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Quick Answer
No, the i7-12700K will not bottleneck the RTX 4080 Super at 4K. At 4K resolution, the GPU does nearly all the work. The 12700K's 8P+4E cores provide more than enough processing power, and you will see virtually identical performance to a 14900K at this resolution.
The i7-12700K may be a couple of generations old, but it remains a powerhouse for gaming. At 4K resolution, this CPU is more than capable of driving the RTX 4080 Super to its full potential.
4K rendering requires the GPU to process 4x the pixels of 1080p. This massive workload means the graphics card is always the limiting factor, not the CPU. Even Intel's latest 14th gen chips show minimal improvement over the 12700K at 4K because the CPU is simply waiting on the GPU to finish each frame.
Compared to an i9-14900K at 4K, the i7-12700K averages within 1-2 fps in GPU-bound titles. The performance gap is statistically insignificant. Your money is far better spent on the GPU, monitor, or cooling.
The 12700K runs on Z690 or B660 boards with DDR4 or DDR5. If you already own this platform, there is zero reason to upgrade your CPU for 4K gaming. Pair it with 32GB DDR4-3600 CL16 for the best price-to-performance ratio.
Our Verdict
Keep your i7-12700K. At 4K, it feeds the RTX 4080 Super with zero bottleneck. Upgrading your CPU would waste money that is better spent on a quality 4K monitor or additional storage for your game library.