Intel Core i5-12600K vs. AMD Ryzen 5 5600G: Which 2021 Mainstream CPU Is Tops?

Intel's launch of the first few chips in its 12th Generation Core desktop CPU family (code-named "Alder Lake") is officially in the rear-view mirror—but the processing drag races have just begun! AMD selections like the Editors' Choice-winning Ryzen 5 5600G ($259 list) haven't gone anywhere, and as AMD has struggled through 2021 to keep chips like those on the shelf at something close to their list prices, Intel is coming to the table with new options like the Core i5-12600K. Both are now on shelves for a bit over or under $300.

A long list of upgrades and improvements have come to the Intel desktop-CPU line with Alder Lake, versus previous generations of 14nm-based Intel processors. But will they be enough to take down one of AMD's reigning champs, known for its strength at casual gaming using its integrated Radeon graphics? Let's jump into a blow-by-blow comparison to find out.

Core i5-12600K vs. Ryzen 5 5600G: Specs and Architecture

To start off our duel between these two midrange chips, let's take a peek at some base specs across the pair...

First up, let's get some nomenclature out of the way. With Alder Lake, Intel is finally moving beyond the umpteenth revision of 14nm lithography, last seen in its 11th Gen ("Rocket Lake") Core family. Its new process technology, dubbed the "Intel 7 Process" (at its heart, a 10nm manufacturing process) underpins the Core i5-12600K. With this new design, the chip is divided between "Performance cores" (P-cores) and "Efficiency cores" (E-cores).

This is part of 12th Gen Core's new "big.LITTLE"-style architecture, an approach which (in this specific chip) pairs six P-cores with four E-cores (for a total of "10" cores, sort of) and dynamically allocates the demands of your PC across them depending on the task at hand. (This is also why we see a core-to-thread ratio that is not 2:1; only the six P-cores are Hyper-Threaded in this new chip design, for two threads per core.)

Meanwhile, AMD is still living it up the old-fashioned way, and used a straight six-core/12-thread design in its $259 Ryzen 5 5600G. (The "G" indicates it is one of AMD's relatively few Ryzen chips that is equipped with an integrated graphics processor, or IGP, to run graphics output on your PC without a dedicated video card.) The company's stellar "chiplet"-style architecture makes yet another return, this time improved with a single-CCX design that reduces the latency between cores that existed in older IGP-equipped Zen processors like the Ryzen 3 3200G ($99 list) and Ryzen 5 3400G ($149 list).

If you've been wondering this whole time why we're comparing the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G to the Intel Core i5-12600K, instead of the more direct competition in AMD's IGP-less Ryzen 5 5600X ($299 list), it all comes down to those integrated graphics. In GPU-constrained times like these, we need to keep all types of PC users (gamers and not-gamers) in mind, including those who might be able to afford a processor and motherboard much sooner than a new graphics card, given the inflated prices GPUs are still selling for.

The Ryzen 5 5600G comes with AMD's still-strong Radeon RX Vega platform integrated inside, this time taking the form of a Vega 7 IGP with, you guessed it, seven onboard graphics cores. Meanwhile the Intel Core i5-12600K will feature another addition to Intel's growing line of "Iris Xe"-branded IGPs, the Intel UHD Graphics 770 (up from the UHD Graphics 750 we saw in Intel's last generation of desktop chips).

On the topic of coolers, it's a straight win for AMD: Ryzen 5 5600G buyers get a Wraith Stealth air cooler included in the box, while Intel Core i5-12600K owners will need to buy a separate cooling fan that works with the new LGA 1700 CPU socket. Point goes to AMD on both cost of adoption and overall cooling requirements, considering the power requirements of the two chips.

TIE: Intel Core i5-12600K for number of cores, AMD Ryzen 5 5600G on price and IGP specs

Core i5-12600K vs. Ryzen 5 5600G: Platforms and Compatibility

Next up, platform compatibility. You can take a deep dive into all the newness on offer from Intel in our explainer on the Z690 platform. Z690 is the only chipset available so far that supports the new Alder Lake chips. But for those who just want the basics, let's run through a quick primer.

Intel's new 12th Generation chips come with a change to another new motherboard socket, LGA 1700, as well as the Z690 chipset, for a refreshed offering of motherboards. The Z690 is an upgrade from the top-end Z590 chipset that came in with 11th Gen (largely considered a dead-end platform by this point), and it brings with it a whole host of improvements that may or may not be relevant to you, depending on what you do with your PC.

The main upgrades between the two platforms include more PCI Express (PCIe) lanes, as well as those lanes being upgraded from the PCIe 4.0 spec up to PCIe 5.0. The new boards also bring with them support for DDR5 RAM (though some alternately support old-style DDR4), as well as XMP 3.0 (Intel's Extreme Memory Profiler service for overclockers), and Dynamic Memory Boost Technology.

Most of these improvements won't mean much to your average gamer or content creator. However, if you're a serious overclocker, Intel has integrated an array of new ways to control how your chip performs under pressure, especially when pushed to its limits.

The only area where 12th Generation lacks, in terms of platforms, is on cost of adoption compared with what you can find for Intel's 11th Gen chips. At this mid-November writing, there aren't yet any 600-class midrange or budget motherboards in the typical "H" or "B" series on shelves for 12th Gen chips, though we should expect to see info on those emerge in the coming months.

