Intel Core i5-2500 vs Intel Core i7-2860QM

Compare Intel Core 4 core CPU vs Intel Core 4 core processor, specs and benchmark score. Which is the better CPU for gaming?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
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Intel Core i7-2860QM

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 135.87

$ 98.02

$ 37.85 significantly less expensive

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

1975 points

388% significantly better overall score

404 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

3663 points

486% significantly better gaming score

625 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1502 points

345% significantly better multitasking score

337 points

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1441 points

344% significantly better heavy workload score

324 points

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

26.26 points

27.93 points

6% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1687 points

3% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

1628 points

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

571 points

11% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

513 points

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1692 points

1715 points

1% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

592 points

5% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

562 points

Specifications

Cores

Number of physical processing units

Identical

Threads

Number of logical processing units

100% significantly more threads

Clock Speed

Base frequency at which the chip operates

3.3 GHz

32% slightly higher clock speed

2.5 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.7 GHz

2% slightly higher turbo speed

3.6 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

95 W

45 W

111% significantly lower TDP

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

Identical

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

Identical

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

Identical

32 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

725th of 1,089

1,081st of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 February

2011 November

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i5-2500 vs Core i7-2860QM specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i7-2860QM performs better than the Core i5-2500. Despite this, the Core i5-2500 has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

Info from our database shows that they both have the same core count but the Core i7-2860QM has more threads. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-2500 has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-2860QM. Also, the Core i5-2500 has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-2860QM outputs less heat than Core i5-2500 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. For instance, the Core i5-2500 has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.