Intel Core i5-10500 vs Intel Core i7-9700

Core i5-10500 vs Core i7-9700 comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i7-9700 is faster than the Core i5-10500. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-10500 in all gaming tests too.

When comparing core counts for these CPUs, we notice that the Core i7-9700 has slightly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i5-10500 that has 6 cores. Despite this, the Core i5-10500 has more threads than the Core i7-9700. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-10500 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-9700. Despite this, the Core i7-9700 has a slightly higher turbo speed. Both these chips have an identical TDP (Thermal Design Power). This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption. In terms of cache, the Core i7-9700 has slightly more L2 cache when compared to the Core i5-10500. However, both these chips have the same amount of L3 cache.

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 i5-10500 has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.