Intel Core i3-540 vs Intel Core i7-3517U

Core i3-540 vs Core i7-3517U benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-3517U beats the Core i3-540 in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i3-540 in all gaming tests too.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores and the same number of threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i3-540 has a significantly higher clock speed than the Core i7-3517U. The Core i7-3517U outputs less heat than Core i3-540 thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. Indeed, the Core i3-540 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.