Intel Core i5-3230M vs Intel Core i7-4600U

Core i5-3230M vs Core i7-4600U specs and performance

Our benchmark analysis concludes that the Core i5-3230M performs better than the Core i7-4600U. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-4600U in all gaming tests too.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores and the same number of threads. These CPUs have different clock speeds. Indeed, the Core i5-3230M has a slightly higher clock speed compared to the Core i7-4600U. Despite this, the Core i7-4600U has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-4600U outputs less heat than Core i5-3230M 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. Indeed, the Core i5-3230M has more threads than cores. Each physical core is split into multiple threads.