Intel Core i5-2500K vs Intel Core i5-3550

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 i5-3550

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 133.55

$ 165.40 significantly less expensive

$ 298.95

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2325 points

9% slightly better overall score

2119 points

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

4281 points

9% slightly better gaming score

3894 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1776 points

9% slightly better multitasking score

1620 points

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1704 points

9% slightly better heavy workload score

1555 points

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

34.51 points

26% slightly higher Blender score

27.36 points

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1893 points

1939 points

2% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

629 points

644 points

2% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1910 points

1924 points

0.73% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

650 points

0.78% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

645 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

3.3 GHz

Identical

3.3 GHz

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.7 GHz

Identical

3.7 GHz

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

95 W

77 W

23% slightly lower TDP

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

654th of 1,089

702nd of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 February

2012 May

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

DDR3-1333

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i5-2500K vs Core i5-3550 comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i5-2500K is faster than the Core i5-3550. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-3550 in all gaming tests too.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores and the same number of threads. In terms of clock speed, the Core i5-2500K and Core i5-3550 are identical in this regard. In addition, both chips have the same turbo speed. The Core i5-3550 outputs less heat than Core i5-2500K thanks to a slightly 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 i5-2500K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.