BenchPair

Core i5-12600K bottleneck & gaming FPS

Ranked 88 of 201 desktop processors for gaming in our database (56th percentile). It can sustain roughly 131 fps in a typical AAA title regardless of resolution — that ceiling is what decides whether a graphics card is worth pairing with it.

SpecificationsAlder Lake · 2021
ArchitectureAlder Lake
Cores6 performance + 4 efficiency
Threads16
Boost clock4,900 MHz
L3 cache20 MB
TDP125 W
Released2021
Processor ceiling by game1080p, high

The frame rate this chip could sustain with an infinitely fast graphics card. It is almost the same at every resolution, because rendering more pixels gives the processor no extra work.

GameCPU ceilingWith GeForce RTX 4070 Super
Cyberpunk 2077 129 fps 89 fps
Fortnite 168 fps 166 fps
Counter-Strike 2 190 fps 187 fps
Baldur's Gate 3 114 fps 113 fps
Red Dead Redemption 2 149 fps 100 fps
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 75 fps 74 fps
Best matched graphics cards1080p, high

Ranked by how little performance the pairing wastes. Anything much faster than the top entry will sit partly idle at this resolution — though it may still be worth it if you plan to move to 1440p or 4K.

Graphics cardEst. FPSUnused
GeForce RTX 4070 Super 129 0.1%
GeForce RTX 3090 127 1.6%
Radeon RX 6950 XT 124 4%
Radeon RX 9070 124 4.3%
Radeon RX 7900 GRE 129 4.7%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB 123 4.8%

What a Core i5-12600K is good for

This chip is capable at 1080p with a mid-range card, but it will become the limit if you pair it with something substantially faster. If you are considering a large graphics upgrade, check the pairing first — you may find most of the new card sitting idle.

Moving to a higher resolution is the cheapest way to get more out of it, because it shifts work onto the card and away from the chip.

Performance cores and efficiency cores

This chip mixes 6 performance cores with 4 efficiency cores. Games run almost entirely on the performance cores; the efficiency cores absorb background work so it does not interrupt them. That is genuinely useful, but it means the headline core count overstates gaming capability — our model counts about 8.8 effective cores here, weighting an efficiency core well below a performance one.

Hyper-threading is enabled, adding 16 total threads.

Where it sits

Ranked 88 of 201 desktop processors for gaming. Nearest faster: Core i7-12700F, Ryzen 5 5600X3D. Just below: Core i5-12600KF, Ryzen 7 5800X. Full method on the methodology page.