Meanwhile AMD's Ryzen 5 5600G remains compatible with a large swath of Socket AM4 motherboards, ranging back to B450 and X470 models, which cover just about every price point that you could think of by now. These models can come in as cheap as $35 in some extreme circumstances, though on average you can expect to spend around $60 to start for a lower-end AMD B450-based motherboard, while X570 boards can range as high as $900 in some extreme enthusiast releases.

TIE: Intel Core i5-12600K wins on new features and added flexibility, AMD Ryzen 5 5600G wins on cost of adoption

Core i5-12600K vs. Ryzen 5 5600G: Productivity Performance

So, with four more threads to work with, performance tests that push cores hard should be an auto-win for the Intel Core i5-12600K over the Ryzen 5 5600G...right? Let's jump into the benchmarks to see what's what.

(All of these runs were performed on respective Windows 10 testbeds.)

Overall, there's little contest here; on the whole, the Intel Core i5-12600K is a much faster processor in content creation compared to the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G, even if it does slip in a few occasions where the processor didn't get the most out of the Windows 10 scheduler.

Aside from those hiccups, though, the Intel Core i5-12600K is dominant here. (And plus, Windows 11 is where it is specifically expected to shine even more, with Thread Director helping for programs like Adobe Photoshop.) We already mentioned this in our review of that chip, but this is the first consumer-facing desktop CPU released in a while that we've seen really try and bring significantly more content-creation performance down to the midrange. And although most will look at the i5-12600K first as a gaming engine and an amateur-level content creator second, the chip is more than comfortable playing both roles as long as it's running on a compatible Windows 11-based machine.

WINNER: Intel Core i5-12600K on outright performance (Windows 11 recommended)

Core i5-12600K vs. Ryzen 5 5600G: Gaming Performance

Last but not least, we arrive at gaming performance, the true test of a midrange processor for a certain set of buyers...

We tested the CPUs here on their respective platforms in Windows 10 using a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti discrete graphics card. The results above show a dominant set of a wins across 1080p and 4K (the two resolutions we test in) for the Intel Core i5-12600K, although for its price, the Ryzen 5 5600G is only just below the price-to-performance curve.

That edge for Intel falls away almost completely, though, once we jump to testing how the two chips fare during runs on the two chips' IGP...

We weren't able to get too many IGP numbers out of the Core i5-12600K during our initial run of testing (WNR means "would not run"), due to some issues with Intel's provided driver set. However we have included numbers from our testing of the Intel Core i5-11600K and its UHD 750 chip, which is just about the same as the UHD 770 save for a slight uptick in total boost clock between the two generations (1.45GHz versus 1.55GHz).

Above we can see that not even 100MHz would be enough to bridge the major gap that currently exists between Intel's UHD platform and what AMD has achieved with its long-running Radeon RX Vega IGPs.

If you're having a hard time picking between these two choices on gaming alone, the platform-adoption cost of 12th Gen could end up as the deciding factor. AMD wins on what it would cost to get a budget gaming system off the ground (especially if you plan to run without a GPU, just relying on the CPU's IGP). Intel, meanwhile, holds its own on outright frame-rate victories using dedicated graphics.

However, we need to close out this section with a caveat: Intel's 12th Gen processors may not work on every single PC game, regardless of your operating system. During our testing, we found that our Assassin's Creed: Valhalla benchmark title wouldn't boot in. Only after consulting with Intel did we find out this is due to an issue with the DRM service Denuvo, which confuses the two core types of 12th Gen as two separate systems. You can read about the issue, as well as look through a list of the affected titles and their timetables for an applied fix, in our full breakdown here.

TIE: Intel Core i5-12600K wins if you are using a dedicated graphics card (and your favorite games aren't on the Denuvo fix list), AMD Ryzen 5 5600G wins for integrated graphics testing

The Verdict: Intel Surges Up the Performance Charts

By most of the measures we've gathered here today, it's obvious that the move to a new process technology has done wonders for Intel's competitiveness in content creation on chips like the Core i5-12600K versus previous generations. But that performance boost does not come cheap, when you factor in the cost of the platform, which is all-new. And in this price range, isn't that half the point?

Until we see more Alder Lake-compatible motherboards outside of the pricey Z690 chipset family being released, ownership of any of Intel's 12th Gen chips will come at a premium, making its "midrange" Intel Core i5-12600K a pricier prospect than it might seem at first glance. This rule proves itself out further if you plan on using DDR5 RAM like we tested with here. (As mentioned above, DDR4-compatible Z690 boards are also available, though not for much less than their DDR5 counterparts. See our guide to the initial wave of Z690 boards.)

Just how much extra might you spend to get those productivity wins on the Intel Core i5-12600K versus building out a new AMD Ryzen 5 5600G system? Let's visualize things real quick...

That roughly $400 gap we see between the two cost-of-adoption tiers? That's the cost of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition in the right circumstances (or at least the down payment on one, video-card list prices being the fiction they are these days). Plus, even if you wanted to pocket the difference and run on the integrated graphics of a Ryzen 5 5600G alone, you'd still end up ahead of the Core i5-12600K on both frame rates and price.

The Intel Core i5-12600K is undeniably the more productivity-powerful option of these two, but we also don't see a huge market for the "cost-conscious content creator," at least not one nearly as large as those looking to build a gaming PC on a tight budget. If price is your primary concern, the pairing of AM4 compatibility and very good Radeon IGP performance makes the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G a tough competitor to Intel's 12600K. However, if all you want is the most productivity and content-creation performance that a sub-$300 desktop CPU can offer, and you're willing to pay the platform tax to join the LGA 1700 crowd, then Intel sure has got the chip for you in its Core i5-12600K.