Intel’s (NASDAQ:INTC) new Core i3 and Core i5 12th Gen CPUs – traditionally very popular value-conscious options – revealed some excellent performance this week. If you’re looking for a PC upgrade to boost gaming and productivity performance, then the likes of the new Core i5-12400, Core i3-12300 and Core i3-12100 could be just what you need.

The benchmarks, posted on Chiphell (via Videocardz) reveal excellent performance for these three low-end CPUs, which sit below the likes of the Core i5-12600K above, and this will likely worry AMD, which doesn’t have low-end options for its Zen 3 CPUs below the Ryzen 5 5700G.

There’s no word on pricing yet, but the likes of the Core i5-11400 and Core i5-10400 have been extremely popular with PC gamers thanks to their low price and ability to avoid bottlenecks with low to mid-range GPUs. This comes as cheaper motherboards that support Intel’s new LGA1700 12th Gen CPUs are expected (with H610 and B660 chipsets), making the new CPUs even more attractive.

Below you can see the benchmarks, which I’ve added to my own for Cinebench R23 and compared against older Intel CPUs such as the Core i5-10400 and Core i5-11400, while also adding in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) benchmarks results posted on Chiphell.

Above is the multi-threaded test in Cinebench, which reveals the Core i5-12400 beating the Ryzen 5 5600X comfortably and also outstripping the Core i5-11600K too.

The Core i3-12300 and Core i3-12100 seem to sit between the Core i5-1400 and Core i5-11400, offering excellent multi-threaded performance for what should be a relatively affordable price tag.

Above is the single-threaded test and here the new CPUs are really going to hammer AMD and offer some very compelling upgrades too. They offer significantly more performance than the Core i5-11400, 11600K and Ryzen 5 5600X and more than double the performance of the Core i5-10400F.

Above are the CS:GO results for the new CPUs too and while it’s just one game with an unknown graphics card at the helm, it does point to all three CPUs offering similar or better performance to AMD’s Ryzen 5 5600G – I’d imagine the two Core i3 CPUs will likely end up costing far less than the AMD chip too.

So, if you can’t quite stretch to a Core i5-12600K or have been waiting for a more affordable motherboard to pair with some less expensive 12th Gen CPUs, the new Core i5 and Core i3 offerings from Intel could be very good value indeed.

I’ll be taking a look at the the new CPUs soon and also big announcements fromAMD and others from CES in 2022 so follow me here on Forbes for the latest PC hardware news and reviews and don’t forget to check me out on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook as well.