You can run some intensive applications, such as Adobe Premiere, on an i5, but will see more of a benefit with an i7 than you might in gaming.
The most recent i5 chips top out at six cores on desktop and four cores on mobile with boost clock speeds closing in on 5GHz. For most users, an i5 is more than enough to handle day-to-day tasks, and they can even hold their own when it comes to gaming. The i5 processors sit in a sweet spot of price versus performance. Should you buy a Core i5 or a Core i7? Bill Roberson/Digital Trends We’re using Intel’s most recent processors, but keep in mind that you can often find processors from the previous generation or two. We’ve rounded up everything you need to know about these two product ranges across desktop and mobile. Core i7 processors have a little more power, and they’re best for users running demanding applications and games at the highest settings.īetween a Core i5 and Core i7, though, there’s a lot more to the story. Intel Core i5 vs i7: What’s the difference?Ĭore i5 processors are great all-purpose chips, offering solid performance for gaming, web browsing, and light productivity tasks. But what’s the difference between them? Like most computer components, there are dozens of models at each tier to choose from, and it can get a little overwhelming. Intel’s Core i5 and i7 CPUs are still the most popular processors you can buy - and for good reason. In this case, however, the difference is probably a good indicator that the is superior. Will be superior in performance, despite frequency being crucial when trying to avoid GPU bottlenecking. The Core 2 Duo has a 0.8 GHz faster frequency, this is not always an indicator that it The Core i5-4200U 1.6GHz and Core 2 Duo are not from the same family of CPUs, so their clock speeds are by no Problematically, unless the two CPUsĪre from the same family, this can only serve as a general guide and nothing like an exact comparison,īecause the clock cycles per instruction (CPI) will vary so much. More important for gaming than the number of cores and threads is the clock rate. Run slightly older games fairly effectively.
With a decent accompanying GPU, the Core i5-4200U 1.6GHz and the Core 2 Duo may still be able to The Core i5-4200U 1.6GHz and the Core 2 Duo both have 2 cores, and soĪre quite likely to struggle with the latest games, or at least bottleneck high-end graphics cards when running Intel's CPUs have varied widely in power consumption according to clock rate, architecture, and semiconductor process, shown in the CPU power dissipation tables. The Core microarchitecture provides more efficient decoding stages, execution units, caches, and buses, reducing the power consumption of Core 2-branded CPUs while increasing their processing capacity. The Core microarchitecture returned to lower clock rates and improved the usage of both available clock cycles and power when compared with the preceding NetBurst microarchitecture of the Pentium 4/D-branded CPUs. The introduction of Core 2 relegated the Pentium brand to the mid-range market, and reunified laptop and desktop CPU lines, which previously had been divided into the Pentium 4, Pentium D, and Pentium M brands. The single- and dual-core models are single-die, whereas the quad-core models comprise two dies, each containing two cores, packaged in a multi-chip module. This means it will become a bottleneck in some demanding applications.Ĭore 2 is a brand encompassing a range of Intel's consumer 64-bit x86-64 single-, dual-, and quad-core microprocessors based on the Core microarchitecture. īoth the processor and integrated graphics have a rated board TDP of 15W. The processor integrates mildly powerful Graphics called Intel HD i5 4200U (variant of Intel HD Graphics 4400), with 20 Execution Units, initially clocked at 200MHz and that go up to 1000MHz, in Turbo Mode which share the L2 Cache and system RAM with the processor. Īmong its many features, Turbo Boost and Virtualization are activated. It offers 2 Physical Cores (4 Logical), initially clocked at 1.6GHz, which may go up to 2.6GHz and 3MB of 元 Cache. Core i5-4200U 1.6GHz is a super energy efficient mobile processor based on the 22nm, Haswell architecture.