Intel Core i5-12400 Processor Review – Intel’s 12th Gen “Budget King”

The Intel Core i5-12400 Processor is considered an entry level Gaming Processor which packs a a lot of punch.

There are many “budget king” tag processors in the market you have heard of that would give you a good and enjoyable gaming performance at a very low value. And yes, now the new Intel Core i5-12400 processor is gonna be one of them. From the reviews of many top experts, this will be one of the best low budget CPUs in the market compared to the recent years.

If you can do the right tuning amount of tuning to your PC, this Alder Lake Intel Core processor will give you a very high level of performance. Also if going to compare with benchmarks with some of the Ryzen chips, it is beating their higher end chips too at a mere price of $192.

So without further delay lets check out the all new Intel Core i5-12400 Processor in action.

Intel Core i5-12400 Processor Specs

Here are the Intel Core i5-12400 Specifications

• Total no. Cores – 6
• No. of Performance-cores – 6
• No. of Efficient-cores – 0
• Total no. of Threads – 12
• Max Turbo Frequency – 4.40 GHz
• Performance-core Max Turbo Frequency – 4.40 GHz
• Performance-core Base Frequency – 2.50 GHz
• Cache – 18 MB Intel Smart Cache

In the Alder Lake family of processors, this chip comes with 6 cores with 12 threads. As this Intel 12th, Gen chip is not a hybrid processor, all the 6 cores are P core (Performance cores) with a newer architecture design. As there are no E cores (Efficient Cores) on this specific 12th Gen i5 Processor, it doesn’t use Gracemont-based cores for background tasks.

So this Intel Core i5 processor also doesn’t need Windows 11 exclusive thread detector technology for placing workloads in the correct cores. The Processor runs at a base frequency of 2.50GHz and the maximum turbo frequency is 4.40Ghz along with 18MB L3 cache along with Intel UHD 730 graphics, this Alder Lake is more even faster than it’s previous gen i5-11600k processor.

Like the previous budget friendly Intel processors , this is also a 65W power demanding CPU, but in maximum Turbo mode, the power demand could be up to 117w. This is a locked processor but still overclocking can be done with Intel’s Z, B and some H series motherboards.

With a max memory bandwidth of 76.8GB/s, this Alder Lake i5 supports DDR5 memory with a maximum of 128GB. With DDR5 you can get speeds up to 4800Mhz while with DDR4 you can get speeds upto 3200Mhz.

This processor supports maximum resolution of 4096X2160 at 60Hz with HDMI Cable, 7680X4320 at 60Hz with Display Cable with support for DirectX 12 . Along with DDR5, it also has support for PCIe 5.0.

Intel Core i5-12400 Processor Performance

With the latest high-end Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090, here are the test performance results. Previously, Denuvo DRM was causing problems with Alder Lake but now they have released their patches. These games have been played in Windows 11 with 1080p, in ultra-high settings.

Far Cry 6–  Game is hitting at an average of 152fps with smooth performance.

Formula One (F1) 2021- Game is hitting at an average of 249fps with smooth performance.

Hitman 3- Game is hitting at an average of 131fps with smooth performance.

Horizon Zero Dawn- Game is hitting at an average of 177fps with smooth performance.

Microsoft Flight Simulator- Game is hitting at an average of 136fps with smooth performance.

Red Dead Redemption 2- Game is hitting at an average of 163fps with smooth performance.

Watch Dogs Legion- Game is hitting at an average of 128fps with smooth performance.

By all the testing reports, the Intel Core-i5 12400 is giving 86%-88% fps when compared to an Core-i9 12900k 100% fps performance. Benchmark was tested in DDR4 memory, expecting better to do with DDR5.

Heavy Application Load- As there are no efficient cores (E core) on this processor, there is no huge improvement, this chip is performing 2.3% faster than Core-i9 11900k, 6% faster than i9 11700k and much better than i9 11400 with 15.7% faster.

When comparing to Ryzen5 5600G in single threaded load, it is giving 13.5% faster and a huge improvement of 24%, faster than AMD Ryzen 5 3600X and 27% faster than AMD Ryzen 5 3600. Moreover, single thread performance is 87% max and multi thread performance is 52% max when compared to Intel Core-i9 12900k Processor.

Intel Core i5-12400 Processor Review – Verdict

At the end of the day, we can easily say that Intel i5-12400 is 17% faster than Ryzen 5600G on average and 9% slower than core- i5 12600K.  This processor beats up Ryzen processors in single threaded workload performance. Considering the price and the performance it offers, the Intel Core i5-12400 Processor pretty much can run anything you throw at.

Although applications like Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator etc. might get a performance hit. If you are creating content apart from Gaming we suggest that you should go with Intel Core i7-12700K Processor.

That’s all folks!

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