Intel Core i3-12100 vs Intel Core 2 Duo E6550

Core i3-12100 vs Core 2 Duo E6550 comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core i3-12100 beats the Core 2 Duo E6550 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core 2 Duo E6550 in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core i3-12100 has significantly more cores with 4 cores whereas the Core 2 Duo E6550 has 2 cores. It also has more threads than the Core 2 Duo E6550. Our comparison shows that the Core i3-12100 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core 2 Duo E6550. A Core i3-12100 CPU outputs less heat than a Core 2 Duo E6550 CPU because of its slightly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i3-12100 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.