Intel Core i3-7020U vs Intel Core i5-2520M

Compare Intel 7th Generation Core i3 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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Intel Core i5-2520M

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 1126.00

$ 69.00

$ 1057.00 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

999 points

2% slightly better overall score

979 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

1994 points

6% slightly better gaming score

1873 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

740 points

0.27% slightly better multitasking score

738 points

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

710 points

0.28% slightly better heavy workload score

708 points

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

18.70 points

46% significantly higher Blender score

12.81 points

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1475 points

61% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

915 points

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

726 points

57% significantly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

462 points

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1491 points

60% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

929 points

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

734 points

57% significantly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

467 points

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

Identical

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

2.3 GHz

2.5 GHz

8% slightly higher clock speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

15 W

133% significantly lower TDP

35 W

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

948th of 1,089

955th of 1,089

Family

The product line

7th Generation Core i3

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2018 May

2011 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR4-2133

DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i3-7020U vs Core i5-2520M specs and performance

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-2520M beats the Core i3-7020U in overall performance. Despite this, the Core i3-7020U has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

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 i5-2520M has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i3-7020U. A Core i3-7020U CPU outputs less heat than a Core i5-2520M CPU because of its 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 i3-7020U has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.