Intel Core i7-12700: What Reddit Really Thinks

You are better off saving 10 bucks and going for the 12700K which is slightly faster and overclockable. The coupon does not apply to the 12700.

The 12700 is better than the 12600K but it's not worth purchasing over the 12600K just for gaming purposes, it's more for production workloads.

12700 has 2 more performance cores, but somewhat lower clocks. 12600k has higher stock clocks and can be overclocked higher. So even without overclocking it will have slightly higher per core performance, but significantly less multi core. If you do work that needs more cores, 12700 is a clear choice. For gaming, you will hardly see a difference.

Attention! Fellows who plan to use alder lake cpu with DDR4 OC RAM, particularly b-die - DO NOT BUY non-k CPU. Can confirm that 12700 non-k has fixed System Agent voltage, which is not possible to override. So with 12700 non-k my brand new b-die corsair dominator 3600 CL14 working at 3000-3200 tops. With 12600k it makes 3800-4000. TL;DR if you buy expensive OC RAM buy -k intel chip. If you buy 12400 12600 12700 do not waste your money, buy 3200 with lower timings.

That's not what we've done, it's not locked at 65w, we were very careful to call it the 65w spec, not locked at 65w.

I'm a game developer and I went for the i7 (with a DDR5 motherboard and RAM). I absolutely love how fast it blows through compiling, lighting builds, and video compression. And paired with fast SSDs, it checks file diffs across my 10 GB repo in seconds.

I have mine at 5.0 GHz with a core voltage lowered into the 1.236-1.248 area that significantly reduces heat without sacrificing any speed and that's with an air cooler.

My G.Skill C16 3600 runs perfectly fine with my 12400 at 3600.

You can get the 12700k for $299 at Microcenter.

I have a 12700f cpu paired with an asus tuf b660m-plus matx motherboard and 16gb of teamgroup t-force dark z fps 4000mhz cl16 which has 2 xmp profiles. Both profiles worked with no hiccups even in cinebench, unigine heaven, furmark and 2hrs of gaming.

I selected i7-12700 and MSI MAG B660 Tomahawk WiFi. My memory is DDR4 Corsair Vengeance 3600MHz 32GB. I don't regret my choice. After disabling the power limits I get ~22k points in cinebench R23 multicore. The RAM works stable at 3600MHz.

$40 more to have it unlocked.

Seems like an overall good combination between the 12700, B660 board they tested and new cooler. People looking to save some money probably should skip the K-skus this year. Performance is right up there with the 12700k, the RM1 cooler handled things pretty well except extended workstation tasks (blender).

I managed to use the $50 off coupon on an open box 12700k and got it for $243.96 before tax. The Overland Park MC guys are pretty cool if you're nice and patient with them.

Depends on the price and quality of the motherboard. Not surprising that some boards will allow non-K SKUs to run at P2 power limit forever while some won't.

The 12700 is strictly better, but not by much unless you're doing very thread-heavy work like video rendering or some kinds of fluid simulation. It's a productivity sort of chip, not a gaming one. The 12600k sort of sits in the sweet spot where you won't get that much better for gaming, but you still have a good core count for productivity with the E-core cluster backing you up.

I was in the same dilemma, and ended up picking the 12700. 12600K would need a pricier Z690 motherboard to actually OC, single thread performance is more or less the same, and 12700 gives you 2 more cores and has more cache as well.

The 12900k ES had extremely gimped performance and other quirks, in the end it didn't even make sense to buy it at like half the price of retail because the 12700F would've been a better buy. You get what you pay for, and there is a reason most ES sit on eBay at a low price. If it was cheap performance people would snatch them up.

The cooler handled the cpu when limited to 65w. Throttled after 3 seconds when unlimited.

If you're not planning on overclocking, the only advantage the 12600K has over the i7 is a better binned memory controller, apparently the non-K Alder Lake CPUs are not good in terms of memory support past the stock frequencies. A friend of mine is running 3600mhz RAM on his 12700 without issue but his kit is listed on his mobo's QVL, so YMMV.

