Intel Core i3-3220 vs Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400

Core i3-3220 vs Core 2 Quad Q9400 specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i3-3220 beats the Core 2 Quad Q9400 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core 2 Quad Q9400 in all gaming tests too.

With info from our database, we find that the Core 2 Quad Q9400 has significantly more cores with 4 cores whereas the Core i3-3220 has 2 cores. But they both have the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i3-3220 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core 2 Quad Q9400. A Core i3-3220 CPU outputs less heat than a Core 2 Quad Q9400 CPU because of its 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 i3-3220 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.