Intel Core i5-2500K vs Intel Core i7-3740QM

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 i7-3740QM

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 133.55

$ 2118.45 significantly less expensive

$ 2252.00

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2325 points

2493 points

7% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

4281 points

8% slightly better gaming score

3957 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1776 points

2061 points

16% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1704 points

1979 points

16% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

34.51 points

43.44 points

25% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1893 points

2018 points

6% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

629 points

2% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

611 points

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1910 points

1995 points

4% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

650 points

8% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

599 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

22% slightly higher clock speed

2.7 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

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

654th of 1,089

629th of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 February

2012 August

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 i7-3740QM comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark tool, the Core i7-3740QM is faster than the Core i5-2500K. Despite this, the Core i5-2500K has the advantage in our gaming benchmark.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores but the Core i7-3740QM has more threads. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-2500K has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-3740QM. Furthermore, both these CPUs have identical turbo speeds. The Core i7-3740QM 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.

The more cores a CPU has, the better the overall performance will be in parallel workloads such as multitasking. Many CPUs have more threads than cores, this means that each physical core is split into multiple logical cores, making them more efficient. For instance, the Core i5-2500K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.