The Intel Core i5-12400 is an extremely powerful processor but at jaw-dropping prices. It manages to beat the much costlier Ryzen 5 5600X while costing much less than it. This has made the Core i5-12400 a sought after processor by several gamers worldwide. Intel’s Core i5-x400 processors always sell like crazy. These chips are a great balance of value and performance. So, in this article, we will make hunting a GPU for this processor a bit easier by listing the best cards to pair with this chip.
What is the Best Budget Graphics Card to Pair With a Core i5-12400?
The best budget card one could pair with a Core i5-12400 is the AMD Radeon RX 6600 8GB. At just $369, this card can easily play all the latest games on the market with ease. This card will not bottleneck the Core i5 in any game at any resolution, thereby making it an even better choice. However, at the bottom of the budget spectrum, users will be limited by the resolution settings. This card will fall apart at higher resolutions like 1440p and 2160p. So, we highly recommend gamers stick to 1080p with this card.
The XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6600 CORE is available for a great deal over at Amazon at the moment.
Also, the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle 8G is a great performer for the slightly higher price it asks.
What is the Best Graphics Card to Play Competitive Games With a Core i5-12400?
Competitive gaming asks for visual fidelity, high framerates, and cost-effectiveness on the same table. This makes choosing a card for competitive gaming very difficult. Until today, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti was the only card recommended for competitive players ever since its release in 2017. This was because of the sharp pricing of the card, and its insane performance in top competitive titles like Fortnite, PUBG, etc. But, as the pricing of cards starts to fall, the new competitive gaming recommendation is the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB. It has more than enough VRAM to handle any competitive game and beats its predecessor, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti by a huge margin when it comes to performance. The similarly performing GeForce RTX 3070 costs much more than the RX 6700 XT, and therefore this card is an easy recommendation. This card can easily give over 150fps in the most popular competitive games today. Thus, you can easily pair a high refresh rate display with this card, and use up all of its advertised specs.
The XFX Speedster SWFT series turns out to be the most value-for-money offering again, at just $569.99.
The Sapphire Pulse variant of this card is a great choice too, albeit with one less fan and a 10$ higher price.
What is the Most Performing Graphics Card to Pair With a Core i5-12400?
Although the Core i5-12400 is a performing chip, it slightly bottlenecks high-end cards like the RTX 3090 Ti and the Radeon RX 6900 XT. However, you can safely pair up to a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with this card. Although the pricing of the RTX 3080 Ti is a bit questionable considering the slight performance gain it comes with over an RTX 3080, this is the most performance you can get with a Core i5-12400 without significantly losing your GPU’s performance. We do not recommend getting the RTX 3080 Ti, because of the minor performance gain you get over its non-Ti variant, and the more value-for-money Radeon RX 6800 XT.
These were some of the best cards you can pair with the insanely value-for-money Intel Core i5-12400. You can pick up any AIB card considering the price differences. The Founder’s Edition variants (for Nvidia cards) are going to be fine too.
