Intel Core i3-3240 vs Intel Core i5-3230M

Core i3-3240 vs Core i5-3230M specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i3-3240 performs better than the Core i5-3230M. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-3230M in all gaming tests too.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores and the same number of threads. Our comparison shows that the Core i3-3240 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i5-3230M. The Core i5-3230M outputs less heat than Core i3-3240 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 i3-3240 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.