Intel Core i3-2120 vs Intel Core i7-3520M

Compare Intel Core 2 core CPU vs Intel Core 2 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Intel Core i7-3520M

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 170.00

$ 108.02

$ 61.98 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

1307 points

4% slightly better overall score

1256 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

2496 points

0.77% slightly better gaming score

2477 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

989 points

5% slightly better multitasking score

934 points

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

949 points

6% slightly better heavy workload score

895 points

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

14.23 points

19.75 points

38% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1073 points

1134 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

516 points

554 points

7% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1022 points

1158 points

13% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

497 points

570 points

14% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.3 GHz

13% slightly higher clock speed

2.9 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

65 W

35 W

85% significantly lower TDP

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

Identical

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

Identical

32 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

869th of 1,089

881st of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 February

2012 May

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

DDR3-1333

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i3-2120 vs Core i7-3520M specs and performance

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i3-2120 is faster than the Core i7-3520M. Despite this, the Core i7-3520M has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores and the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i3-2120 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i7-3520M. The Core i7-3520M outputs less heat than Core i3-2120 thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. Indeed, the Core i3-2120 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.