Intel Core i5 12400F vs. AMD Ryzen 5 5600X: gamer badges? | Digital Trends Spanish

As exciting as the new Intel Alder Lake 12600K and 12900K processors are, most gamers don’t need anything this powerful. Affordable i5 models are likely to be the highlight of their generation, which is why the debut of the Core i5-12400F is so exciting. This cheaper six-core processor is designed to compete with the hexacore design of AMD’s Ryzen 5600X, at a much lower price. How do these two chips compare? Facing: Intel Core i5 12400F vs. AMD Ryzen 5 5600X.

You will be interested:

Specifications

Prices and availability

The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X debuted on November 5, 2020, with a suggested retail price of $299. It’s down a bit, but has hovered around $285 after the release of Intel’s Alder Lake processors. Although it was difficult to get stock at first, it has been widely available throughout 2021 and into 2022.

The Intel Core i5-12400F went on sale on January 4, 2022, priced at just $190. Stock varies by retailer, but it’s not too hard to find shortly after launch.

However, motherboard prices are higher for the Intel processor, demanding a $70 premium on entry-level main cards compared to options for AMD Ryzen buyers.

Performance

The Intel Core-i5 12400F, like other non-K generation Alder Lake processor designs, does not have efficiency (E) cores running alongside the higher powered performance (P) cores, but that it just puts it on par with the Ryzen 5600X core-for-core, and doesn’t seem to have slowed it down in the kind of mid-range gaming it’s aiming for.

In most games, the 12400F is very competitive with the 5600X, and even outperforms it in some games by a small margin. In others, like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Age of Empires 4 Y Rainbow Six Siegefalls behind by a few percentage points, but never drifts into double digits.

For productivity tasks like photo and video editing, the 12400F is the strongest processor when activities are predominantly single-threaded, but it’s not as dynamic as the 5600X when using all the cores of the AMD chip.

For the price, this makes the 12400F a very attractive option for anyone looking for an affordable mid-range system for work or play. Especially since, unlike higher-end Alder Lake processors, it retains a comfortable 65W TDP, which matches the 5600X.

Neither chip gets particularly hot or power hungry, making them great choices for small form factor builds. For the most part, they tend to trade blows, though the 5600X is again, a bit more capable.

PCI Express and memory support

There are some feature differences between Intel and AMD platforms, but you may not need to use them on a mid-range system. On high-end Intel 600 series motherboards, you have the option of PCIExpress 5 slots and support for DDR5 memory.

These features offer more storage speed (when more drives are available) and higher memory bandwidth (when DDR5 memory is available and more affordable).

In its current form, AMD-compatible 400 and 500 series motherboards (and even some select 300 series) support up to PCIExpress 4 and exclusively support DDR4 memory.

As it stands in early 2022, there is little benefit to having a high-end motherboard for use with a 12400F processor. They’re expensive, you can’t get USB drives or sticks to take full advantage of it, and even if you could, the real-world performance advantage would be next to none.

While the Intel platform currently has the best feature set on paper, it doesn’t offer any tangible benefits, and trying to use it would inflate your budget to the point where any cost savings from going with Alder Lake would be wiped out.

Buy the new 12400F, but the 5600X is a better upgrade

If you’re looking to build or buy a new computer, the Intel Core i5-12400F is a fantastic option, offering mid-range performance for productivity tasks and gaming at a very affordable price.

Motherboards are still more expensive than they should be for this processor, and you can’t take full advantage of the Alder Lake generation’s feature set without overpaying, but the 12400F outperforms most of its high-end predecessors. and it’s very competitive with AMD’s much more expensive 5600X in almost every respect.

That said, if you currently have an AMD computer with an older Ryzen processor and it supports the 5000 series, then the 5600X represents a great upgrade path.

The price could come down as it’s a much less exciting processor in 2022, easily falling behind the 12600K and 12700K in most scenarios, but still an excellent processor for gaming and photo and video editing.

It’s a big upgrade, but with AMD’s Zen 4 approaching towards the end of the year and Alder Lake representing more exciting new build options right now, the Intel Core i5-12400F is definitely the most intriguing processor for new buyers. of computer.

Publisher Recommendations