Intel Core i3-2120 vs Intel Core i7-5500U

Compare Intel Core 2 core CPU vs Intel 5th Generation Core i7 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 i7-5500U

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 170.00

$ 1858.00 significantly less expensive

$ 2028.00

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

1307 points

13% slightly better overall score

1149 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

2496 points

10% slightly better gaming score

2264 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

989 points

15% slightly better multitasking score

853 points

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

949 points

16% slightly better heavy workload score

817 points

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

14.23 points

17.15 points

20% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1073 points

1720 points

60% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

516 points

872 points

68% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1022 points

1695 points

65% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

497 points

881 points

77% significantly 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

37% slightly higher clock speed

2.4 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

65 W

15 W

333% significantly lower TDP

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

33% slightly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

100% significantly more supported memory

16 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

869th of 1,089

912th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

5th Generation Core i7

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 February

2015 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

DDR3-1333

Is Unlocked

Can this CPU can be overclocked

Core i3-2120 vs Core i7-5500U benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i3-2120 beats the Core i7-5500U in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-5500U in all gaming tests too.

Info from our database shows that they both have the same core count and the same number of threads. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i3-2120 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-5500U. The Core i7-5500U 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.