Intel Core i3-3120M vs Intel Core i5-3317U

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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CPU Comparison

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Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

924 points

967 points

4% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

1808 points

1993 points

10% slightly better gaming score

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

689 points

707 points

2% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

660 points

678 points

2% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

13.36 points

25% slightly higher Blender score

10.66 points

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

854 points

1% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

840 points

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

405 points

411 points

1% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

831 points

2% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

814 points

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

400 points

403 points

0.75% 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

2.5 GHz

47% significantly higher clock speed

1.7 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

35 W

17 W

105% 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

974th of 1,089

960th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2012 August

2012 May

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1333

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i3-3120M vs Core i5-3317U benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-3317U beats the Core i3-3120M in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i3-3120M has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

Info from our database shows that they both have the same core count and the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i3-3120M has a significantly higher clock speed than the Core i5-3317U. The Core i5-3317U outputs less heat than Core i3-3120M thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. Indeed, the Core i3-3120M has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.