Part of this comes down to faster average clock speeds. They tend to be found inside PCs that target a more budget-conscious market-segment where the need for a device to be affordable eclipses the demand for higher performance.Īs you’d expect, Intel’s Core i5 processors tend to be more powerful than their i3 counterparts. The reason for this is that i3 processors are designed to hit a lower price-point more than they are push boundaries for performance. With a few exceptions, such as Intel’s 8th Gen Core i3 “Coffee Lake” CPUs, most Core i3 CPUs only have two cores. While there isn’t a hard and fast rule around it, you’re also more likely to find less cores in a Core i3 than you are a Core i5 or i7.
WHAT IS INTEL TURBO BOOST TECHNOLOGY MONITOR 2.5 PC
This means that a PC with a higher core-count is going to be better for tasks where multithreading is important, such as web servers, web browsers and some video games.
While the number of cores inside an Intel Core CPU isn’t everything, the more cores there are, the more tasks (known as threads) can be served at the same time. Number of cores Credit: Intel intel-xmm-8160-modem-1-100779874-orig.jpg However, to avoid confusion, let's start by exclusively talking about the desktop variants. In some cases, the difference in specs and performance for the desktop and laptop variants of Intel’s i5 and i7 CPUs can be quite significant. Wattage is the big differentiator here, since CPUs inside mobile devices generally have to make do with less power draw, Some are intended for us inside laptops, others are intended for use with desktop PCs. Intel’s Core i3, i5 and i7 processors can also be grouped in terms of their target devices.
Since some older i7 CPUs might not out-perform more recent i5 CPUs, these designations shouldn’t always be taken as gospel but if you’re after a short and easy way to understand which processor is better, the numbers attached to each Intel Core family serve nicely. In other words, you’re much less likely to find things like Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading in an i3 processor compared to an i5 or i7 processor.Īt the most basic level, these numbers reflect where each class of Intel Core CPU sit relative to one another and are intended to give consumers an idea of the kind of performance they should expect from each.Įssentially, the idea that Intel are looking to convey with this CPU classification system is that PC builders should expect:Īn Intel Core i3 to provide adequate performance for basic tasksĪn Intel Core i5 to provide good performance for most tasksĪn Intel Core i7 to provide great performance for the most demanding of tasks Which family an Intel Core CPU falls into is based on a collection of criteria involving their number of cores, clock speed (in GHz) and cache size, the number of Intel technologies they integrate also plays a role. Intel’s Core i7 CPUs don’t have seven cores nor do Core i3 have three cores. They’ve got nothing to do with the number of cores in each CPU nor the speed of each. If you're building your first PC, the main thing you need to keep in mind here is that the 3, 5 and 7 attached to each family of Intel Core processors are simply meant to be indicative of their relative processing power. We’re not going to go to deeply into those and how they compare to Intel's Core proecessor, since this article is specifically focused on the difference between Intel’s Core i3, Core i5 and i7 CPUs - but they do merit a mention. If you want to boil things down to something plain and simple, then generally speaking, "most" Core i7 CPUs are better than most Core i5 CPUs, which are in turn better than most Core i3 CPUs.īelow that, you’ve got fare like the Intel Celeron and Intel Pentium processors. Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 - the difference in a nutshell Thinking of building a new PC around Intel’s high-end Core i9 processors? Check out our guide to Which Intel Core CPU is best here. No matter who you are, you’ll want to know whether an Intel Core i3, i5 or i7 CPU is the right choice for you and this buyer's guide is here to help. But with the advent of Intel’s new Coffee Lake, Ice Lake and Whiskey Lake CPUs, there’s a whole new generation of PC buyers facing the same familiar decisions. Kaby Lake processors and whether Google’s mesh node Wi-Fi system lives up to the hype. In the past, we’re analysed what the difference between an Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 CPU was for things like Intel's 7th gen.
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