Careful with Alderlake engineering samples, some require a specific bios revision to work and they do not have all features are fully enabled. So they are pretty much useless for the average consumer. I would avoid any engineering sample that has any mention of bios requirements, because those BIOS were never released into the wild.

Engineering samples tend to be clocked lower than the consumer variant. It also may or may not work on your motherboard. The ES i7-12700 has turbo boost max clock of 4 GHz. Retail consumer variant goes up to 4.9 GHz for single core max.

Let's be blunt: the unheatsinked VRM on that board has a maximum power draw of 125 watts. The 12700 has a power draw of up to 180 watts. You won't see that chip's full performance on that board.

Personally I don't see about an extra $160-200 worth a few percent of performance, and even with it overclocked it might not even be noticeable; you might want to get a decent cooler even for the 12700 non-k since the stock cooler would get a bit too loud with increased power limits.

The locked System Agent voltage on the 12700 is only an issue for DDR4. For DDR5 it's a non-issue. Maximum DDR4 memory speed you should aim for with a 12700 is DDR4-3200, anything higher is a toss-up whether it's going to work in gear 1, and gear 1 performs significantly better than gear 2.

If you don't plan to OC buy the 12700. By the time a 12700 won't be enough an overclocked 12700K won't give you much more anyway.

The differences between the two CPUs are really minor - a 100-200 MHz difference in turbo speed. It's in the realm of insignificant.

Rule of thumb I never buy an F processor. Firstly their resale value if you decide to upgrade just sucks in comparison. And secondly if your GPU dies and you need to debug things having an iGPU is handy.

Most B660 boards can remove the power limits, so you can run, if you want, at 180w non stop.

Only difference is the F version lacks the iGPU. Even if you have a dGPU, an iGPU can come in handy if something happens to your dGPU or maybe an issue pops up with pcie x16 slot.

mc was selling these for 299 like a week ago. I bought one and using a b660-g to overclock. Stable at 5.33 on a single core, 5.16 on 4 cores and 4.96 all core... 1.36v level 4 LLC on 360mm aio max temp 81c.

It's going to depend. For heavily multithreaded workloads, the i7 wins. Is this a 50USD advantage? Maybe, depends on what you use your computer for. With my VM work it certainly would be for me, but for a strict gaming machine probably not.

12700 is 8+4 cores and 13700 is 8+8 cores. Obviously the 13700 is the more powerful option.

A lot of people seem to be forgetting that the non-k CPUs don't boost to the frequencies as long as last generation. It has lower cinebench scores, because after a while it will downclock to 65w whereas the k versions can boost to max clocks forever.

The ram limitation is on the non k you can't increase voltage, and the other differences are from power limits, as long as your motherboard supports removing the power limits, the 12700 is about 5 percent slower than the 12700k.

Running 12700 with RM1. Normal tasks it's noisy but keeps the CPU at reasonable temps. Running prime95 and it hits over 100C in seconds. So I'd say upgrade to something better asap.

Get the 12700f over the 12600k. It'll mean you can get a cheaper mobo without leaving performance on the table and overall the price is the same for more performance.

I have H150i Elite Capellix, temps jumping between 45-55C hitting low 40 in dead screen. I played many AAA games at 1440p Ultra and never seen this CPU hit more than 60C. Warzone 2 is most demanding with stable 50C with jumps to 60C, not even God of War could go above 55C after 8 hours of playing.

CPU usage readings are currently bugged on Windows 11. Spiking to 90% is fine, and you can try to get the average utility by resetting the statistics in hwinfo before your run. Also check your temperature, power consumption and clock speed.

The max my 12400 can handle is 3080. Anything stronger than that GPU and drops and stuttering happens. I know, because I have a 4070ti and the CPU works way smoother with the 3080. That's why I bought the 12700 a couple days ago for $200 used.

The higher RAM capacity is important for VMs, but getting that much DDR5 to work in 4x DIMM config can be an issue. If you are serious about VM work, you should look into workstations with higher RAM capacities.