Quad-Cores Are Back! Intel Core i3 12100F Review, Much Better Than Expected

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00:00 - Welcome back to Hardware Unboxed
02:49 - Test System Specs
04:07 - Cinebench R23
06:00 - 7-Zip File Manager
06:35 - Corona 1.3 Benchmark
07:21 - Adobe Premiere Pro 2021
07:53 - Adobe Photoshop 2022
08:16 - Adobe After Effects 2022
08:45 - Factorio
09:18 - Chromium Code Compile
09:41 - Blender Open Data
10:01 - Blender Open Data, Power
10:17 - F1 2021 [DX12]
11:07 - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege [Vulkan]
11:30 - Watch Dogs: Legion
11:59 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider
12:27 - The Riftbreaker
12:57 - Hitman 3
13:21 - Age of Empires IV
13:41 - Far Cry 6
14:11 - Horizon Zero Dawn
14:29 - Cyberpunk 2077
15:03 - Cyberpunk 2077, Power
15:21 - 10 Game Average
16:14 - Temps
16:48 - Final Thoughts

Quad-Cores Are Back! Intel Core i3 12100F Review, Much Better Than Expected

Disclaimer: Any pricing information shown or mentioned in this video was accurate at the time of video production, and may have since changed

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[Kubose]

Man, if the gpu market wasn't nuked to shit, budget pc gaming would look pretty sweet with this thing.

[EvL--_--]

For gaming, especially 1440p, 12100 is on par, even better at times than a 9900K - absolutely insane!!!

[pranayp]

If graphics cards weren't such a shit show. These times would have been such a great time to be a gamer.

[cromefire_]

The non-F version would make a great Desktop/Office Machine (up to even non-GPU dependend light workstation workloads)

[Vermilicious]

Good job, Intel! I just got my 12400F and I'm happy so far, although I have some trouble running the 3600MHz memory at advertised speeds. The 12100F seems like a decent cheap-o alternative that can fit well with most people's budgets. Personally though, I think it's best to get the extra two cores if you can. AMD needs to step up their game if they want to compete against this amazing value.

[nttea]

12400 feels like better value considering total system costs. Still like you said not a terrible choice if you're penny pinching.

[andrewx]

This is shocking to see. Here I thought my 7700k running at 5ghz was still top tier in terms of average performance across the board, but with this i3 revelation, in theory it completely beats it out of the water.

This really goes to show how competitive Intel has become with 12th gen. Gonna have to think it over for the next few days whether I upgrade...

[ericepperson]

12400 and 12100 performance is so encouraging for budget builds right now. Just waiting on reviews of B660 boards now. Seems like these are taking a lot longer to get out than the last couple of review cycles :(

[WinnieBlue]

I was waiting for this one! 12100F looks like a great value.

[chrisweston]

I love to see AMD & Intel going at it again. I'm sat here with a R5 3600 thinking that the performance doesn't look that good for the Ryzen but then realising that I am going to be GPU limited in every single game and unwilling to pay the current prices to get anywhere near the 6900 XT

[nipa]

Good to see that there are capable budget CPUs again! It feels strange though to pay more for the board than for the CPU.

[eugeneswanson]

12100f is cheaper and better for gaming than ryzen 3600. We have new budget cpu king!

[MrTadizzz]

intel slaying the CPU game at the moment, lets hope they do the same with GPU's

[SKHYJINX]

You Beauty!!! 12MB Cache 4C8T with Modern IPC
Steve, can you do 12100f vs 4790k/7700K systems?

[isaacinsungjang]

this is super impressive that a 4 core part is trading blows with 6 and 8 core parts. very exciting times ahead to see competition in the cpu space! can't wait to see how amd and Intel compete going forward. so far it looks like price creep isn't happening as dramatically as gpus

[zrmx]

It is so weird feeling this deja vu that Intel is basically pulling an AMD when 3600 was released and combo-ing it with a B450/B550 board and DDR4 and boom, great price performance value.

[marcelthorsen]

Impressive performance given the price. AMD are going to have to release something fairly special to compete with Intel at the entry level of the market.

[blackmennewstyle]

It's not really hard to beat AMD at this point, they are not even trying anymore. They did not even bother to release a budget CPU in the Ryzen 5000 lineup lol

[addersforkaustria]

I'm a proud owner of a 10100f and it's quite great to see, what its younger brother does to the market. Crushing it!

[theprogrammer]

Thanks Steve, great content piece!
Definitely interesting to see how it fares with an H610 though, as that should be the real budget go-to. If it fares almost as well there, I think on the budget side it's just a crazy win for Intel (who would've though?!)