Intel Core i5-10500 vs Intel Core i9-9900

Core i5-10500 vs Core i9-9900 benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Core i9-9900 beats the Core i5-10500 in overall performance. 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 i9-9900 has slightly more cores with 8 cores compared to the Core i5-10500 that has 6 cores. It also has more threads than the Core i5-10500. Both the Core i5-10500 and Core i9-9900 have the same clock speed. Despite this, the Core i9-9900 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 i9-9900 has slightly more L2 cache when compared to the Core i5-10500. The Core i9-9900 also has slightly more 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.