Intel Core i3-12300 Review 2022 – The Fastest Quad-Core

Intel Core i3-12300 Review 2022 – The Fastest Quad-CoreĀ The Intel Core-i3-12300 “Alder Lake” is an entrylevel processor that succeeds an odd line of SKU’s, such as the i3-10300, i3-8300, etc.

This is not the cheapest 12th Gen Core-i3 you can buy, as that title goes to the almost-$99 i3-12100F, which won us over for some impressive gaming and general productivity performance at its featherlight price. The i3-12300, on the other hand, commands a price that’s 50% higher, at $159.

So what are the premium features on the spec’s sheet for the Core i3-12300? Surprisingly, nothing much guys. Historically, Intel sub-classified its Core-i3 desktop processor series into the i3-xx100 and i3-xx300 series, with the latter usually featuring is not just higher clock speeds, but also a little more L3-cache.

For example, the i3-10100 quad-core processor comes with 6MB of L3 cache, while the i3-10300 has 8MB. We tested both chips, and the i3-10300 ended up all of 3% faster in productivity tests on average, with the larger cache to helping with certain streaming-data multi-threaded workloads, and file compression.

 

The Core-i3-12300, which we are reviewing today, does’nt come with a different hardware configuration from the i3 12100 aside from clock speeds. It ticks at 3.50GHz, with 4.40GHz Turbo Boost, while the i3-12100 comes with 3.30GHz base and 4.30GHz Turbo Boost.

The Xe-LP-based UHD 730 graphics is same on both SKUs, save for the 50MHz higher iGPU boost frequency on the i3-12300. Both SKUs come with four “Golden Covee” performance cores (P-cores) and no “Gracemont” efficiency core’s (E-cores).

The cache structure is still same, too, with 1.25MB L2 cache per core and 12MB of shared L3 cache. The processor base power and maximum turbo power values are still same, too, at 60 W and 89W, respectively. Lastly, the I/O is exactly the same, including native support for the same memory frequencies of DDR5 4800 and DDR4 3200, as well as support for PCI-Express-Gen 5.

What’s on offer if you put aside all of these is a sub-$149 product that gives you all of the next-gen I/O capabilities, and a 4-core/8-thread’s CPU with muscle for most desktop productivity use cases, and gaming. Just about 4 year’s ago, Intel felt 4-core/8-thread is all that gaming will needed.

A lot of water has flown under the bridge in the world of a processors since, which especially holds true for Intel. The 4-cores of the i3-12300 come with the first massive generational IPC uplift for Core-i3 in over six years! If you recall, Intel skipped Core-i3 for “Rocket Lake” and its “Cypress Cove” cores.

 

Hopefully this article Intel Core i3-12300 Review 2022 – The Fastest Quad-Core can be benefit and useful.