Intel Core i5-2500K vs Intel Core i7-3820

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

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Specifications
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Intel Core i7-3820

Price

The cheapest price from our partner retailers

$ 133.55

$ 216.33 significantly less expensive

$ 349.88

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

A combined score of all workloads

2325 points

2718 points

16% slightly better overall score

Gaming Score

The raw gaming performance with a fast GPU

4281 points

3% slightly better gaming score

4152 points

Multitasking Score

Performance in workloads using up to 8 cores

1776 points

2278 points

28% slightly better multitasking score

Heavy Workload Score

Performance in workloads using up to 16 cores

1704 points

2189 points

28% slightly better heavy workload score

Free CPU Benchmark

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Other Benchmarks

Blender score

Cycles Render (Samples per minute)

34.51 points

38.29 points

10% slightly higher Blender score

Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1893 points

2358 points

24% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (multi) score

Geekbench 5 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

629 points

2% slightly higher Geekbench 5 (single) score

613 points

Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Multi threaded benchmark

1910 points

2306 points

20% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (multi) score

Geekbench 6 (single) score

Single threaded benchmark

650 points

4% slightly higher Geekbench 6 (single) score

624 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

3.6 GHz

9% slightly higher clock speed

Turbo Speed

Higher frequency used for heavy workloads

3.7 GHz

3.8 GHz

2% slightly higher turbo speed

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the CPU

95 W

36% slightly lower TDP

130 W

PCIe Lanes

Number of physical connections between the CPU and expansion slots

150% significantly more pcie lanes

Memory Channels

Lanes for simultaneous memory access

100% significantly more memory channels

Supported Memory

Maximum amount of RAM supported by this CPU

32 GiB

39% slightly more supported memory

23 GiB

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

654th of 1,089

583rd of 1,089

Family

The product line

Core

Core X-series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2011 February

2012 February

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

DDR3-1066

Supports ECC memory

Does this CPU support error correcting memory

Core i5-2500K vs Core i7-3820 comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core i7-3820 beats the Core i5-2500K in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i5-2500K in all gaming tests too.

Our spec comparison shows that they have an identical amount of cores but the Core i7-3820 has more threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i7-3820 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Core i5-2500K. Also, the Core i7-3820 has a slightly higher turbo speed. A Core i5-2500K CPU outputs less heat than a Core i7-3820 CPU because of its slightly 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.