Core i3-12100F vs Ryzen 5 5500
Compare the Core i3-12100F and Ryzen 5 5500 on real gaming and productivity benchmarks, full specifications, live retailer prices and performance-per-dollar, then jump straight to the cheapest in-stock option.
The short answer
The Ryzen 5 5500 is the better value, though the Core i3-12100F is the faster gaming chip.
- Core i3-12100F is about 24% faster for gaming at 1080p (gaming index 48.0 vs 38.7).
- Ryzen 5 5500 is roughly 33% faster in multi-core work, an edge in rendering, encoding and compiling.
- Ryzen 5 5500 is the cheaper chip right now, by roughly 57%.
- Ryzen 5 5500 delivers about 26% more gaming performance per dollar.
- Ryzen 5 5500 has more cores (6C/12T vs 4C/8T), which helps in heavily threaded workloads.
Gaming performance
CPU-bound gaming score: a geometric mean of in-game frame rates at 1080p, normalized so the fastest gaming CPU we track = 100.
Does the CPU matter at 1440p or 4K? Much less. At higher resolutions the graphics card sets the frame rate, so the gap between two CPUs shrinks — often to nothing. The 1080p figure above is the demanding case, where the CPU is stressed and the difference actually shows.
Performance per dollar
Gaming index divided by the current lowest price — higher is better value. This moves with the market as prices change day to day.
The Ryzen 5 5500 gives about 26% more gaming performance per dollar at today’s prices.
Full platform cost
A complete-platform price needs a live CPU price and an in-stock compatible motherboard on both sides. We can’t build one for Ryzen 5 5500 right now, which is common for older sockets like AM4 where we don’t track current boards. The gaming, value and specs comparisons still apply.
Specs head-to-head
Productivity & compute
Efficiency
Gaming performance per watt (gaming index per 100W of TDP) — higher means more frames for the heat and power.
Where to buy
Ryzen 5 5500from $84.93
| Retailer | Availability | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | In stock | $84.93 |  |
| B&H | In stock | $89.99 |  |
Core i3-12100Ffrom $132.99
| Retailer | Availability | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | In stock | $132.99 | |
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