There are some other differences such as cache size, power usage, and the integrated graphics chip. I3 processors don’t support Turbo Boost, while both i5 and i7 do. That’s not to say it can’t under the right load. Turbo Boost kicks in only when necessary, that is under load, and hardly ever reaches the maximum capacity. Intel still categorizes the processor with the base clock speed because this is the actual clock-speed the processor will perform at most of the times. So when needed, the clock speed will be boosted up to 3.2 GHz automatically. In essence, the thermal design power of TDP is the temperature up to which a processor can safely operate.įor example, the Core i5 750 has a base clock speed of 2.66GHz but has a maximum Turbo Boost speed of 3.2GHz. The clock speed keeps increasing until it either reaches the Turbo Boost limit or the processor temperature reaches its maximum thermal design power. It operates in 133Mhz increments and will scale up if needed. Turbo Boost is dependent on the number of active cores, the estimated current consumption, the estimated power consumption, and the processor temperature. This increase in speed is not set in stone and is, in fact, dynamic, depending on the situation. Inter’s Turbo Boost technology lets a processor increase its clock speed when the need arises, to state it simply. These too, support hyperthreading on top of the actual four cores that they have and thus provide an edge over the i5 line of processors. So if a quad-core does perform better than a dual-core with hyperthreading, why not add hyperthreading to a quad-core and further increase performance? This is an important piece of information because i5 processors, which are generally quad-core, lack hyperthreading. When it comes to it, a quad-core processor (one with four physical cores) will always outperform an i3 with four virtual cores. And that’s true here, but these are four virtual cores not real, physical cores. If you’re good at math, you may have figured out that hyperthreading is actually creating four cores out of the two available cores. With hyperthreading, your dual-core Intel i3 will perform better than any normal dual-core processors especially when it comes to multitasking.

This helps deliver more performance per physical core while also saving power. In layman’s terms, hyperthreading is a technology that lets a single physical core act like two cores thus improving multitasking without the need to activate another core. You can learn more about processor cores by heading to our dedicated article explaining the difference between dual-core and quad-core. Some extreme versions can have six or eight cores but there are hardly any applications that utilize more than four cores. Similarly, all desktop i7 CPUs are quad-core, at the very least. But don’t worry, there is an easy way to figure out how many cores a processor has and we’ll talk about that too.Įven though some i5 processors are dual-core, they will outperform an i3 dual-core thanks to Turbo-boosting. If you’re talking about desktop CPUs most i5 CPUs are quad-core except a rare case here or there. Especially when you consider mobile i5 CPUs such as those used in a laptop or an ultrabook. Coming on to i5, these can be quad-core but there are also dual-core variants. These processors are dual-core but support Intel’s hyperthreading technology which we will discuss in a bit. Core i3 processors have the lowest core count which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

What is turbo boost core list