Intel Core i5-2500K vs Intel Core i3-1215U

Core i5-2500K vs Core i3-1215U comparison

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i3-1215U performs better than the Core i5-2500K. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-2500K in all gaming tests too.

In terms of the number of cores of each of these CPUs, the Core i3-1215U has significantly more cores than the Core i5-2500K. Indeed, the Core i3-1215U has 6 cores compared to 4 cores found in the Core i5-2500K. It also has more threads than the Core i5-2500K. Our comparison shows that the Core i5-2500K has a significantly higher clock speed compared to the Core i3-1215U. Despite this, the Core i3-1215U has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i3-1215U outputs less heat than Core i5-2500K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption.

Modern CPUs generally have more logical cores than physical cores, this means that each core is split into multiple virtual cores, improving efficiency for parallel workloads. For instance, the Core i5-2500K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.